Subalpine Warbler: a l(l)ovely day on Lleyn!

Once again, Suzanne and I headed over to North Wales and her parents’ place at the weekend. I’d negotiated a day’s birding, balancing a day of building flatpack furniture, shopping and various other jobs and errands – and with the forecast favouring Saturday, and a decent bird making a timely appearance over on the Lleyn peninsula, it was an easy decision about where and when to go.

So, Saturday morning dawned to see me emerging from the luxurious Auberge Mondeo at the end of the road at Uwchmynydd… and presenting me with a pretty damn fine view back into North Wales in one direction, as the sun rose:

… and over the channel to Bardsey island in the opposite direction.

The bird in question was a singing male Western Subalpine Warbler – a smart little thing, and had it been in the south-east there would undoubtedly have been a number of people looking for it. However, this was a remote spot in NW Wales, so there was one chap heading off to do some survey work, and me. Excellent! From the word go, there were plenty of migrants about, predominantly Wheatears (up to 30 of these), but quite a few Meadow Pipits and smaller numbers of alba Wagtails moving north as well. On the ground, a few Willow Warblers were obvious, but it took me a couple of loops around the area that the Subalp had been favouring before it appeared…. flying right round me and straight into a bare gorse bush in front. Happy days… they don’t come much better than this!

I ended up spending getting on for eight hours on site in the end, wandering around various other areas and looking for migrants, then periodically returning to the Subalp, and chatting to the tiny number of other birders – no more than a dozen in the whole time. The bird was wonderfully confiding at times, and allowed a close approach (given a bit of care and fieldcraft), so I took plenty of photos. Here’s a few of the better ones…

I never quite got the killer shot I wanted, what with a fast-moving bird in dense vegetation, and unhelpfully strong sunlight most of the day. But they’ll do for the time being, plenty good enough to remember a stunning bird in a glorious location.

Other migrants included a typically elusive Grasshopper Warbler, which appeared right next to the Subalp a couple of times before vanishing without trace, and a now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t male Whinchat which must have headed on straight through. Residents were well represented, too, with a couple of pairs of Chough, and numerous pairs of Stonechat:

Once I eventually tore myself away, the drive back to Chirk was broken unexpectedly quickly just beyond Aberdaron, where a birder I’d met earlier was waving frantically beside the road… and with good cause, since he’d just found this on the telephone wires:

A Woodchat Shrike… pretty smart! Ten minutes earlier, and it could’ve been nestling on my self-found list. But hey-ho, still another very smart bird, albeit one to make me wonder what else had made landfall in the area, and gone undetected.

After the shrike had gone missing, I returned to the route home, and finished up with a final scenic stop in the edge of Snowdonia. Here, a couple of newly arrived male Redstarts were chasing each other around a meadow, Willow Warblers and Nuthatches sang all around, and once again, there were no people. No dog walkers. No noise. No litter. Sure as heck beats birding in some other places I could mention…

And yet more ducks!

There’s a small pond fairly close to where I live, right beside a main road junction that I use at least once or twice a week. Since it’s on the edge of Epping Forest, with its established population of Mandarin Ducks, I make a point of looking at it every time I go past. Never seen a Mandarin on there, in four or five years – presumably it gets a bit too much disturbance, and there’s not much cover.

Or maybe you just can’t see them if you’re in the driver’s seat… since Nick had no trouble whatsoever picking up a pair in the pouring rain this afternoon, at the first time of trying! We bailed out of the car to take a few hasty photos – not nice light at all, and not nice conditions for a non-waterproof lens, but worth it for pretty smart birds, enhanced by the water droplets on their plumage. Maybe these two will hang around; I’ll certainly go back for a lengthier visit if they do.

And, continuing the theme, here’s the Green-winged Teal that Rich B found at Crossness yesterday. A London tick for me, these have been surprisingly scarce for a few years in the capital. You’d think that Rainham would get one sooner or later, given that plenty of us check all the Teal pretty carefully, but (unless this individual pays a visit to the reserve) it’s getting a bit late for this winter.

The bird showed pretty well for scope views, dabbling around on the sewage outfall (another glamorous and lovely birding location, I hear you cry), but still a bit far for the camera. Head-on, the much fainter yellow lines around the green head panel were clearly different compared to Teal, as well as a warmer-toned pinkish colour to the breast. Oh, and the massive solid white vertical lines on the fore-flanks help, too…

Ducking and diving

Just a few quick record shots from a full day in the field in London – three species that are all somewhere between scarce and rare in the area. The first two birds, a female 1st-summer male Long-tailed Duck and a female Scaup, were seen on the KGV Reservoir. [edit: thanks to Barry’s attention to detail, it’s been pointed out that I screwed up the ID of the LTD: it’s a boy, not a girl! The pink panel on the bill is the giveaway, as well as the white scaps and crown…]

The third, the rarest of the lot, a Red-throated Diver, was on the Thames at Rainham. Thanks to Jonathan Wasse and Shaun Harvey for the tweets to get the news out.

Sadly this bird doesn’t appear to have a bright future, with a large oil patch on its flanks and vent, and in its constant effort to preen, it must be ingesting a fair amount of toxic rubbish. On a couple of occasions, it hauled itself out onto the soft mud in Aveley Bay… not the act of a healthy bird, and pretty depressing to watch.

Hoping for something a bit more cheery tomorrow.

Black Guillemots in Oban

Just one more post from my trip to Scotland, before I return to long-overdue Moroccan pics….

Having arrived back in Oban later than planned, due to exceptionally low tides on Uist delaying our departure by two hours, we opted to stay in town that night rather than make progress a bit further south. With blue skies and sunshine greeting us the next morning, a bit of type around the harbour with the local Black Guillemots was in order! Jono has been here once or twice before, and raves about the photo opportunities – and now I’ve visited too, I can see why. With a high tide early morning, we counted at least 25 birds off the harbour wall near the church, many of which were visiting nest holes in the wall just under the promenade.

We could easily have spent more time here, but these are the best shots I managed before we needed to hit the road for the 9 hour drive home!