Irish wildlife observations 2011

Date 13 Feb 2011.

1 pm observed 1 adult otter swimming northwards and diving close to rocks at Garron Point, Co Antrim.

I'm pretty sure I saw one when fishing on Skerries beach in early morning about 10 years ago...

I'm pretty sure I saw one when fishing on Skerries beach in early morning about 10 years ago...

Thanks for that Chris, what did you see, was it far away?

As you can see the thread has been retitled to include all wildlife, should make it more interesting. Chris please report anything interesting you see while out and about this season.

Cheers,

Cathal.

One morning i was joined by this fellow while i was fishing from my kayak.
click on link for my otter photos. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=6 ... d1e809ba06

Great photos there Dave, he prob never seen anyone in a kayak before and was trying to figure out what class of beast you were?????

Had a similar experience last summer while spinning off rocks, it looked at me from 20 yards away as if to say, here boy those are my fish. But he didnt give me enough time to get the camera out.

Great animals to see in the wild and get near to. Thanks.

19 Feb 2011.
Wasnt actually fishing yesterday but saw some good stuff on a hill walk, 2 pair of grouse, a woodcock out on the heather and 2 common buzzard.

I wonder are those grouse pairing up already? Only fish I saw were stickleback in the shallows of a wee lough.

there are several of these birds hanging about both the inside and outside piers at carrigaholt in west clare

are they black throated divers? is that rare? they seem to be actively diving down and feeding i wonder
what on.

You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.

hi jw.
a black throathed in winter in winter plumage there.a winter migrant to our shores along with the red throathed (slightly upturned bill) and the larger great northern..fairly common around our coasts, most people just assume its just a cormorant. some may linger into spring and early summer and can be seen in breeding plumage.food mainly consists of small fish and crusteacens... when the body gives up on this fishing lark i will return to my first love....birdwatching

There are a few hanging round North Clare/Galway Bay. They seem to come in closer than the cormorants.

It looks more like a great northern diver in winter plumage. Bill suits better for g.n.d being very thick compared to that of the black throated. Half collar around neck also points towards g.n.d (black throated doesnt have this)

yes ronald a gnd....should have leafed through my well worn peterson/mountfort/hollum...too long since the scope and bins saw any action

Sure you can fish and bird-watch at the same time, thats what I do

seen a few of them up around north connemara as well

thanks for those replies, i found this site which is good for identification of sea birds

http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdgui ... index.aspx

it does look like the gnl, not the black throat

@ cathalger
this is the seal with 'Pink eye' i dont know what was wrong with him, but he was gone the next day so hopefully made a recovery after this rest

You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.

Thats pretty nasty lookin Stevie, a shame. Wonder how that came about.

I was at Garron Pt on NE coast of Co Antrim this afternoon, at a friends house. We were watching a big seal sport in the ebbing tide which was flowing northwards like a river. Then we noticed a big flock of birds, approx 200, flying very low over the calm sea, heading southwards at great speed. All the birds were about 1 foot above the water and going like blazes, flying in a big V tight to the water. My friend had a look with the telescope which points at the sea from his house permenantly. He IDed them as razorbill.

In the next hour and a half we saw 10 flocks of identical birds doing exactly the same thing, flying southwards down the coast. The flocks were all way over 100 birds and some could have been 400 birds. Id say we saw in excess of 2000 birds all heading south in a big hurry. Pretty cool, a mass migration of razorbill and maybe some guillemot? We dont know how many flocks flew down before we started to see them or how many we couldnt see way out in the thin mist?

But what Im wondering is why are they heading south right now and where are they coming from?? The flocks of geese to be seen out there are all going north after over wintering somewhere south of here. Youd expect birds to be heading in a northerly direction at the mo?

fished an overnight session at culdaff beach (donegal) at the weekend. 7.30am sunday morning watched a pod of about 20 dolphins about a half mile off shore circling and jumping herding a shoal of fish of some sort while over 100 gulls were diving into them . class to watch while drinking the breakfast coffee . reckon they were dolphins and not porpoises as they looked very big even from the distance we were away. althow i could be wrong as i'm not that knowledgeable about dolphins and porpoises

I think you are probably right that thay were dolphin as opposed to porpoise, I have observed dolphins jumping frequently but never porpoise. Lovely sight anytime.

I saw three otters last year, the first was on Liscannor beach, it looked like a black binbag blowing across one of the gullies until I noticed it was going the opposite way to the wind. It left the gully and didn't take any notice of the two anglers in front of it. The second was on the Shannon near Labasheeda, hunting about twenty feet offshore and the third ran across the road near Coole park very early one morning.
I met a birdwatcher near Liscannor who said he was watching Choughs but I wasn't convinced as what he showed me looked more like jackdoors. I always thought they had a bright red curved beak.

Any whale or dolphin sightings can be reporting to IWDG at http://www.iwdg.ie/iscope/sightings/report.asp?id=46. It helps to have them on a database so that this infor can be fed into government decision making when it comes to planning conservation initiative or reacting to marine development proposals such as renewable energy developments at sea.