The Wilson's Bonanza

Today is the anniversary of Ireland's Wilson's Bonanza, 1st of August 2009, at the Bridges of Ross, co. Clare.

This remains the largest single count of Wilson's petrel from land in Ireland at a VERY conservative 27 individual birds.

Wilson's petrel - Robert Vaughan

I had been watching the weather forecast for several days with the bank holiday weekend approaching. Having decided that it looked very good, I began calling around telling people to get themselves to the Bridges.

Dara Fitzpatrick decided he would join myself and my dad, and we arranged to meet him in Limerick in the wee hours of the morning. After a few car trouble delays on the part of Dara, we finally arrived at the Bridges in the early morning, with a few birders already on site.

Not long after we had gotten comfortable in the hollow, the first Wilson's began to appear...and did not stop appearing. 

Bird after bird began to flow through, often wonderfully close and the task of keeping track of them became difficult.

Thinking back on it now, I'm not sure why the constant recalculations were applied to the birds. It certainly wasn't I who decided upon this action (I'm not sure who it was, but would hazzard a guess), but instead of simply counting birds as they passed the cliffs (as would be the standard thing to do), it began to be assumed that some were birds floating back into view. There really was no evidence of this at all, and thinking about it logically at this point, I suspect a line of thinking akin to "There simply can't be this many. We have to mitigate these numbers somehow" was applied. 

Certainly some birders present concluded there were over 50 birds on the day, and I dare say many of the mid-range to distant birds were simply let go.

Nonetheless, the count of 27 stands. Could this year be the year that this record is broken? The numbers seem to be there. Here's hoping. 

Dara Fitzpatrick's account of this great day below

I thought about putting together an account of my great escape to Clare the weekend all the Wilson's Petrels showed up at the Bridges. It's not the prose you're used to from Séamus Feaney but here goes:

Those of you with young kids or even high maintenance pets will know how difficult it is to get away to do some solid birding but my opportunity arose at the right time when the missus and kids went to Dublin for a week. Owen Foley saw a Wilson's on the Tuesday and the forecast looked good for Saturday (1st Aug) with strong north westerlies so by Friday we hatched a plan for a trip to Clare.

3am!! The worst thing about birding is reaching for the alarm clock to knock it off ten times and then fall out of bed wishing you picked a different hobby rather than get up at an unearthly hour with a long drive ahead and no guarantee of seeing anything. I decided to have weetabix and not curry chips which I normally have at that hour of the morning.

3.30am. The flask and sambos were made so I jumped in the car (old punto). The car had been giving trouble starting the previous few days but I was clever parking it on a slope on the road outside. Would it start - no! Could I roll it down the hill -no, someone had reversed their car in front of mine within an inch of the front bumper. So before I went anywhere it looked like the trip was off. I knew the neighbour who owned the car but knocking on their door at 3 in the morning wouldn't be popular. So after half an hour of pushing the car inch by inch up the hill whilst kicking a large stone on front of the rear wheel, and hiding in the car every time a car passed in case they thought I was steeling it, I managed to move the car far enough to let it roll down the hill. Now I only had an hour to make it from Crosshaven in Cork to Limerick at 5am to meet the Foley's for a lift the rest of the way. I felt like I'd a days work done already and again questions arose in my mind about my choice of rewarding hobby!

5.30am. Finally, I jumped into the Foley's car and we were all on the road from Limerick to the Bridges. (I won't tell you about taking the wrong road into Limerick and the ten phone calls to hook up successfully.) The trip down was uneventful and we got there at 7.15am. There were heavy showers in the area but the sea state was magnificent with huge rolling waves crashing in at the Bridges. From the car park I could see masses of sea birds, including a sooty,  pressed in against the shoreline so conditions looked perfect. We were into our raingear as quickly as possible and out to the watch point. We knew Dermot Breen had beaten us there as his car was the only onein the car park. He was there about 15 minutes but there was nothing of note in that time. The number of manx and stormies going past was impressive. 

