North Wales

Sundays plan was to nip over to North Wales, go to Worlds End near Llangollan for the showy Dartford Warbler and hopefully get some pics, carry on to South Stacks for the Chough, again photograph them, back to Lligwy Bay on Angelsey for the Bonaparte's Gull then do some of the coastal sites on the way back. We set off early and there was still some showers lingering as we bypassed Chester and Wrexham fortunately it faired up as we arrived although remained cloudy, we walked up the track to the area of Moorland the bird was favouring and waited, several Ravens and Buzzards plus a single Peregrine went over, there was a very distant Great Grey Shrike on the other side of the valley and also 20+ Black Grouse flying around and lekking over there but it was almost an hour before the Warbler showed, it was associating with a couple of Stonechats and although we got reasonable scope views it didn't look like it was going to come closer so I didn't get my pics, a nice male Crossbill was singing from the top of a conifer as we got back to the car park.

view from the Dartford Warbler site

A distant Black Grouse displaying

the singing Crossbill



We headed off to South Stacks and as we drove along the A55 the sun came out and it looked like it was going to turn into a nice day, however as we crossed the bridge and drove onto Angelsey there was low cloud and drizzly rain and by the time we turned into the car park at South Stacks it was a real pea souper, we ventured out to the cliff edge but apart from a Raven appearing out of the murk there was nothing to be seen, we took the back route back to Holyhead to check out the fields in case the Chough were feeding there, visibility improved and just as we were almost back four Chough were seen flying over a field, we watched them fly off and into the distance but they didn't land so again no photo. We drove back onto Angelsey and went over to Lligwy Bay on the North coast, the Bonaparte's Gull was still present but the tide was right out so it was quite a trek out over the sands, worth it though the bird showed really well. We ended the day at Penmon searching for the Black Guillemots but there were no Auks at all, maybe they're later back on the West coast, the sun was still shining on mainland Wales though so the low cloud was just literally over Angelsey.

Stream running into Lligwy Bay

Lligwy Bay

Bonaparte's Gull

Lighthouse at Penmom



Puffin Island




the sun shining on Great Orme