Rare Birds

I've just joined a birdwatching group. On my first field trip we spotted migrant birds from Canada and Iceland as well as a rare visitor from Scandinavia.

I'm not used to early starts on Sundays, so I made my sandwiches and packed my bag the night before. At least driving in to Belfast and then up to the north coast was easy going after the shock of the alarm.

As the sun came out after drizzle, the group were esconced in a hide on the Bann estuary with binoculars and telescopes raised. The tide began to fall and the birds became active, finding food on the muddy foreshore. We saw Dunlin, Redshank, Curlew, Greenshank, Grey Plover, Snipe and Bar-Tailed Godwit.

Moving on to the Foyle estuary, near the mouth of the Roe, we saw a large flock of Golden Plover (around a thousand birds) that had flown here from Iceland. At the waters edge around a hundred Brent Geese just arrived from Eastern Canada, via Greenland and Iceland.

On the way between the estuaries we spotted Swallows and Swifts catching insects on the warm breeze, readying themselves for the long flight to Southern Africa. An arduous and attritional 6,000 mile journey that only half of the birds that set out would survive to return here next year.

And striding through the shallows of the Foyle estuary, a huge grey bird with black and white markings - the head of a heron and the body of an emu. A European Crane: a rare visitor from Scandinavia blown off course on its flight to Spain, the first sighting in NI for 30 years. When the winds changed and the air cooled, the Crane would head south for its winter home.