Sunday 10th May . 2015

A trip out to Lundy Island with the Devon bird group today ! we left Ilfracombe at 8.30 on the M S Oldenburg and steamed out into the Bristol Channel and we soon started to pick up some sea birds with Northern Gannet , Northern Fulmar and Manx Shearwater seen along with numerous auks , on arriving at Lundy the boat went around the island allowing us to see numerous Razorbill & Guillemot and a few Atlantic Puffin , the ship then docked and from it we could see 3 Atlantic Grey Seal in the harbour , so we had 5 hours to bird the island but first we had the horrendous climb up the steep hill ! once we had got to the top people headed in all directions but myself and Ken went to look for more Atlantic Puffin and we managed to see 12 of them , we then looked around the island but there was not a lot to be seen but we did see numerous Barn Swallow , 12 Common House Martin , a Common Sand Martin , 20+ Meadow Pipit , 8 Northern Wheatear , 2 Blackcap and 10 Sika Deer , we were birding on the right hand side of the island when we came across another birder who said that he had seen a bird that he thought was a female Golden Oriole but that he wasn't sure as he had never seen one before so we stopped and had a look at the tree where he had it when all of a sudden out flew the bird and right enough it was a female Golden Oriole it flew around the corner and out of site so I followed it in hope of getting a shot of it and as I got around the corner to my amazement I found a stunning male Golden Oriole sat on top of a tree in front of me but as soon as I had seen it , it had seen me and off it flew again with the female bird , we watched them fly into some trees where they called for some time but after much searching we never saw them again , but I did hear that other birders were lucky enough to catch up with them , this is the first time that I have had luck to find one of these birds so as you can expect it made the trip for me .