Really hope to have a good turn out on Sunday night. Cathal has put a fantastic effort into this and it really is for a good cause. Look forward to seeing lots of familiar faces there.
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County Louth (formerly Dundalk Bay) local patch. (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter breffni
- Start date
Drove around knockbridge on the way back from Baltray last night looking for quail - no quail but did catch a barn owl (137) in my headlights beside the turn for knockbridge on the ardee road. Counted 114 herring gull, 37 great black backed gulls, 122 oycas, 22 dunlin, 9 turnstone, 17 ringed plover, 15 sandwitch terns, and 15 cormorant along the tideline last night. Also what i thought was a sparrowhawk on the way in, but may well have been that cuckoo that was hanging around. There was a common sandpiper feeding along the shore of the boyne.
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Four common sandpipers, a dozen greenshanks and two adult an two juv little egrets in ballymac bay yesterday...no sign of green sandpipers at the "hidden channel"...
Black guillemots at Giles Quay have at least five nests with eggs. Two further nesting holes have evidence of fledged birds (copious droppings inside). A high tide in late june probably flushed out some of the holes so the five are presumably second attempts.
Black guillemots at Giles Quay have at least five nests with eggs. Two further nesting holes have evidence of fledged birds (copious droppings inside). A high tide in late june probably flushed out some of the holes so the five are presumably second attempts.
Just noticing that this time last year we had 13 chicks and had just gotten over a period of high tides...http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=28640&page=37 - as far as i can make out we have at least 17 at the moment. Thinking of little tern ecology, our colony is about 40 pairs, how are they doing? (forgive the back fo envelope maths). Little terns live about 20 years so we would expect a natural attrition of the population of minimum 5% every year. Therefore to maintain the population they need productivity of 5% per year at least ie each pair must produce two breeding adults. To produce two breeding adults they need to fledge 10 in their lifetime (assuming 80% attrition in first year after fledging). That means that just to hold their own each pair needs to be successful one year in every four, or that in a given year that a quarter of birds need to be successful ie 10 out of a colony of 40 or 20 chicks fledged. Last year we had 41 chicks fledged, this year 17 so far and a good chance of more...so they would appear to be well ahead of the game...
Gerry o Neill
Well-known member
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Concert was great - Mary Mc Cague and Ciaran Rosney doing the Rocks o' Bawn really hit the spot! Counted more than 70 people at the end of the night...photos here: http://louthnaturetrust.org/little_tern_2008_blog
It really was an excellent night and a huge thank you is due to Cathal Johnson who more or less single handedly organised the whole thing, a great effort which really paid off and is hugely appreciated.
Thanks to Mark Dearey too for use of the Spirit Store and for donating a hamper of beer for the raffle, and thanks to everyone who turned up and supported it.
Helsinki Birder
Stealth Birder
A wrecked Juvenile gannet was present in the boyne estuary, west of baltray on Saturday.
1 Puffin and 4 species of tern the best in a brief seawatch off clogherhead.
Owen
1 Puffin and 4 species of tern the best in a brief seawatch off clogherhead.
Owen
Great - you didn't notice if it was a male or female? I wonder if there is a pair...
BTW I have one male collie-type puppy left if anybody is interested...
I believe that they had major losses of chicks over the week-end but I don't have figures, perhaps someone else can help here.
Just have to add my own comments about Sunday night. It was absolutely fantastic. Great music which was well appreciated by the audience, I was blown away by the high standard of all concerned. Much thanks due to Cathal who organised the whole thing! A few pics to give a flavour of the night.
Pic 1 French Fiddles
Pic 2 Audience
Pic 3 Mary McCague & Ciaran Rosney
Pic 4 Jacque Faure along with Breffni & Michael Holohan
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Peter Phillips
Well-known member
I thought you were in south africa, nice to get the terns, the population around here seems to have collapsed - in the meantime, a few shots from the Maine trip.
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Sorry Breffni, just caught a flash of blue and it disappeared. Vegetation is very dense along the banks so it was a really brief glimpse. Delighted to see them -thats the first one I have seen since I moved into Brook Street seven years ago - perhaps the loss of the trees at the tennis club caused them to move along the river?
Helsinki Birder
Stealth Birder
Pale phase 2nd summer arctic skua off Clogher head yesterday.
A moulting adult ruff at baltray also.
Regards
Owen
A moulting adult ruff at baltray also.
Regards
Owen
I spoke to them on Monday, they had severe losses and had found a lot of dead chicks but they hadn't completed a full chick count at that stage and didn't know how many they have left.
The latest from Baltray is that 4 more chicks have hatched so we now have 21. This is still an excellent number for Baltray.
