Bottle-nosed dolphins, Cardigan Bay

Just for a change I varied my route home from Swansea today and went via New Quay and Cardigan Bay. It's a beautiful route and when you've got most of the day to get home the extra hour's driving seems insignificant when compared to the nightmare of the M4/M5/M6. 

I always try to stop off somewhere to have a look for the bottle-nosed dolphins which frequent the bay, apparently the largest UK population. When I arrived at New Quay there was a dolphin watching boat about to go out with a few available spaces, so for £15 it seemed a good way to spend an hour and get close up to the dolphins, and so it proved. Probably the best dolphin watching trip I've ever been on in the UK and certainly better than spending the hour queuing on the M6 at Birmingham where the only thing I'd get close up to would have been the bumper of the lorry in front.

Even before we got on the boat I'd spotted a couple of dolphins from the jetty, a mother and calf. We saw these very well during the trip and I suspect that most of my photos are of this couple, but there were also at least three other bottle-nosed dolphins in the area as well and these also came quite close.

Long-billed dowitcher, Burton Mere Wetlands

It's been a great July, rounded off nicely by a summer plumage long-billed dowitcher at Burton Mere Wetlands, my third on the reserve and about my 14th overall. There were two togther at BMW when it was still Inner Marsh Farm back in 2009.

    

Even though I have no reason to doubt that this is a long-billed dowitcher, I always like to try to confirm it for myself if I can. I'm no expert, but as I understand it the patterning on the underwing helps split summer plumage long-billed from short-billed dowitcher.  On the photo above, the black marks on the axillary feathers are quite a bit narrower than the white which points to long-billed, whereas on short-billed the black and the white would be of similar thickness. Also the patterning on the lesser coverts is more like long-billed forming two distinct lines unlike short-billed where they would be more densely patterned and not forming such obviously parallel lines.

Harbour porpoise, Strumble Head

Strumble Head in Pembrokeshire is at the opposite side of Cardigan Bay to the Llyn peninsula. It can be a great seawatching place and in the past I've seen my only UK Balearic shearwaters here as well as a decent selection of other sea birds. It's also pretty good for dolphins and today I saw a single common dolphin and about three harbour porpoise. Of particular interest, one of the porpoise was tail slapping as it swam through the water. Dolphins and porpoise do this to stun fish in order to make them easier prey.

Dragonflies on a Welsh Moor

I love getting up on the moors at this time of year and seeing some of the very special dragonfly species which inhabit these remote and wonderful places. Pride of place must go to golden-ringed dragonfly, the female of which is the largest of all UK dragonflies. They tend to be around streams of a certain size and they buzz back and forth along the stream, the males fending off competitors and searching for females.

The other star species on the moor is the keeled skimmer. The male is powder blue and a beautiful looking insect, but actually I think that the female is even more beautiful, with blue eyes and a golden abdomen. These dragonflies seem to like even the shallowest of bog pools.

Large red damselflies are common pretty much everywhere, including on the moors.

I'm in South Wales this week, and raptors have included several red kites and a couple of sightings of goshawk. I also managed to see a few crossbills and these and the goshawks move my UK year list to 227.

Hilbre Hoopoe

A glorious couple of days on Hilbre Island spent hoping to see a melodious warbler which was trapped early yesterday ultimately ended in failure on that score, but just as I was setting off to leave at 11:30 after five hours on the island this morning, I flushed a hoopoe from the slipway at the southern end of the main island. I guess that it had been feeding under the cliff, it just flew up right in front of me looking like a huge butterfly and quite unmistakable, leaving me in a state of shock! Initially the bird flew out over the water and I thought it was leaving, but it turned and flew back over the rocks to Middle Eye where I watched it land. I ran back to the bird observatory to inform the two members who were present and we set off to Middle after putting out news and contacting others on the mainland.

At this stage we didn't expect the bird to stay long because the tide was receding on a beautiful, hot summers day and we could see crowds of people crossing over to the islands, which led us to believe that it's stay on Middle might not be more than a few minutes. Already as we crossed there were two groups of people on top of Middle but although we couldn't see the bird they didn't appear to flush it so we kept going. Once on top we split up and began our search for the bird. It didn't take long, it suddenly flew up from the west side and headed south towards Little eye, surely it was gone for good now but no, miraculously it turned and flew back along the shore towards us, eventually going past us and heading back to the main island. 

