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…

What, no birds?

The area where Suzanne grew up is only just over the border into Wales along the beautiful Ceiriog valley; it’s not a particularly well-known area for tourists to visit, but I’m always struck by how great the scenery is around there – it feels like you’re suddenly in another world as soon as you turn off the A5 at Chirk.

As mentioned in the last post, we were over there last weekend and after a night of pouring rain, the weather was glorious on the Sunday morning so I headed out with the camera. First stop was on the back road over the top to Llangollen. The second of these two shots is looking across towards the Panorama – a spectacular limestone outcrop, and a well known landmark.

Then I retraced my steps down into Glyn Ceiriog, and took the road further up the valley to Llanarmon Dyffryn Ceiriog and over the top again towards Llanrhaedr-ym-Mochnant (couple of good place names there for the student of Welsh pronunciation). Again, the views aren’t too shabby:

And then finally, I reached my destination: Pistyll Rhaeadr, the highest waterfall in Wales, at 80m. After a few days of heavy rainfall, it was in spectacular form!

Taking these and posting them up here, has reminded me that I really should take more landscape and scenic photos, given the quality of the places I visit regularly. Maybe there’s a new year’s resolution coming?

A day in north-east Wales

Last weekend, Suzanne and I went across to see her extended family for the usual pre-Christmas meal and present-swapping extravaganza over a lovely relaxed Sunday lunch in the Britannia Inn, just down from the Horseshoe Pass outside Llangollen. That morning had clear bright blue skies, and hopefully there are some nice landscape photos of the area to come in a future post – watch this space! Unfortunately, the Saturday wasn’t so good weather-wise, but I headed out fairly early and managed to find some good birds to the north of Glyn Ceiriog.

First destination was the area around Denbigh, where a large flock of 200+ Waxwings had been seen on an industrial estate the day before, so I was hoping for some photos if the birds were still around and would come down low. I didn’t get that far before finding the target, though, since I stumbled across two smaller flocks (maybe offshoots of the original group) by the roadside between Ruthin and Denbigh. On this occasion, they didn’t show particularly well for photos, staying high up in trees against grey skies… but something tells me I might get a few more opportunities at Waxwing photography this winter!

While watching the second flock, I noticed a bird song that I’ve not heard for years and years – a Dipper singing under the road bridge! Creeping up a bit closer, in fact there was a pair, with the male singing persistently and even displaying at times. Although the light was really poor, the Dippers were more paying more attention to each other than to me, so I managed to get fairly close for a series of photos. Check out the white eyelids!

These are just brilliant little birds, really smart and characterful. A real shame I don’t see them more often, though I’ve already made a mental note to return to that bridge on a brighter day next year and try to get some better shots!

While putting stuff away into the car, and wondering where to go next, news came through of a Desert Wheatear on the seafront at Rhyl – not really that surprising given that a Wheatear had been reported there the day before, which although not unprecedented, would’ve been very late. Given that I wasn’t too far away, and that rare wheatears often show well, it was an easy decision to go and take a look.

The Wheatear showed pretty well, though with quite a few cyclists, joggers and dogwalkers going up and down its favoured stretch of the coastline, it was fairly mobile and generally not as confiding as the recent Abberton bird. A good bird for Wales, though, I think only about the sixth record ever.

From here, I spent about half an hour scanning a large and mostly distant flock of scoter off Llanddulas, hoping to pick out one of the three Surfies, before bailing out of that and going searching for Chough above Aber Falls. No joy here (though stunning scenery), and by mid afternoon the weather had taken a turn for the worse, and it was back down the A5 in the rain.