I stayed overnight in Llandudno last night and took the opportunity to see both the sunset and sunrise on the Great Orme, both wonderful experiences though dawn was somewhat quieter with virtually no people around, whereas there were quite a few people watching the sunset.
Just the usual birds, the only migrant was a nice male wheatear on both days, probably of the Greenland race, though I did also see a flock or 20 woodpigeons fly in off the sea and continue south. Choughs and ravens were quite numerous and it's good to see the majority of choughs without the multi coloured bling that most carried a few years ago.
I spent most of my time in the morning watching the sea birds which were quite impressive with two rafts of easily 800 kittiwakes on the sea and at one moment hundreds of guillemots and a few less razorbills flew off the ledges in one big group and out to sea. Several black guillemots were close to the cliffs and a similar number of gannets were further out. The Great Orme is always an awesome experience.
Going......
....going......
.....gone.
Sunrise.
St. Tudno's church.
Seabird cliffs.
Hoary rock-rose is a specialty of limestone headlands in North Wales and is very rare elsewhere. In fact I'm pretty sure that the only other place it grows is Teesdale in North East England, where I saw it in May 2012 (opens in a new window) and even there it's very rare.
Possibly the star of the show today was this common pill millipede. It's not particularly rare but it's the first that I have seen. It's easily mistaken for a pill woodlouse, but note how many legs it has. Woodlice have just seven pairs of legs.
Like pill woodlice, pill millipedes roll up into a nice round ball when threatened.
On the west side, looking back towards Conwy.
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