First of all...some Logistics
The trip starts with the 2.5 hour crossing from Brest to Ouessant, which stops to pick folk up at Le Conquet and on Ile de Molene, leaving at 08:30, so perhaps the most comfortable course of action is to travel to Brest the day before and spend the night in a hotel on the waterfront. We always stay in le Gens de Mer http://www.lesgensdemer.fr/hotel-restaurant-2.php which is perfectly adequate and has an OK restaurant.
There is usually some sort of discount running between this hotel and the ferry company http://www.pennarbed.fr/ giving you a reduction on either your accommodation or your tickets. However, the main attraction with this hotel is that if you ask nicely they will let you leave your car in the secure parking for the week, free of charge.
On arrival, we usually take our pre-arranged taxi (see here: http://www.ot-ouessant.fr/fr/touris...taxi-mauve.html ) up to the house where we were staying. In the autumn there is plenty of accommodation available on Ouessant as the island needs to cope with large amounts of tourists during the summer. Most accommodation is self-catered rented house type stuff, but there are also a few hotels (see tripadvisor) and for those who want to mix with the birders, there is cheap and basic accommodation at the CEMO (Used to function as an observatory, now it’s the place where most of the birders stay) It can be useful to at least visit, to pick up maps and get some bird news, and is located among some of the islands best migrant spots. http://www.cemo-ouessant.fr/index.p...id=61&Itemid=65
Accommodation is spread throughout the island, but it pays to be relatively close to Lampaul, the islands main (only?!) town. Lampaul has several advantages: it is central, only being a max of 15 minutes cycle to anywhere else on the island; most of the decent bars and restaurants are there (with the exception of L’arrive, which is located where you jump ship and does excellent and authentic crepes): all of the food shops are there, and there is some pretty good birding there too. Shops are open every day apart from Sundays.
Before I start, I best get my disclaimer in…although everyone I visit this special island is very birder tolerant and I usually get to do my own thing, it is not a birding holiday, and I would say that perhaps less than half of my time is spent birding. Obviously this is not ideal, but if I want to go back next year I have to reign it in a little bit!
Day one – Oct 2nd
Usually Balearic shearwaters can be seen on the crossing (especially in the sections between Ouessant and Le Conquet) but there were none available on this particular trip. The undoubted highlight of this crossing was a great northern diver seen in flight not too far out of Le Conquet. Also seen were an ad w little gull, several Mediterranean gulls, and a few commoner seabirds such as guillemot, gannet, common and Sandwich tern, and plenty of shags.
After getting settled in I had a quick look at the area around the house – where there were Ouessant staples such as marsh harrier, Dartford warbler and chough, as well as some signs migrant life in the forms of common redstart, northern wheatear, and a rather late and excitement inducing common swift.
As is always the case on these trips with the in laws, lunch was a protracted affair, comprising what were, at least in my opinion, two unnecessary courses! I cycled out to the west of the island afterwards where I checked over a few of my favourite spots.
At Kun – between Lampaul and Phare du C’reach (the big lighthouse) – an area of bushes and open land had 3 common redstart, 3 pied flycatcher, a single reed warbler, and loads of common chiffchaff. Just a little around the corner, at Ar Reun, there were the aforementioned species, as well as willow warbler and whinchat, and from Ar Reun I cycled to the lighthouse at C’reach where the open ground had loads of northern wheatears, meadow pipits, the odd stonechat, and a clouded yellow.
I anticipated being summoned back to Lampaul at some point to drink some delicious Breton cidre (ohh the hardships of a non-birding holiday…) so I headed back that way to get a little birding in at Prad Meur, a boggy row of trees adjacent to the islands cemetery. Here there were further common chiffchaffs, with a couple of firecrests thrown in and a flyover grey wagtail.
I was going to call it a day birding wise and try and be sociable, but in the early evening I noticed a large flock of gulls hawking for insects over the house. They were mostly black-headed gulls, with a few Mediterranean as well. As I watched the gulls going about their business I latched onto a flock of starlings and was rather pleasantly surprised to see a lone juv rosy starling among them. Also during that short period, I got brief views of a water rail and even briefer views of a ringtail harrier species that turned out later in the week to be a hen harrier. Not a bad start at all…