I’ve been working
Galley since 2003, and the area that I cover is just about 2 km2 in
area. It’s a coastal headland, with a
mixture of dairy and arable farmland that is thankfully not particularly
intensively farmed, with gardens and a bit of woodland.
Galley Head is
probably most famous for seawatching between July and October, with some very
large numbers of goodies like Great and Cory’s shearwaters in some years. I’ve also been lucky enough to see four
Fea’s-type petrel’s go by off Galley too, and there really is no better
adrenalin rush!
Galley also does ok
for migrants in south-easterlies, although the numbers aren't anything like
Cape Clear standards and anyone used to birding on the UK east coast would be
pretty unimpressed. As far as I'm
concerned, the "Shite Lane" area is the best bit for migs turning up –
(its also amusing to put it out to bird news services!) Shite Lane is on the
western side of the head, and my half-baked theory is that eastern stuff ends
up on that side in a south-easterly, for shelter. This is kind of backed up by
the fact that at least 4 yanks have turned up on the east side, in the scarily
overgrown (particularly if you've birded Shetland) Dirk Bay - Philadelphia
Vireo & American Redstart in '85, Hermit Thrush in '98 and Swainson's
Thrush in '08 - classy birds! God knows what has been missed in there though!
Although its often a slog, over the years I’ve racked up marsh warbler, 2 pallas's warblers, 2 richard's pipits, icterine and melodious warblers, several wrynecks, woodchat and red-backed shrike, hoopoe, ortolan and probably best find of all, black-headed bunting, as it was a proper “world tick”. Species such as yellow-browed warbler are pretty much annual, which is great, as its never really a proper autumn without a yellow-browed on patch! In fact, bizarrely, common gank like coal tit, long-tailed tit and bullfinch are all less likely to occur on a Galley year list than YBW – one of the things I love about patch birding! As for extreme rarities, well, I was close on hand to see both the Swainson's thrush in 2008 and the female red-flanked bluetail this spring, and both were absolute belters!
Prospects for
wildfowl and waders are a bit more limited.
Kilkeran Lake, although just off-patch, is easily scope-able from the
house and is usually good for dragging in a few bonus species each year,
although nothing seems to stay very long.
There are few resident species (little grebe, mallard & mute swan
being it) although in the course of a year I usually do ok for the commoner
duck species.
My best birds on here
are a female ring-necked duck and a male green-winged teal, although sadly I
did miss the black-winged stilt which visited for 6 days in 2006 – bugger! Generally speaking,waders are pretty thin on
the ground although I usually get a reasonable variety of the commoner species passing
over in autumn.
I’ve seen 192 species
on patch at Galley from 2004 to date, and reckon that breaking the near
mythical 200 barrier will realistically take another three or four years!
There’s still a few glaring omissions, notably red-breasted merganser,
treecreeper, and that stilt, but I did manage to put a few patch bogies to bed
in 2012 – long-tailed skua, garden warbler (ffs!) and crossbill, oh and
bluetail of course!
(Photo: C Cronin)
All in all, its a
great patch to have - there is nowt better than being able to stroll out the
door and find class birds like Black-headed Bunting within 1/2 mile of the
house! It doesn't happen often, but when it does, its feckin great!
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