Work In Progress

Located within Donegal Bay on the north westerly coast of Ireland, Killybeggs Harbour leads out into the Atlantic and is one of Irelands biggest fishing ports. These two factors make it popular with gulls and gull watchers. I'm certainly no gull expert, but I'm very keen to develop my skills and knowledge in this area. Target bird for today was Glaucous Gull. The first promising spot was a fish processing centre, south of the main harbour. The workers kindly let us stand within their grounds, allowing a good vantage point for both the gulls visiting their facilities and also out over the water. On the downside it did stink.

The gulls visiting the processing centre were mainly Herring and a few GBBG, there were also Common and Black Headed about. Nothing unusual so far. Things started to pick up when we spotted a pair of Red Breasted Mergansers on the water, and then a few more (year tick). I began to scan gulls on the water and I found a very white gull swimming. Luckily it was in scopable distance and we were able to ID it as a first winter Iceland Gull (lifer) It later rested on the rocks. Also a Shag was preening with the Cormorants on the rocks (year tick).

We moved up to a more industrious part of the harbour just past the pier. We had just set up scope and I had a white winged gull resembling Glaucous but then all the gulls flushed from the rocks! The bird in question flew briefly back into sight a few times, but the views were not sufficient to rule out Iceland. We had a couple more Iceland Gulls and more Shags here. Hundreds more gulls turned up as some fishing boats had come in and it just became complete mayhem and it was also very cold so we went for fish and chips instead.

After lunch we returned to the spot. The gulls had returned to the rocks and I immediately found the Glaucous Gull (lifer). This time the views were excellent and its mighty size was apparent, stood next to the Herring Gulls. Also got some views of it in flight. There were also quite a few seals in the harbour.

Then something amazing and totally unexpected happened. I saw a small bird swimming not too far from the shore. I took this for a small grebe, but when I got it in my bins it was clearly some type of Auk. It had striking white wing patches and it was smaller than a Guillemot. It could only be a Black Guillemot in winter plumage (lifer)! I looked in Collins to confirm this. We had awesome views of the little fella. There is even a terrible digi-scoped pic which I might post when I return to the UK tommorrow.