Ouessant

I remember when the Field guide to the Rare Birds of Britain and Europe arrived in my house when I was a kid. A book that was crammed full of the rarest of the rare was always going to have a huge appeal to a teenage birder like me, and of course I was instantly struck by Ian Lewington’s stunning plates. I devoured it.

After a few days of looking at the pictures I realised the book had a lot more to offer, and decided it might be a good idea to actually read some of the text! Underneath the feather by feather descriptions, each species account had a summary of occurrences, and I found myself drawn to this paragraph for the rarest birds. For the very rarest, dates and places for individual sightings were mentioned, and with each of these came a pang of excitement…’Imagine finding one of them!’ With many of them came the same name, over and over again.

Ouessant.

In the intervening years I often thought back to Ouessant, and wondered why I never heard anything about it in any of the various birding magazines and websites that I looked at. It seemed to me to be some sort of forgotten island – and I guess from a UK birders perspective it was – but of course the French and other visiting European birders had been knocking the rares in year after year there – we just never got to hear about it over here. Apart from a few French language websites, (which were admittedly dripping with mouth watering photos!) the only readily available information on birding on the island was a piece written for Birding World during it’s very early years. I realised that if I was going to find anything out about this place, I was going to have to do it for myself.

And so it was that in early October 2007, along with my girlfriend and her family, I made my first journey to Ouessant. I was a little concerned about how I was going to manage the birding holiday/non-birding holiday issue, but it turned out to be quite easy as I’m the only morning person in the group! On more recent trips, I tend to be sociable at meal times and then grab opportunities in between for the rest of the day. Note though that the ‘between mealtimes’ window is shorter in France than in the UK…

On that first trip (and with every subsequent one) we travelled to Brest and stayed overnight in a hotel by the harbour, just a short walk to the boat which sets off for the island at 08:30 am. I remember the excitement as we past westward along the coast from Brest, towards the first stop at Le Conqeut. Meadow pipits passed overhead in the direction of the islands, and Balearic shearwaters motored past the boat at close range. Balearics are seen in small numbers on most outward crossings (I’ve only made one outward crossing when I haven’t seen them) but not so on the crossings on the way back from the island. Some years see bigger numbers though, such as the 147 birds seen in about an hour on the outward crossing in 2012. The boat stops at Le Conquet (I remember a marsh harrier there on the first trip) and then heads out towards Ile de Molene before making the final stretch to Ouessant.

Molene looks well worthy of exploration. It’s turned up some goodies in the past such as red-eyed vireo, but considering its location it’s pretty seriously underwatched. The birders on Ouessant have started to organise day trips to give the island the odd days worth of total coverage, and these trips usually turn up something. Recent years have turned up American golden plover and rosy starling, as well as the almost obligatory yellow-browed warbler. You’d be doing well to get anything like that from the brief ferry stop, but scanning the area from the boat often turns up Mediterranean gull, marsh harrier and peregrine.

I’ve been visiting Ouessant every October for 7 years now. It’s not a big island – under twice the length and breadth of Fair Isle, and yet on every visit, exploring the nooks and crannies of my favoured spots has led me to new areas that deserve as much attention as anywhere else on the island. There really is suitable habitat for migrants and rarities everywhere. From the dense ‘stangs’ in the middle of the island, to the gardens of the holiday homes, via the large areas of Atlantic heath and boggy patches of shrubs dotted around the coast, there is more than enough here to keep the thirty or so visiting birders occupied during peak time. Birds can, and do, turn up anywhere, and quite often reflect the areas getting the best coverage. A nice example of this was one year where I found wryneck, common rosefinch, Richards pipit and rosy starling within a stones throw of the house I was staying in, with my best from elsewhere on the island being ortolan, a few more wryneck and a yellow browed warbler. In fact, most of my better finds (which admittedly don’t hold up in comparison to some of the other stuff I’ve seen when I was there!) have been during grabbed half hours here and there from the house. On the only time I’ve bumped into visiting British birders I was asked where the best spots to go birding were – It was a question I had no answer to at all – the best I could think of was to advise them to just ‘go birding’ and ‘keep birding wherever you are’.

