Bob and I ventured out to Llanon again today to have another look at the Laplands after last week's slightly disappointing glimpses thro the stubble of a first winter bird and a couple of females. Today proved a bit more demanding than expected as we were presented with about 200 Skylarks spread over five fields and most of the time we were looking into the sun.
We spent an "enjoyable" two hours carefully examining every bird each time they upped and moved to another field with lots of "probable" sitings of a Lapland before the cold wind made us think that it was time to head for the warmth of a fire. As we walked back to the car from the fourth field south of the car park we checked out all the birds again without any success. There were a couple of dozen Golden Plover dotted around the grass fields together with a few Snipe, Song thrushes, Reed Buntings and Red Kites and all of these together with the Skylarks looked wonderful in the clear winter sun but we were a little disappointed not to have "nailed" the Laplands with good clear views of a male in good light.
Then just as we were approaching the car park we saw a few birds fly up and non of them showed white outer tail feathers, so once again scopes were erected by cold hands and we were immediately rewarded with excellent views of two well marked males and six to eight females. We could clearly see the short black tipped yellow bills and on the one male in particular we could see the red-brown greater coverts and some evidence of black edging on the ear coverts, at last we had our reward and could fell that we had seen proper Lapland Buntings and all within 50m of the car. Two happy birders headed for home and in my case a lovely cup of hot chocolate and a piece of home made fruit cake, bliss.