Andy Bramwell's blog entry yesterday succeeded in working up my enthusiasm to spend a couple of hours at the high tide roost at Ynyslas Point this morning. I wasn't disappointed birds started to arrive in small flocks as the tide gradually crept in. I arrived there at 8.30am. The numbers of dunlin and ringed plover built up nicely to figures approximating what Andy had counted yesterday with a couple of sanderling and turnstone thrown in. The birds rested and preened and then the inevitable happened people and their dogs walking straight through the middle of the roost. In fairness only a few of the assembled birds shifted to a location a few metres away. But before all this the same dogs had been running loose within the area cordoned off for the nesting ringed plover. The couple in charge of the dogs I think realised that something was amiss when they saw this 'weirdo' pointing a camera and a telescope at them! I decided to have a chat with them and rest assured I was 'polite'. I explained in my best layman's terms why this roost was important to these avian travellers and they were very sympathetic. Its all about raising awareness at the end of the day. Anyway the dogs were less troublesome than I anticipated but when a peregrine made an appearance it was a different ball game entirely! The flock of waders took flight en-masse and boy wasn't it a magnificent sight! OK the birds weren't in their thousands as you would expect to see in the Wash or the Ribble estuaries but It was impressive nonetheless. Now one part of me wanted the peregrine to catch its lunch but my other half wasn't keen to see the dastardly deed committed and the 'coup-de-grace' inflicted on some poor wader isolated from the main flock but I tried to remain unbiased. Anyway this was not the peregrines day the 'collective' had beaten (and confused) it on this day. After its failed attempts to garner its lunch the bird flew off somewhere to the North. Not all the waders returned to the roost but otherwise it was pretty well back to normal even as the peregrine alighted briefly on the foreshore to re-evaluate its tactics! It instinctively knew it had lost the initiative and the element of surprise.
Offshore there was a heavy movement of manx shearwaters and then this transformed into a feeding frenzy of manxies gannets and the odd kittiwake on the sandbank between Aberdyfi and Tywyn. Gannets plunge dived and the manxies were in their hundreds.
As Andy indicated yesterday there was a steady stream of swallows throughout the morning with a sprinkling of house martins. Where are they all going?
Anyway it was a brilliant morning and thanks Andy for putting an entry on the blog yesterday I may not have gone there this morning otherwise.
Anyway it was a brilliant morning and thanks Andy for putting an entry on the blog yesterday I may not have gone there this morning otherwise.
Can you spot the peregrine in the above photo?
(Janet Baxter if you should journey to the 'Elysian Fields' before I do then can you leave me in your will that fab camera and big fat lens you had with you this morning!))