The first trip, in October 2007, had a real sense of adventure about it. I had no idea what to expect from the island, and despite it being the slowest week I’ve ever had there, from about half way through the first day I knew I was hooked. The best bird I saw that week was a red-breasted flycatcher, but I had fun trying to decipher an elusive unstreaked acro (which turned out to be a reed warbler) and the number of interesting migrants such as redstarts, pied flycatchers and whinchats made for a very enjoyable week. I’d also got to know the island a little, refined my tactics a bit, and found out all the best places to eat and stop for crafty halves of Breton cidre.

I put all of this knowledge into action for my second week, in October 2008. I did a little better finding things, turning up my first yellow-browed warbler on the island, ‘self finding’ a rosy starling that I had no idea about, and flushing up a juvenile night heron from a roadside as I whizzed by on my bike – a pretty decent bird by Ouessant standards. All of this was overshadowed by a grey-cheeked thrush that turned up on the second day though, which sparked a bit of a twitch (about 12 people) and gave me pretty brief but good views.

I think I spent most of 2009 looking forward to my October week on Ouessant, and it didn’t disappoint. It was a little later in the month than my two previous trips which might have accounted for the ease with which I bumped into interesting stuff. Things started well with a red-breasted flycatcher in the garden on the day we arrived, and continued well through the week with several yellow-broweds being found, as well as water pipit, Siberian chiffchaff, Lapland bunting, a rosy starling, and two twitched penduline tits rounding the week off nicely.

The 2010 trip was a little disappointing in comparison – it rained pretty much all week which made birding difficult, and in general there were very few birds around. My first turtle dove on the island was very welcome, as were a woodchat shrike and a yellow browed warbler that both turned up in and around the garden. In terms of national rarity the best bird was a rosy starling that appeared briefly in front of my girlfriend before revealing itself to the islands birders the next day. A very enjoyable week despite the weather and lack of migrant action, but the closest thing to a flop out of the four trips so far.

I was hoping for a change in fortune in 2011, and luckily, it happened. Perhaps my eye was in a little better having been birding hard on Sanday for a week two weeks before, or perhaps there were just more birds around. Over the course of the week I stumbled into a rosy starling, Richard’s pipit, common rosefinch, ortolan bunting, yellow browed warbler, and several wrynecks, and was lucky enough to find out about a little bunting and an American golden plover, giving me my best haul from the island so far.

I was pretty realistic about my chances of doing better in 2012 than I had in 2011, and in terms of finding stuff, I was right to be, with only yellow-browed warbler and Lapland bunting to show for my efforts. This was more than amply compensated by what the other birders turned up though, with a cliff swallow that was elusive at the beginning being a bit of a show-off by the end of the week, and a Pechora pipit that played a token game of hard-to-get before showing superbly to a gang of very happy French birders, who had been able to enjoy two second national records on the same day.

2013 was also pretty successful. There were yellow browed warblers everywhere (according to my notebook I saw YBW 19 times in the week – in fact – 19 times in the first 5 days) and I twitched a little bunting and a semipalmated sandpiper. I found a red-breasted flycatcher, dotterel and rosy starling, and enjoyed plenty of other quality in the forms of crossbill, merlin, firecrest, and common migrants.

Again, in contrast, 2014 was disappointing. According to the French birders present, it was the most disappointing autumn that many of them could remember (the worst in 15 years according to one). That said, we picked up YBW and lapland bunting, locally mega Hooded crow, and had a fantastic encounter with balearic shearwaters on the way across to the island. 

To me, birding on Ouessant offers the best sort of compromise. I get to spend a fair bit of time on an island where anything can happen, and where there is always some sort of migration going on. As well as that, I get to bird that island on my own terms, with only small numbers of other birders (who are always very pleasant, helpful, and rather humblingly good at speaking English), and, perhaps most importantly, I get to call it a family holiday. You can probably see why I keep going back. There is another reason why I keep returning though…

I’m still to find that parula….