Following my talk to Bangor Bird Group yesterday evening I decided to stay over in Llandudno rather than face the nearly two hour drive home. I spent the night at the Chatsworth Hotel on the promenade for the princely sum of £20 and was rewarded by a beautiful sunrise and a glorious morning the following day.
The Great Orme is one of my all time favourite places and Llandudno would be my number 1 place to live if I got the opportunity. I parked at the West Shore and was walking by 7:30am, my route taking me over the limestone pavement to the Cafe, then around the coast back to Llandudno.
I've always enjoyed birding on the Great Orme and these days it seems to get even better, with choughs and black guillemots both colonising in recent years. Today I saw about eight of each.
I love this photo, the light was perfect and you can really see the contrast between the jet black razorbills and the dark grey guillemots. It's a really good identification feature in good light.
It's not particularly easy to view the guillemots and razorbills on the ledges, in fact this is about as close as I've ever got to them.
A view of the lighthouse with the colonies of auks on the cliffs in the foreground.
Fulmar are a bit easier to see.
I'm sure that these grey seals didn't visit the Orme in such numbers when I first started visiting back in the 1970s.
The first stonechat I ever saw was on the Great Orme on 29th May 1973........
.....and I also saw my first rock pipit on the same day.
No comments:
Post a Comment