Sunday 14 August 2022

The Brick-house, Ynyslas and Ynys-hir

  

A pleasant morning birding starting at the brick-house at Ynyslas where some 6-7,000 Manx shearwaters flew north along with 220 gannets, 128 sandwich terns, 35 Mediterranean gulls, 3 little terns and numerous kittiwakes etc with many feeding at the mouth of the estuary. This flock attracted 4 arctic skuas between 0730 and 0900 with all four visible together at 0810.

At Ynyslas itself later, there were a few waders but as the tide rose numerous gulls, terns, gannets and shearwaters poured into the estuary presumably feeding on small fish. I counted 354 sandwich terns flying in but surprisingly no other tern species.

Later at RSPB Ynys-hir the two female garganey were on the Marian Mawr pools with a great egret, a little ringed plover and two green sandpipers. On the estuary was a black-tailed godwit, two common sandpipers and 6 ospreys together which was a bit of a surprise (presumably the Dyfi Osprey pair and young and one other).

 Russell Jones