Hey birders. A quick birdy post. The past 2 weekends we've been birding, looking for the autumn returnees. 58 species over the 2 weeks. We started at the Wexford Slobs: a marshy reserve set aside for wintering geese: mainly the Greenland White-fronted geese. 6000 of them. We also saw the much rarer Pink-footed goose. 3 of those. And a few whooper swans thrown in for good measure, with about 500 mute swans. And PK finally saw the elusive Lapwing.
This past weekend we slopped through mud and muck to look at waders, what we used to call shorebirds. More lapwings. A great crested grebe. Dozens of oystercatchers. Hundreds of dunlin. A fair few curlew. A shelduck or two. Flocks of brent geese (pale-bellied). PK saw a raptor make off with something small and feathery. The star of the show, however, was the Curlew Sandpiper; a lifebird for both of us. It took about 30 minutes to identify, but there it was. Or there they were. The next 30 minutes were spent trying to determine if the beautiful bird sewing the mud right in front of us was bar tailed or black tailed...
A word on wellies. We recently bought wellingtons. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, we bought big, vulcanized, rubber boots. Why it took us so long to do so is unfathomable. They are the 4x4 of the shoe world. Mud, sopping grass, sand, standing water. These things are no longer barriers to us. Of course, the first time I tried them on I should really have been wearing waders. But no matter. I got out without a bootful of swamp. And at the end of a day of birding in the rain and cold, you can't ask for much more than that.
Slainte.
