Rockabill Species List 2015, and the mystery of the Blackbird

Apologies for the lack of updates - plenty to be done as the breeding season draws to a close! Don't worry though, we'll get you up to speed with all of our end-of-season news in no time!

As well as tracking the trials and tribulations of our nesting species, one thing we like to monitor (being the keen ornithologists that we are) are the other species that visit Rockabill. The number of species we record varies from year to year, usually due to weather and surveyor effort. Years with lots of wind increase the chance that more birds associated with the mainland might accidently get blown out to Rockabill, and when there's rain or fog then birds that are migrating or simply flying by are more likely to land on Rockabill for shelter or to take a break rather than continue flying in poor conditions.

Surveyor effort also plays an important part - quite simply if you don't get out and look, you won't see anything! Each year the wardens make a list of the species they see, and there's always some friendly competition from year to year. When I started on Rockabill last year, the wardens from 2013 (Aine and Roisin) had recorded an impressive 51 species! So that was the number to beat.......or not beat as it turned out. Myself and Donnacha only managed to find 40 species from May to August last year. Well that just made me even more determined this year and Andrew was equally enthusiastic. So here is our Rockabill bird species list for this year.........

First we have the obvious ones - the birds that breed on Rockabill:

1. Roseate Tern

2. Common Tern

3. Arctic Tern

4. Black Guillemot

5. Kittiwake

6. Oystercatcher

Our ill-fated Oystercatcher nest. (B.Burke)

Then we have the other seabirds that breed on Lambay and other nearby islands:
7. Herring Gull

8. Great Black-Backed Gull

9. Lesser Black-Backed Gull

10. Common Guillemot

11. Razorbill

12. Puffin

13. Fulmar

14. Cormorant

15. Shag

16. Gannet

Other passing seabirds that don't breed nearby:
17. Manx Shearwater

18. Storm Petrel

19. Arctic Skua

20. Great Skua

21. Black-Headed Gull

22. Common Scoter

Wader species moving to and from their breeding grounds early and late in the season:
23. Turnstone
24. Purple Sandpiper
25. Dunlin
26. Knot
27. Whimbrel
28. Redshank
29. Lapwing

We have a small number of Turnstones with us on Rockabill for most of the summer. (B.Burke)

Purple Sandpiper - their numbers will build up as winter approaches. (B.Burke)

....and 30. Shelduck

A Shelduck on the Bill. (B.Burke)

Then the birds of prey coming out for food:
31. Peregrine Falcon
32. Kestrel (that didn't end well, click here to read more)

Peregrine Falcon (bottom) hunting a Common Tern on Rockabill, 2015. (B.Burke)

Kestrel eating a chick on Rockabill, 2015. (B.Burke)

We get the usual harbingers of summer that everyone looks forward to, and some less common migrants too:

33. Swallow
34. Swift
35. House Martin

36. Wheatear

37. Chiffchaff

38. Willow Warbler

39. Whitethroat 

40. Spotted Flycatcher

41. Blackcap

42. Grasshopper Warbler

43. Black Redstart

44. Ortolan Bunting (1st Dublin record, click here to read more)

Grasshopper Warbler looking for food in a Roseate Tern nestbox. (B.Burke)

A House Martin rests on Andrews windowsill (A.Power)

Black Redstart in one of the gardens on Rockabill (A.Power)

Wheatear on the Bill. (A.Power)

Ortolan Bunting - the first record of this species in Dublin. (B.Burke)

Lastly we get other common species that are doing a bit of pre-breeding season movement and somehow or another end up 7km out to sea! This section of the list can vary a bit from year to year, and most of these birds were seen in May, with the birds usually wasting little time in returning to the mainland:

45. Collared Dove 

46. Racing/Feral Pigeon

47. Rock Pipit

48. Starling

49. Rook

50. Hooded Crow

51. Pied Wagtail

Racing Pigeons often stop off on Rockabill. (B.Burke)

 

So that would be 51 species, a big improvement on last year but the same as seen in 2013! We've listed the Rockabill breeders, the other seabirds that breed nearby or pass by, the birds of prey, the spring/summer migrants and the common species that got blown out accidently..........Thankfully we saw one more species - a female Blackbird - taking us to 52 species, 1 more than 2013!! 

The Blackbird that has appeared on and off on Rockabill all summer! (A.Power)

The reason I didn't put it in that last category is because it didn't seem to have been just randomly blown out to sea one day. We saw the same Blackbird on 9 occassions between the 15th of May and 30th of July, including being seen with  nesting material. Had we seen it on a near-daily basis we would have assumed it was resident on the island, and if we saw it less times we'd probably think it was just moving through or maybe a couple of different individuals, though Blackbirds are not recorded on Rockabill every summer. But no, this Blackbird would appear, disappear for days or weeks, and then reappear! The same Blackbird! After two summers I know the island like the back of my hand, and I'm fully sure it wasn't nesting on Rockabill - but then where was it nesting and why was it coming out to Rockabill so much? Maybe it was nesting on Lambay, the large island to our south? Or maybe on the mainland? There's very little foraging habitat on Rockabill - the island is smaller than a football pitch and mostly just bare rock, with most of the other areas covered in Common Tern nests by early June. So where was that Blackbird on the days we weren't seeing it? And was it by accident or intent that it returned to Rockabill so many times? It's a mystery!