North Wales

Out with Mark and Pete Watson today, its still fairly quiet at the moment so as we had been planning to do it all Spring we decided on a trip to North Wales to photograph Chough and Black Guillemot. We started at Holyhead Fish Quay and soon had a Black Guillemot fly in, unfortunately it plonked itself down right over the other side where it remained until a leaving Ferry flushed it back out to sea, a bit later another one that must have been further in, also flew out to sea, with that we thought we’d do South Stacks then have another look on the way back. At South Stacks Mark was happy to year tick Stonechat at last, a pair was knocking around near the Car Park, a couple of Ravens performed aerobatics and although they took a bit of finding a couple of Chough eventually showed well and we spent a bit of time photographing them, back at the Fish Quay the two Black Guillemots were still messing about out at sea and with the arrival of the afternoons first shower we decided not to hang around, so failed on photographing that one. It was still fine back on the mainland so we popped in to Conwy RSPB on the way back, there were a handful of Waders there but nothing out of the ordinary and it wasn’t long before the rain caught us up. The intention was to call in for the juv Two Barred Crossbill near Clitheroe on the way back but it was slow going due to heavy traffic and the rain as we were leaving Wales and with parking only available to 5pm at the Crossbill site we didn’t really have enough time so ended up just heading straight for home.