Antrim Lough Shore Park, Lough Neagh, Northern Ireland

Whooper swan 15 flew over
Golden plover 30 flew over
Hooded crow 5
Lots of woodland birds including Jay, Goldcrest and Treecreeper.

Lough Neagh has over 1000 wintering Whooper swans, so it was nice to see at least some of them on this brief visit.

There was a flock of about 50 Black-headed gulls coming to bread near one of the car parks, and I noticed that one of them had a white ring on its right leg T35J. I took a photo so that I wouldn't forget it, and then found another three gulls in the same flock with red rings, though these were all on the left legs. There's an interesting blog about Black-headed gull ringing in Northern Ireland, which seems to be based around Antrim and Lough Neagh. It turns out that the birds with red rings had all (unsurprisingly) been ringed locally by the author of the blog, but the white ringed bird had a much more interesting story (see below).

Whooper swans.

T35J was originally ringed as a chick at Kretuonas in Lithuania in June 2006, an amazing 2064km from Lough Neagh. In 2011 it was recaught at Gdyna in Poland when it was re-ringed and fitted with the colour ring T35J.  It's back for at least its second winter at Lough Neagh, though it's not entirely certain where it breeds.

I'd forgotten that they got Hooded crows in Northern Ireland, so I was a bit surprised to see this bird. Hoodies were far outnumbered by Rooks and Jackdaws though.

Lough Neagh. This is the largest freshwater lake in the British Isles and is 20 miles long at it's longest point, and covers an area of over 151 square miles.

This is the torpedo platform on Lough Neagh. Built in 1942 in order to test torpedoes for World War II, it's now home to a Common tern colony in the summer.