Belted beauty in Beara!
A loud rattle alerted Patrick Lyne to the presence of a stunning American vagrant in a secluded West Cork bay.
always keep a keen eye out for anything strange or new in west Beara. On 9 November I was out at Dunboy and the cackle of Jays started in the Holm Oaks along the path. They always seem to evade my approach and with their beautiful colours are a unique subspecies in Ireland.
Then I heard an unusual rattle from the trees over the water. I saw a flash of dark and white and assumed a Magpie was having an argument with the Jays. The behaviour and call were odd, though, so I took a few photographs (a digital phenomenon, no longer
constrained by the cost of film). I then lifted my binoculars to see a bird perched on a branch above the sea, with a noticeable crest and a large, long and stout bill.
I tried to get closer, taking photos every 2 m, but the bird flew away back up the path. I stayed put and waited for it to come back as the direction it had chosen to fly didn’t offer suitable fishing grounds for a kingfisher (which I was sure it was). It dutifully returned for some photos and once I had these I rushed
back to the house to check my bird books. I reached for the old favourite, the Hamlyn Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe. A gift in 1972, with the price mark still on it. Going straight to the kingfisher section there was nothing remotely similar, so I turned to Google, looked up ‘American kingfisher’ and Belted Kingfisher came up.
It was beyond doubt. A bird common in North America and the Caribbean, but that has only been recorded in Ireland on four previous occasions, the last in 2012. This bird has at least for now taken up residence in an area frequented by local Common Kingfishers, which I confess I think are far more pleasing on the eye, if less exotic. The ‘belt’, a band across the breast, is blue-grey with a distinct rustorange colouring through it. The secondary band of the female is missing and therefore after much discussion it seems to be a male, and due to the changing band colour, a juvenile, similar to the last individual seen in Co Galway in October 2012.
The Belted, buoyed by strong winds on a 3,000-km journey arrived healthy and well and presumably will remain here for some time. It has been seen at various locations along a 3-km stretch of coast with overhanging trees. It seems to have little difficulty catching fish here, sitting on branches overlooking the water and fishing in the same bays as our native kingfishers – although it can be easy to overlook it due to the profusion of rhododendrons along the shore. ■