My Baikal angst continued as I flew to Belfast to spend a couple of days working at WWT Castle Espie on 2nd Dec. Castle Espie is always a great place to work and brief moments spent birding looking over Strangford Lough were rewarded with Spoonbill (still very rare in Northern Ireland), Little Egrets, c.2500 Pale-bellied Brent Geese, Peregrine, Greenshanks, Little Egrets, clouds of Dunlins, Golden Plovers and Lapwings, with rafts of Shelducks, Eiders, Wigeons and a few Red-breasted Mergansers offshore. Hooded Crows (a very rare visitor at home in Lancashire) are always a treat to see and a herd of Whooper Swans in the shadow of Scrabo tower was great to watch from across the lough. In a year living in County Down in 1991 I didn't see a local Barn Owl, so I was delighted to see one drift across the road near Killinchy - two Irish ticks in a day.....
Back home on Wednesday 4th and I managed to get to see the Baikal Teal feeding amongst thousands of Wigeon along the Crossens channel, a cracking bird - well worth the angst to see one locally! I managed to see him twice more over the next few days and was also pleased that so many of the other local birders enjoyed seeing him. He had a decent supporting cast too; two Great White Egrets, a juv Ross's Goose, a juv Long-tailed Duck, Merlins, Peregrines, Marsh Harriers, Twites and the Ribble water bird spectacle. I recently delivered a talk 'Birding the Ribble Coast and Wetlands' to West Lancashire Wildlife and suggested that rare and scarce birds are ambassadors for sites and habitats; comrade Baikal really did prove that....
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