14th/15th October

Gerard and I had planned an over night trip to Tory on the 14th/15th October. With Rose-coloured Starling, Greenland Redpoll and the candidate eastern Yellow Wagtail all present on the 13th an a light north easterly blowing it looked liked we had timed our visit well.

We took the Magheraroary ferry and with an easterly wind it was quiet on the ferry over.

Barnacle Geese

The best about 1000 Barnacle on the smallest island on the crossing,Inisbeg. The weather was glorious so we set out east in search of the Rosy Starling which was feeding on the seaweed at the east end beach. Jim and Victor had not seen the Redpoll or Wagtail that day which was a little disappointing. We located the Starling easily enough but the starling flock was jumpy and views were a bit distant. We checked east town for the Redpoll and Wagtail but neither appeared to be there. The best bird we could find was a Yellow-browed Warbler in Grace's garden. Fieldfares and Redwings buzzing around our heads were the only other visable sign of migration

Redwings

Yellow-browed Warbler

The following day a quick visit to west town got me two island ticks Jackdaw and Goldcrest.

Jackdaw. Tory rarity..

After breakfast we headed back east to check the east end and the beachj, hoping to get better views of the Rosy Starling. We had a quiet couple of hours checking the fields. The best a merlin being modded by a pair of Pied wagtails.

Merlin

We then headed to the beach to check out the starling flock. The Rosy was giving reasonable views, feeding on the seaweed.

Rose-coloured Starling (Peter Phillips)

Rose-coloured Starlings by Gerard Murray

Scanning the rest of the beach I picked up a monochrome looking flava wagtail a few metres away, feeding between the stones.

Flava Wagtail (all photos by Gerard Murray)

It was clearly the bird found by the two Jim's and Victor. We had talked about the bird, with Jim and Victor the day before. The plan was to try and get a recording of the birds call or a DNA sample. I spent 30 minutes failing miserably to record the call on my mobile phone, even though we had the bird as close as 4 metres. I gave up. After discussing it with Jim we though we would try to get a DNA sample. After about 15 minutes it eventually did the business on a large pebble on the beach.Gerrard kept an eye on the location of the stone and guided me to it.

It will be interesting to see what it turns out to be. There are currently no accepted records of Eastern Yellow Wagtail  M.t.tschutschensis in Ireland (as far as I can tell) and just two  British records up to the end of 2007. Both from Fair Isle. Both specimems obtained; 1st winter female collected on 9th October 1909 and a first winter male collected on 25th September 1912 (Slack; Rare Birds Where and When).

A recent record from Devon also provided a 100% match with eastern type Yellow Wagtail.(British Birds Jan 2013) per Killian Mullarney.

Very happy with ourselves we headed back to west town with the DNA sample. A stonechat on the road to east town was another island tick

Stonechat

Passing through east Town a single Tree Sparrow sized finch caught our attention

Greenland type Redpoll

It looked good for Greenland Redpoll and possibly the bird found a couple of days previously by Jim and Victor.

We got the 3pm ferry off the island. A very productive couple of days. Good luck to Jim and Victor who are staying on until the weekend.