I wasn't really think straight when I arrived in Dublin last Friday. Was I going straight to the Bridges of Ross, was I going to Galway, or should I just jack the whole thing in and go down to Tacumshin in Co. Wexford, there to feast upon Caspian Tern and the like? Struck by indecision, I probably changed my satnav destination about eight times on the journey, but based on an up-to-date wind forecast of the 'pretty pants' variety, I ended up in Galway. And Galway, let me tell you, is buzzing on a Friday night. Amazing. I forewent the opportunity to get straight onto the pints and instead headed for the near mythical Nimmo's Pier, site of monster counts of White-wingers in winters past, plus various yank Gulls and Terns. I suppose you could call my trip to Ireland a fact-finding mission in many ways. Although August is far from ideal for Nimmo's I just wanted to check it out, and the extra two hours in the car didn't really bother me.
I soon found Nimmo's Pier, and rather than the industrial wasteland I had imagined it to be, with piles of disused lobster pots and abandoned trailers, it was in fact a popular place to go for a walk, slap bang in the middle of Galway City and about three minutes from about a thousand pubs and five million Friday night revellers! The Gulls like to loaf around near the city end of it, sharing a small lagoon with a bunch of Mute Swans that never leave (they're visible on the Google Satellite view), and sure enough there was an Iceland Gull in with the Herrings. With the light fading there was little I could do beyond a few grab shots, so I decided to try the next morning and head towards the noise and the fun.
Galway is a party town! Ram-packed with people enjoying themselves. I'm not one for drinking alone, so a quiet pint of de Black Stuff in a quiet pub was all I opted for, before nabbing a fish supper and heading back to Nimmo's. Tired but happy, I set off for somewhere quiet to sleep in the car, the last thing I wanted was to be sent on my way in the middle of the night. The Galway coast is pretty busy, but eventually the promenades faded and I found my spot - though its inhabitants didn't realise, I slept in the village of Barna outside a very large house. Gone before daybreak, I refreshed myself in Salthill and hit the pier again at around first light. Had a nice chat with Frank who was picking up Friday-night beer cans, and had another pop at the Iceland, which is looking extremely settled. On the whole though I was itching to get sea-watching, so it wasn't long before I pointed the car towards Co. Clare, and headed for the fabled Bridges of Ross. And as I've already talked about that, I have nothing else to say until I find a Wryneck on the patch tomorrow. As for Nimmo's Pier, it will see me again for sure.
I have to admit that I'm going off sea-watching a little bit. First of all there was the minor problem of missing a Tropicbird by about fifty metres last weekend, and now my monster weekend on the Bridges of Ross turned into a bit of a flop as the winds were essentially non-ideal. Or pants as it's often known.
I've always wanted to go to the Bridges, with its mouth-watering record of amazing birds and amazing counts, and with a free weekend (kids away chez grandparentals, Mrs L off being musical somewhere) I decided to go and book it. The risk was always that the winds and I didn't coincide, and so sadly it proved. In that respect it's very much like going to Shetland, you can either time it absolutely perfectly and drown in rares, or you can spend a week being blown to shreds by northerly winds and seeing a few Chaffinches in the brief moments when you can raise your bins to your face. If you live in Ireland you can just look at the forecast and go when it suits, whereas the needing to book flights bit is what did for me. I'm not a last minute person when it comes to that kind of thing, and so booked a fair while ahead. And so while the east coast of the UK has been plastered with Wrynecks and hippolais Warblers, I've been staring forlornly out to sea on the west coast of Ireland not seeing a great deal.
Well, it depends on what your definition of "a great deal" is. If for you that means a handful of Great Shearwaters and a good passage of Sooties, then you would have been happy. If however you understand seeing a great deal to mean a couple of Fea's Petrels, a Little Shearwater, daily counts of large Shearwaters numbering in the hundreds, then, like me, you would have come away slightly underwhelmed by the whole experience. In many ways my experience of sea-watching, with Fea's bagged on my second Cornish trip, has set me up for almost constant future disappointment. I guess it comes down the fact that by far the majority of sea-watching days are quiet ones where not a lot happens, you know, the odd Tropicbird, but not a lot else. The massive days are the rare events, but these are the ones that stick in the mind, and that you kid yourself are the norm at places like the Bridges of Ross. To be fair, I did see more Sooty Shearwaters than I have ever seen before, and piles more birds besides, but I didn't experience a 'classic'. There is always next year though, and, like Shetland, at some point the winds and I will meet, and it will be good.
Nonetheless I very much enjoyed the trip. The west coast of Ireland is beautiful, the people very friendly, and there was a lot more than just sea-watching. The small band of die-hard observers were a good bunch - fun times in the Lighthouse at Kilbaha on the evening I managed to stay awake - and it was excellent to be able to explore the Loop Head area, and gain some familiarity with place names that normally you just see on a pager associated with outrageous megas. And of course if the sea was slow, plan B was always to break out the camera.