Pretty soon we were joined by many of the usual Hilbre regulars and we searched the main island, eventually finding the bird on the rocks on the west side. It was always flighty, I only saw it on the ground once. When it wasn't flying it was usually tucked into a cove or behind rocks and then it was a case of waiting for it to fly. On one such occasion it flew past us south but then doubled back and returned north, and later when I returned to the observatory building to pick up my bag it flew over the garden and along the east side before returning in the opposite direction a few seconds later.

It was the stuff of dreams for me finding a hoopoe on Hilbre, the 4th record for the island and the first for an amazing 30 years. Unsurprisingly it was a Hilbre first for myself and also for most if not all of the bird observatory members. The bird continued to show throughout the afternoon, with the last sighting at 5pm. High tide then prevented birders from accessing the island until the following morning and the bird was not seen again. Much better photos than mine can be found on the Hilbre Island Blog (opens in a new window).

Filling my boots with an albatross

Some birds you just have to fill your boots with, no matter how many times you've seen one. A black-browed albatross at Bempton Cliffs is one such example. Yes I saw this bird at point blank range just over two weeks ago, yes I saw one (twice) at Herma Ness, Unst on Shetland in the 1980s and yes I've seen them from pelagics off Australia in recent years, but honestly if there's black-browed albatross sitting on a cliff in amongst the gannet colony at Bempton Cliffs you really can't see it too many times. It's essential viewing, so when I got the opportunity to go back today I jumped at it.

The gannet colony at Bempton has grown dramatically in the past few years. When I first visited the colony in 1984 I recorded 300 birds. By 2014 it had grown to 2000 pairs and the most recent population estimate puts it at 11,000 pairs. Why it should have grown so much is unclear to me, possibly other sites such as Bass Rock have reached capacity and this is the nearest available site at which the population can expand. Whatever the reasons it's an impressive spectacle especially on a bright sunny day such as today, the noise, the smell and views. Wonderful.

Elegant tern, Cemlyn Bay

The weather was pretty grim when we left home this morning and it was misty and lashing it down all of the way to about Chester, making us wonder why we were bothering going, but by the time we got to Cemlyn Bay on Anglesey at 10:30 we were in glorious sunshine. We'd planned a walk from Cemlyn Bay to Carmel head which conveniently passed the viewing area for the Sandwich tern colony on Cemlyn lagoon which in recent days has played host to a cracking summer plumage elegant tern, only about the fifth ever in the UK. 

On our first pass of the lagoon the tern was missing and had not been seen for two hours having flown out to sea before we arrived, presumably to fish, but on our return a few hours later, we found that it was back and showing well in the middle of the colony. 

A lot of the time only it's head was visible above the tall vegetation, when there was no mistaking it with it's bright orange bill, but occasionally it sat out in the open and gave excellent views.

Not a first for me, I saw a different, ringed bird at Pagham harbour in 2017, but a cracker non the less. Also on the lagoon a roseate tern, bringing my UK year total so far to 222 species. Cemlyn Bay is at the extreme edge of what I consider the north west, which is basically all of the coastal counties of North Wales plus Lancashire, Cheshire, Merseyside, Cumbria and Greater Manchester. In otherwords the area that was covered by the old Birdline North West. Elegant tern therefore is a new north west tick for me, and brings my NW total to 373 species.

 

Orange-billed terns are by no means straight forward to identify, with several similar species to confuse matters, plus there is always the specter of hybridisation hanging over every identification. I don't know enough about the identification of these birds to eliminate the possibility of this being a hybrid, but presumably somebody has ruled it out. I'm not worrying too much about that though, the bird that I saw at Pagham harbour was ringed in France and DNA was taken which proved that it was pure elegant tern, that's one of the reasons I was so keen to travel to see that bird. 

Elegant tern breeds on the Pacific coasts of North America, but in recent years the species has started breeding  in small numbers on the Mediterranean coast of Spain and even western France. I guess that we can expect records to become more frequent.

Edit: It appears that the bird at Cemlyn Bay has been matched from photo analysis with one of three elegant terns which have been seen in western France during the past few weeks. The other two are a pair with a chick and one of them is the bird which I saw at Pagham harbour in 2017.

Great Orme

Hundreds of silver-studded blues on the Great Orme this morning, most sitting on the vegetation waiting for the sun to come out and waiting for the day to warm up, I've never seen anything quite like it. Lots of colour on the Orme at the moment, with carpets of common rock-rose interspersed with bloody cranesbill, meadow sweet, pyramidal orchid and viper's-bugloss, amongst many other plants.