April Mega at Ballycotton

I am ashamed to say that I, again, have not managed to spend much time at Ballycotton last month. Not that it would have made much difference. This spring is by far one of the weirdest I have ever seen. I have yet to see a single hirundine (anywhere, let alone on patch), whilst birds such as Wheatear and Black Redstart continue to avoid Ballyc like the plague.

This weekend saw the first signs of spring on patch. After a quick trip on Saturday into Wawwwwherford territory, for a couple of Firecrests, we made it down to Ballycotton for some much needed patching.

First up, were quite a few sandwich terns, both off the cliffs and in the bay. A species I would usually get here in March, but they eluded me. Little else was moving offshore.

It was then on to the lake, where some true patch gold was sitting in with the Teal, a female Pintail.
Dabbling ducks are exceptionally rare in Ballycotton. I have only ever known the site after the destruction of the Lake "Proper", and as a consequence have only ever seen 1 Pintail here before, so this constitutes a true patch mega.

Female Pintail - Patch Gold

We then headed out towards the beach, hopeful to pick up Wheatear, and maybe even something juicier, like a Little Ringed Plover. The beach was strangely dead for both Passerines and Waders. However a surprise did come in the form of a female Brambling, moving with chaffs and reed buntings in the fields.
I had seen a couple of Brambling earlier in the winter at the eastern end of Ballycotton Bay, and had hoped that they might make their way west at some point. This was a new species for me in Ballycotton, a patch tick (I believe the term is "Full Fat").

On Sunday, we again made our way down to Ballycotton, starting at the cliffs, where Hanna picked up the first Manx Shearwaters of the year (of which there were good numbers), and I picked up a solitary Arctic tern.

The Pintail was still on the lake, but apart from that migration was non-existant.

April starts well with 5 patch ticks, 1 being new for the patch.
In addition, noticing a cock up omission of 3 species seen back in January (namely Grey Plover, Grey Wagtail and Siskin) brings me a score of 107 Species, 144 points and a Comparative score of 61.10%.

EDIT: Goldcrest was also omitted. 108 species. Other scores updated accordingly.

Bring on the spring in full force.