MIGRATION '25 AT TACUMSHIN, CO.WEXFORD.

 September Migration at Tacumshin, Co. Wexford with Oriole Birding

Tacumshin is a remarkable place. This unique coastal wetland with its own lexicon - The Forgotten Corner, The Racetrack, The Patches - has a lonely mystique reinforced by an enviable back catalogue of birding greatest hits. It draws birds from across the Atlantic but is also a last stop for those about to jump off the Irish land mass and head south for warmer, and certainly drier, days.

Walking out, through welly-sucking reedbed and flooded grasslands, it felt like the Pantanal or the Okavango Delta in European miniature - an adventurous opening to hidden rewards. We were the only people evident in its 1000 acres of lagoon, dune, marsh and reedbed, and roaming this untrammelled wilderness provided a stark contrast with the restricted access to so much UK habitat. Imagine being able to wander freely over Cley or Holkham Marshes with only the noise of sea and birds for company.

The first birds we saw were a pair of Ospreys, probably young siblings en route to Africa. The Osprey is a bird that has never lost its caché for me. I remember standing in the hide at Loch Garten, aged 10, commandeering a telescope and watching, wide-eyed, as an adult brought a fish down into the nest, its wings outstretched. Now 50 years later, having seen Norfolk's first breeding pair for over 250 years at Ranworth Broad, the dazzling fish-hawks were calling overhead. 

Arguably the most significant migration this year has been that of the Glossy Ibis. The post-breeding dispersal, following a bumper year in the Spanish wetlands of the Coto Donana, brought flocks of this primeval-looking bird to northern Europe where normally singletons are sufficient to excite great interest. At Tacumshin, a group of 19 birds was unprecedented. Such numbers always raise the prospect of some hardy specimens over-wintering and perhaps extending their breeding range into the UK and Ireland, maybe into Holkham's heronry? 

Strong westerlies in the preceding week had also done much to raise hopes of  American vagrants - birds rather than the ancestry pilgrims! - for which this area is renowned. Tacumshin was a still, watery nexus for the constant flurries of migration, with curlew sandpipers, little stints and dunlin scurrying along the shoreline. Statuesque in the margins, a pectoral sandpiper was the first scarcity to show itself.

The much-coveted buff-breasted sandpiper, a bird in global decline and a genuine rarity on this side of the Atlantic, then strolled into view. I had seen two before, both distantly at Cley, but here one wondered if this lovely wader had ever encountered humanity as it came to within a few metres, the large eyes suggesting a rather innocent, mournful character.

We were to encounter other birds, notably a white-rumped sandpiper, sabine's gull, sooty shearwater and grey phalaropes, but the final memorable image was of walking through a blizzard of hirundines in a last communal agitation as if encouraging each other to make the great leap into the unknown. 

Thanks to Cian Cardiff  (@cian birder) and Nick Parsons (info@oriolebirding.com)