066-915 0530 || 
The weather forecast looked promising – heavy rain was due to clear to sunshine. Shelter from a northerly wind would encourage bird activity. Late October usually marks the end of autumn migration and wintering species are settling in. It's a great time to be out. That was the plan.
We patiently spent time watching the vegetated gullies in Fahan and Coomeenoule. Sheltered, bushy places on headlands often hold migrating birds and, sure enough, we saw two species of migrant birds, Blackcap and Chiffchaff. At Slea Head, a sea-watch revealed no whales but a Harbour Porpoise joined a group of gulls following a Grey Seal.
After sussing out a variety of wintering shore birds in Ferriter's Cove we headed over the Clasach to Ventry. This road follows Gleann Mor, which the ‘Punkbirders' (a UK group of ace birders who occasionally visit) call 'The Magic Valley'. This spot is renowned internationally for records of rare and usual sightings. Nearing the top of the hill a strange, long-tailed rufous bird flew alongside our car and, as we pulled up, the bird perched on a post nearby. A young cuckoo – in late October! Cate took only a few excited moments to photograph this extremely rare occurrence.
The barring on the plumage showed it to be a young bird, hatched and raised most likely in a nearby Meadow Pipit’s nest by unwitting pipit parents. The female Cuckoo watches for an unguarded moment at a pipit nest before nipping in and laying her own egg in the nest. The young Cuckoo hatches first and quickly pushed the other pipit eggs out of the nest. By the time a young Cuckoo is ready to fledge, it is four times heavier and many times larger than the pipits, but the Cuckoo’s incessant demands for food stimulates the pipit’s instinctive urge to feed the intruder. Young Cuckoos will then migrate to Africa on their own, having never seen their parent Cuckoo.
The young Cuckoo in Dun Chaoin is the latest Cuckoo record in Ireland for over 100 years.
So, what is going on? Well, it has been an unusually fine and late summer. This Cuckoo, a juvenile, has been slow to move south to its wintering grounds in southern Africa. The particularly mild and sunny September has resulted in there still being a ready supply of insects and caterpillars for it to feed on, and might well explain it’s delayed departure. Most adult Cuckoos have left Ireland by early August, with juvenile birds departing only another week or two later. Richard Moores, a visiting UK birder, reported what we assume was the same bird in Dún Chaoin the week before our sighting and was also surprised at the lateness of the record.
For more on sightings on the peninsula: The Dingle Peninsula Bird Report by Michael O'Clery on sale in Ventry PO and the Dingle Bookshop.
Kerrybirding.blogspot.ie
BirdWatch Ireland Corca Dhuibhne Facebook
