Buff-Bellied Pipit - Redbarn, Cork

Buff-Bellied Pipit is a species with a strange history in Ireland.

Virtually absent from everyone’s radar until two birds appeared at Lissagriffin in October 2007, sparking a mega twitch.

.

At the point of initial news, one bird was thought to be present.

Birders gathered at the Lissagriffin car park the following morning. We were running a mere ten minutes late and I received word from good friend Phil Davis that the crowd were already planning on going in on an organized flush.

The "locals" who found the bird, not really locals, but goons who appear on Mizen in October every year same as everyone else 😂 declared that "They would go in first" and call in people if they found the bird.

Luckily, Phil, not one to go along with whatever nonsense is happening on any given day in Irish birding, informed people that we were a mere ten minutes away in Goleen, that they would be waiting, and that everyone would go in together.

Ya gotta love it. And so it was.

Lesson for anyone out there. That’s what fairness and common sense looks like.

"Locals" 😂

We all went in and almost straight away a Buff-Bellied Pipit went up calling and landed a short distance away.

Everyone moved into position and managed good views.

Over the course of the bird wandering around the marsh, it ended up right in front of me, a mere 5-8 meters away.

As several of us were watching it in an open patch, it then moved into some vegetation out of view. Seconds later, some 25/30 meters away, a Buff-Bellied Pipit went up out of the marsh calling.

Impossible. I flagged this straight away.

"How could that bird have gotten from right in front of us to all the way over there in seconds?"

One Cork-South Dublin clown responded snarkily "It walked" and you could see several of the great and good of high standards roll their eyes at the suggestion being put before them.

We left and went birding. Wasn’t worth hanging around such bellends, but it was hilarious that evening to see pronouncements and photo comparisons from the same snarky clown declaring two birds to be present. 😂

I could easily claim this second bird for myself, justifiably, but I don’t.

After this, there were a number of years where Buff-Bellied Pipit became reasonably regular, and I managed to see several over the years.

My self found bird fell on the Mizen peninsula.

11th October 2009

Myself, Don Foley and Conor Foley were once again working Mizen for our Autumn break.

On the day in question, we had not been having much luck, and having worked the lighthouse road that morning to no avail, made for Crookhaven for some O’Sullivan’s soup.

Leaving Crookhaven, having done a few gardens there, again with nothing, we decided we would work the brow head area before making our way back to the Mizen side of things later.

We didn’t get very far, driving up the steep hill to the Brow Head car park, there, waddling around the verge just before the car park was a Pipit.

Don stopped the car, and raising my bins, the ID was immediate!

Buff-Bellied Pipit!!

We all stared in amazement! All features were visible as it wandered along the lane in front of us.

We watched with a live commentary between us as the bird fed.

Plain mantle - Check

Buffy below as f*ck - Check

Complete eye ring - Check

Pale lores - Check

We couldn’t believe it.

I stuck my head out the window to view, just on the off chance that the glass of the car windows was distorting things or this was some lack of fresh air set of hallucinations. Nope.

I said it again. "It’s a Buff-Bellied Pipit!"

A couple of minutes watching it, and now the concern was that my Nikon Coolpix and Scope were in the boot of the car.

Maybe I could sneak out and set up without this thing lifting.

I opened the door. Slid out and back along the car, opened the boot...and the bird was up.

Sip sip sip. All three of us heard this grey wag like call and the bird was off, over the hedge, over the head and gone.

We gave the couple of fields and the start of the brow head Heather a good bash, even walking down to the Millennium Falcon site, but nothing.

Then the news came through that a Blackpoll Warbler had been found at Garinish and that was that. We were headed for beara. We saw that bird too if you wanted to know. 😎

This would have been the 9th or 10th for Ireland. Hard to know these days what the right numbers are.

It remains one of my favorite finds, a feeling I know is shared by the family members.

Great to find yanks. 😍