Seawatching at Ynyslas turn

Despite the strong winds yesterday I managed to find a relatively calm spot tucked into the dunes at the north end of Ynyslas turn car-park. The sea was extremely rough and at first the only birds moving were herring and common gulls flying north with the wind. After 20 minutes or so I picked out a largish skua slowly flying north and occasionally harrying and chasing both common and herring gulls. The size of the bird, along with a deep chest, broad arm and typically measured wing-beat at first suggested great skua when first seen further out in rather poor visibility but when it harried a common gull and followed it to just off the beach I could see that it was an adult dark morph pomarine skua. (Memories of a year spent at Dungeness came to mind when flocks of up to 80 poms beefed ther way up the channel on balmy May mornings.) All the gulls on the beach panicked and the skua slowly headed out to sea again. Buoyed by this excitement and dreaming of little gull, leach's petrel and more skuas I stayed for a further 80 minutes, getting colder by the second but the only other bird of note was a second winter Mediterranean gull heading north. In total some 420 herring gulls flew north with smaller numbers of common gulls before I gave in and headed for my warm living room.