Blast From The Past Finds - Red-Rumped Swallow

Red-Rumped Swallow in Ireland remains a top class rarity with a stable trend. It's as rare today as it was 30 years ago and seems likely to remain so, with at best 1-3 a year on average.

My lifer Red-Rumpeds occurred in eastern Spain where my family would often holiday and my Irish tick individual occurred as a very early Spring occurrence in Co. Wicklow, but it would be many many years later before my first self found bird fell.

8th of April, 2011

Still riding on a high from having found Ireland's first Pallid Harrier a couple of weeks before, I was again out working east Cork for rarities in what was by all accounts a good Spring.

In a way my targets hadn't changed. I was still somewhat intent on finding a Red-Rumped Swallow, the same as I had been when checking Ballyvergan. 

And, having worked Ballycotton in the morning, it was en route to Ballyvergan that I struck gold.

Turning onto the old Youghal road, I noticed a reasonable sized group of hirundines feeding over a small marsh to my right. 

A quick reverse of a couple of meters and I raised my bins to glance through the window and was instantly greeted with a pink rump gliding over the rushes in amongst the Swallows and House Martins. Bingo!!

I put the news out instantly, moved the car in off the road a little ways east and walked back with my scope to enjoy the bird and wait for the inevitable twitchers. 

Red-Rumped Swallow - Rónán McLaughlin 

The bird showed nicely for a couple of hours, and I moved on, continuing to work other areas, but at this point anything else would be a bonus. 

There is something special about Red-Rumpeds. One of those classic spring old skool rarities that people dream of finding, and which I had wanted for ages, finally fallen. 

And this is really what building a self found list is all about. You can, believe it or not, target birds of this nature for finding. Megas are random, but the regular, annual stuff?...you can work for those. 

20th September, 2011

My second self found bird fell the very same year, on Mizen Head.

In very similar fashion, I picked this bird up from the car, however, as you might imagine, and autumn Red-Rumped wasn't really on the radar, and so when I picked up a pink rump gliding over the fields with other hirundines near the school, the panic was that this could be a Cliff Swallow. So believe it or not, they was a brief nanosecond of anti-climax where the thought entered my head that "Oh, it's JUST a Red-Rumped Swallow"...which of course very quickly transits to "Red-Rumped Swallow! Nice!".

The bird fed around the fields for a few minutes before the flock seemed to move off towards the Three castles direction.

I moved on towards Joe's garden, hoping to re-encounter the flock over the fields there, but no joy, and the same was to be said then of Three Castles itself.

I didn't manage to connect with them again. 

Such is the nature of Red-Rumped Swallow, with the vast majority of birds being one day wonders and many of those being fly throughs themselves. 

Absolutely brilliant birds.