2. Fauna and flora Bantry has a wide range of plant and ... - Bantry.ie

Bantry Biodiversity Audit and Management Plan, 2010-2015
2.1 Breeding and wintering sea birds and waders
Horse Island, a small boulder island, between
Whiddy and the Golf Course, has supported
an important colony of common terns since at
least 1995. The peak count of nests was 143 in
June 2009 (including some arctic terns). They
shifted here from Chapel Island and Cusroe, a
shingle spit at the south-east tip of Whiddy in
the 1990s. One pair of common tern nested on
Cusroe in 2009, the first in around 15 years.
Back in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, terns in
Bantry Bay were found mainly on Roancarrig
More off the east end of Bere Island. This is typical tern behaviour i.e.
to abandon sites for no apparent reason and shift to new ones. The
current site, Horse Island, supports one of the largest common tern
colonies in the Republic.
One unique feature in inner Bantry Bay is the remains of
the Whiddy jetty which was partially destroyed when the
oil tanker Betelguese exploded in 1979 with loss of 49
lives. The remains of the jetty are now home to 70-80
pairs of shag, around 20 pairs of black guillemot and
some gulls. The population of black guillemot is
particularly noteworthy. Other nesting seabirds in the bay
include cormorants, mainly on Lousy Castle Island (near
Whiddy) and Sheelane Island (near Garinish West). In
2006, there were 60 pairs on Sheelane Is and 10 pairs on
Lousy Castle Island. Other birds nesting on the islands
include gull (e.g. black-headed gull, herring gull, lesser
black-backed gull and greater black-backed gull),
oystercatchers and ringed plover. The outer bay supports
additional breeding seabird species such as fulmar and
razorbill.
Many seabirds feed in the bay and seabird watches from headlands carried out by CMRC
(Roycroft et al, 2007) indicated that Manx Shearwaters and Gannets were the most
frequently recorded seabirds in the outer bay, while Guillemot and Razorbill, dominated
the species assemblage at the more inshore sites. Other feeding birds recorded in the
survey include Red-throated Diver, Great-northern Diver, Cormorant, Fulmar, European
Shag and gulls. The CMRC survey indicated that inner Bantry Bay is particularly
important for seabirds in winter, presumably because of the shelter it offers.
The small estuary in Bantry town supports many gulls
in winter, especially Black-Headed Gulls, and a good
number of rare migrant gulls have been spotted there.
These rare gulls include Iceland, Mediterranean,
American Herring, Ring-billed, Glaucous and Little
Gull (www.bto.org). Also feeding on estuarine mud
in winter are small numbers of waders such as Red
Shank and Oystercatcher.
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