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.

The bird was seen displaying to sandwich terns and despite several "dreads" while I was watching, it always seemed to return to this exact spot in the colony. This behaviour is great if it makes the bird stick around for a bit, but not so good if it results in a brood of "elegwich" terns which will no doubt haunt this coast for years to come.

Photo: Elegant tern with Sandwich tern
Photo © John Tymon

Thanks to John Tymon for this excellent photo of the bird displaying.

It's always good to see a roseate tern, I'd like to have seen it a bit better but such is life.

Sandwich terns.

A pain in the arse peregrine kept going over, usually about 30 seconds after the elegant tern had emerged from the long vegetation, resulting in the whole colony going up, otherwise know as a dread.

Ruddy turnstones on the beach nearby.

Birders at Cemlyn lagoon.

We had a beautiful walk to Carmel Head, lot's of terns fishing offshore and the occasional gannet passing by. Also about three choughs and a garden warbler, plus a few grey seals.

Caloplaca marina orange sea lichen.

The Skerries.