7.45 am. I was only settling in when Owen and Dermot called a Wilson's going left. As with any lifer I was beside myself to get a chance to get to grips with this species. Eventually I got on to the bird in question and I wasn't immediately convinced. I asked out load as to why it was a Wilson's and not a stormy? The two lads were agreed that it was a Wilson's and I did note that the bird flapped very little. Anyhow, I was left with the feeling that it was the most disappointing 'lifer' I'd seen yet. However, the light was bad and it was raining and it was still early in the day so perhaps I'd get another chance to see one but to see 2 Wilson's in a day is good going.

7.50am. Just five minutes later and the call went out again for a Wilson's. This time it was closer in and I got on to it much more quickly. I couldn't believe my luck. Unlike the previous encounter I was able to get my eye in and see the key features I'd missed with the first bird. What a great moment and a stunning petrel. All the hassle of getting there had evaporated in an instant. It wasn't yet 8 o'clock and I knew we were in for an excellent sea watch.

8.10am. Another Wilson's! This time in the course of Dermot and Owen giving directions it was obvious they were looking at two different birds! Sure enough there were 2 more Wilson's in front of us. I pinched myself again, from never seeing Wilson's to have four pass by within and hour was a dream and with each bird I was better able to pick them out as was Donal Foley beside me who was in the same camp. From here on and to our amazement, every twenty minutes there was a Wilson's or three passing. As the morning went on the sun came out and the light was perfect coming from behind us and the views were cracking. John Murphy and company arrived and got in on the action. 

10.30am. During a lull we headed for breakfast at the light house inn to recover from our amazement. By this stage we had seen ~12 Wilson's. We discussed the possibility of the same birds going around in circles but none of us had seen any evidence of this. We'd also noticed, due to the good light, that the birds were in different states of moult. In the end we chose to stick to convention and just count the number of passing birds as with any other species.

11.20am We were all back at the Bridges and John et al. had seen another one or two Wilson's in our absence. Over the next few hours we had seen a total of 20 Wilson's close in to shore. I have to confess that as I lay back for a rest that at this stage I didn't get up to see every bird that was called. Instead we were more excited by the rarity of the day which was Sabines (6 in total). We joked about having driven to the wrong side of the Atlantic and shouting 'STORMY' as a rarity, 'WHERE?',.....' in between the 2 Wilson's.'

15.00pm By this stage I was cross eyed and headed for the car for a snooze. Just before I headed for the car park Dermot Breen rang two birders in Galway and told them this was about the only opportunity to twitch a Wilson's in living memory. Although it would take them two and a half hours to get to the Bridges they accepted the challenge.

18.15pm I'd nodded off for a bit longer than I expected but when you are in out of the wind in a warm car it can be a very comfortable place. When I got back to the watch point I saw two very happy Galwegians who had seen the very last Wilson's go past - the 27th! I just hoped their views were better than my first views. However, they were probably the first birders to twitch a Wilson's. In the normal course of events, the fact that I missed out on seeing seven Wilson's petrels,  because I was asleep in the car, would be a disaster but not so on this occasion.

19.00pm Back to the Long Dock in Carrigaholt. I celebrated with a slap up meal and a pint of creamy Guinness. I wouldn't normally  have a pint but given the day that was in it and the fact that I wouldn't have to drive for 3 hours I went ahead. It was a perfect end to our mammoth sea watch.

10.45pm Back to the car in Limerick and guess what it started on the button.

11.00pm I noticed as I was working my way through all the round abouts out of Limerick that there was a cop car tail gating me. I was so busy looking in the rear view mirror that I almost missed the turn off the badly sign posted round about and that was enough for them to pull me over. S**T!! Anyhow all the usual questions with some bewilderment when I told the gard I was birdwatching in Clare. I was honest and told him I'd a pint with my dinner and he was straight back to the car for the breathalyzer. Double S**T!!! So I huffed and puffed into the bag and after what seemed like a long wait 'ZERO' came up on the gadget. Enough said, I just wanted to get home to bed but figured I should have had two pints - not.

1am - bed