First Evening on Copeland Bird Observatory Island

As you know recently I visited the Bird Observatory Copeland Island for the weekend and in this post I will show you photographs of our boat journey which left Donaghadee at 6.00pm and also of some shots of birds before the light disappeared. There were 11 of us, 7 people were from England and the rest from Northern Ireland.  This is some of the English people as we say goodbye to the Donaghadee Lighthouse.

It was a very cloudy evening although the sea was not rough.

 We passed quite a number of Gulls.

View of Mew Island from the boat.

The light was fading very quickly so I took a couple of shots on landing before setting out to see a little bit of the island before it was dark.

 Both this shots were taken from the only house on the island of Mew Island with its lighthouse.

Further round the cliff were a lot of Lesser Black backed and Herring Gulls that are pairing up to start nesting soon. They were very noisy and I don’t really think they liked my presence!

 Some Oystercatchers in the cliff edge.

 I am showing this view above as this was the distance I was seeing the “shags” and so perhaps you understand with the fading light condition and distance from the sea, how I made the mistake of thinking the birds were Cormorants!  Can you see them?

Looking down from the high cliff I thought I saw 27 Cormorant (as I say in the video) however, on closer inspection they turned out to be 27 Shag.

Fulmar in flight

 Lesser Black backed Gull

Then I found 3 pairs of Fulmar nesting.

This is a ‘”view from the loo”.

The light was now fading very fast and I had to climb up again to the top of the cliff but just before I started the climb I spotted this well that I had never seen before.  Apparently it was where they used to get the fresh water from.  I certainly would not have wanted to carry water up the cliff, it was hard enough getting myself up it!!

You can access the video at

http://youtu.be/Vz4n_is4zVI

If there is a black space below, click it and the video will appear.

I hope you enjoyed this post and instead of showing you an Australian bird tomorrow, I will in show you the Manx Shearwater birds that we saw after dark on the island.

Thank you for visiting. 

Many thanks for your comments on any of my posts.