YVCP Gannet

[John Frankland]

One seen alive this morning at 7am on YVCP by Gordon Turner with some great photos on the Facebook page.

Unfortunately the Gannet was deceased under trees near the car park by 910am when I arrived.

The bird was an adult and showed no obvious injuries or illness eg oil or fishing gear. The body was fished out of the water and left for rangers.

According to local fishermen, it wasn’t present last night and so seems to have arrived overnight.

The local species list says Gannets in Chorley are autumn storm driven with only a couple of previous records so this is a real rarity for Chorley and such a shame that it didn’t survive. The fact that it’s so far in land indicates something was wrong anyway so not surprising that it died.

Other sightings this morning included 7 Mute Swan, 7 Coot, 7 Canada Geese, 3 Great Crested Grebe and a Moorhen.

[Neil Southworth]

We have only one previous record of Gannet which was on 5th September 1983 of a bird found at Cowling but which also died.