Inishmore’s star-studded week

An incredible gathering of quality American rarities was found on a single island off the Co Galway coast during January.

BEING the westernmost of the Aran Islands, looming large at the mouth of Galway Bay, Inishmore is superbly positioned to attract transatlantic vagrants. Over recent years, this 12-kmlong rocky island has built a formidable reputation as an autumn birding destination and one of Ireland’s premier locations for producing Nearctic passerines. By contrast, its winter potential has rarely been considered – but that changed rapidly in January 2024.

In events closely mirroring those off Achill Island, Co Mayo, a year and a week previous (see Birdwatch 368: 9), an interestinglooking female ‘Velvet-type’ scoter was photographed by

Chris Gwiazda off the pier at Kilronan on the morning of 6 January. Given the close range of the bird and the quality of the images, it didn’t take long for the identification to be realised as a White-winged Scoter, with the rather square head shape and extent and pattern of the feathering on the bill base clearly indicating the vagrant species.

Although the third record for Ireland in the space of a year, it was nonetheless a Co Galway first and county listers were understandably to be found on the ferry to Inishmore the next morning. Full of anticipation at the prospect of frame-filling scoter views, those on board could not have predicted the eventful week that the island was in for.

With the scoter successfully twitched, Dermot Breen, Aonghus

O’Donnell and Ger Walsh went birding elsewhere on the island and found Co Galway’s first Pied-billed Grebe at Loch Phort Chorrúch. While perhaps an overdue addition to the county list, it was nonetheless Ireland’s first record of this species for almost a decade, the last being on Achill Island in April 2014.

Further groups of birders visited Inishmore in the following days, successfully connecting with both the scoter and the grebe, while also finding that the long-staying male American Wigeon was still present in the Loch Phort Chorrúch area, making for an impressive hat-trick of Yanks on the island.

But the hot streak wasn’t finished there, for on Saturday 13th, while twitchers were on the ferry across to the island, Chris Gwiazda did it again, finding a stunning adult male Bufflehead at Loch an Chara, just up the road from Kilronan Harbour. The pristine bird was a bonus tick for several visiting birders that

day, favouring the small loch and giving some excellent views alongside the local Mute Swans. After November 2022’s all-too-brief birds in Co Mayo, this fine male was very welcome for many.

The Bufflehead completed an extraordinary quartet of quality Nearctic waterbirds for a single site anywhere on this side of the Atlantic – in fact, in a European context, such a line-up might only be anticipated at a wetland in the Azores, and this congregation of highcalibre rarities must be close to unprecedented in either Ireland or Britain. ■

This stunning drake Bufflehead was part of a remarkable quartet of North American rarities that were present on the island of Inishmore, Go Galway, in January.

Co Galway’s first White-winged Scoter was the first Nearctic rarity to be found on the island.

Ireland’s first Pied-billed Grebe for a decade ensured national listers would make the trip.