The Grey-bellied Brant complex part 1
The Grey-bellied Brant in Ireland What is a Grey-bellied Brant: The grey-bellied brant is a subspecies from high Arctic Canada, just like the pale-bellied brent. This subspecies has come to light in recent years on a larger scale, with more and more of these suspected rare vagrants being found in the UK and Ireland each winter. There is still quite little known about this subspecies as a whole. Therefore anytime I get the opportunity to see candidates I make sure to photograph and document them well. For a couple of years I have been fascinated by the brent/brant complex and have written a brief identification guide on the different races that occur in Ireland and the UK. I saw my first grey-bellied candidate at Rogerstown, Co. Dublin that was found by Aidan G.Kelly on the 19th of January 2014. And then found a good candidate at Rosslare back strand with Luke and Sean Gearty on the 4th of January 2019. There was a couple of interesting looking birds with this pale-bellied fl...