Wilson's Storm Petrel

Monday 18th July At the Bridges of Ross today there were two Arctic Skuas, one Bonxie, 11 Sooty Shearwaters, 22,000 Manx Shearwaters, seven Storm Petrels, nine Arctic Terns and eight Puffins. 


Sunday 17th July there was one adult Long-tailed Skua, one adult Sabine's Gull, one Pomarine Skua, four Arctic Skuas, five Bonxies, one Great Shearwater, two Balearic Shearwaters, one blue Fulmar and 53 Storm Petrels at the Bridges of Ross.


Donal, Owen & Conor Foley.

Saturday 16th July there was excellent sea watching conditions with storm West to North West winds pushing in seabirds from far out to sea.  The first Wilson's Storm Petrel (John N Murphy) of the season was found along with some other good seabirds.

Wilson's Storm Petrel  1
Great Shearwater  2
Sooty Shearwater   52
Manx Shearwater  30 - 40,000
Bonxie  3
Storm Petrel  32
Puffin  43
Red-throated Diver  3
Dunlin  3
Sanderling  8

Observers:  John N Murphy, Killian Mullarney, Jimmy Dowdal, Brian Porter, Shane Farrell, Robert Vaughan, The Foleys and Geoff Pearson.

Wilson's Petrel © Killian Mullarney

Sabine's Gull

Mark Carmody was at the Bridges of Ross today 9th July 2011 for a bit of sea watching and managed to find a first-summer Sabine's Gull, one Bonxie, 600 Manx Shearwaters and three Puffins.  A very good seawatch for this time of the year and slack westerly winds.  The following day 10th one other Bonxie was off the Bridges.

Early Cory's

Wednesday 6th July saw the weather change rapidly with a series of lows approaching Ireland from the south west.  So with predicted high winds from this direction it looked good for sewatching.  Brian Finnegan and I decided to head to the Bridges to do a couple of hours seawatch.  When we got to the Bridges the wind was from the east and not the south west as predicted.  Nevertheless we did a two hour seawatch in which there were over 2,000 Manx Shearwaters, one Cory's Shearwater and a pod of 14 Bottle-nosed Dolphins.  On the headland due to heavy rain and high winds small birds stayed under cover but we did see ten Ravens and two Chough.

John N Murphy, 6th July 2011.