An almost obligatory early morning start as we headed for Stansted through the first snow of the year. As this was just a couple of days we were travelling light with just hold bags, which meant we didn't have to check in our bags giving us plenty of time for a leisurely breakfast and cup of tea. It was odd as it felt as if we had forgotten something.
A 90 minute flight and we landed early in Cork, passed through customs, collected the car, a Nissan Juke, and were off to Castletownbeere. It was raining but did ease off and brighten a bit.
The road took us through some lovely countryside very reminiscent of the rocky, grassy hills of Scotland. A brief stop at Glengarriff to look at a flock of gulls included 2 Glaucous gulls and a common seal popped it's head up. A short drive around Castletown and we eventually found the Glaucous-winged asleep on a rocky island just off the sea wall but the abysmal weather made it difficult to see. We decided to go for lunch and come back later if the weather eased. We ended up in McCarthy's bar which is a local, traditional irish bar/shop where we had a lovely crab sandwich and some tea.
The weather hadn't improved so we booked into the Murphy@s Bar and B&B before driving along the sea wall but no sign and the tide was dropping. We spent the rest of the afternoon driving around the harbour to no avail. We did see lots of gulls which included a Glaucous Gull, a couple of Med Gulls, Rock Pipits, Ring-billed Gull, Little Egret, Shag and 2 Black Guillemots.
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