Twitching Ireland.

Sunday evening 11th July 1999 we were at a birthday party at Brian Wyatt’s in Wallingford enjoying a few beers and the warm weather.

I was involved in a conversation with Geoff Wyatt and Martin Hallam regarding an Elegant Tern at Lady’s Island, county Wexford in Ireland that had been present since the 8th. They were talking about going for it and although I had not seen one before and had not twitched Ireland before I was not that keen on going.

The evening wore on and after a few more beers the thought of a good twitch started to get rather interesting even though we were due at work the following day. Around 21:00 that night a plan was hatched, Geoff had worked out the logistics and it all looked fairly straight forward. There was a ferry to Rosslare from Pembroke in the morning..............however as we had been drinking since early evening and none of us were in any condition to drive. It was suggested that Lew may well want to twitch an Elegant Tern as he was at home and hopefully not drinking, so we decided give him a call.

The phone call went something like this; Geoff: “Hi Lew how do you fancy a trip to Ireland for that Tern”.

Lew; “yeah that sounds interesting, when?” Geoff; “How about tonight, there is a ferry around 03:00 in the morning”.

Lew; “Short notice but sounds OK, when do we leave and who’s driving”. Geoff; “Well we can leave as soon as possible and as we are at a party and all rather drunk we thought you might like to drive!”

A slight delay in Lew’s response but he eventually agreed, so the twitch was on. Lew picked us all up we got all our kit together and off we went for a 200 mile drive to get the ferry at Pembroke docks, I guess we must have left around 22:30 ‘ish as we made the ferry OK.

The 4 hour drive for the ferry and another 4 hour trip on the ferry enabled us to get some sleep and sober up somewhat.

We arrived in Rosslare, Ireland around 07:00 and got a taxi to Lady’s Island where the bird had been frequenting and within 15 minutes were watching an Elegant Tern that was reasonably easy to pick out.

Elegant Terns breed on the Pacific coasts of the Southern USA and Mexico and winters south to Peru, Ecuador and Chile so was regarded as an unusual species to turn up in Western Europe.

As well as the Elegant Tern we noted a few Arctic Terns, several Roseate Tern and many Sandwich Tern also 3 Tree Sparrow.

Job done by around 09:00 but Martin and I should have been in work that morning and we were over 300 miles away across the Irish Sea watching birds!

We looked for the nearest phone box to call in our excuses; I managed to swing a day’s leave at short notice and told work that I was in Ireland at that time and I would not make it in anyway. My work colleagues were well aware of my twitching habits and I had no problem with short notice absences.

The return ferry journey back was one of those fast jobs that only take a couple of hours however we spent those few hours on the upper deck observing plenty of Guillemots with young well out at sea, c10 Puffin, a few Razorbills, 100’s of Manx Shearwater and good numbers of Gannets and Kittiwakes. All in all a successful trip and that has been my one and only twitch to Ireland.