Wednesday 30 July 2008

A Head Tern er! and no mistake.

The view many people enjoyed of the Glaucous Gull as it scavenged around the landfill site in Telford was normally distance and at best unsatisfactory, now how about having a juvenile taking sardines from your sandwich? Well this cheeky chappy was doing just that.
It would use the updrafts from the sea to hang! around looking for those special tid-bits that visitors were leaving around, even to the extent of chasing the Herring gulls away.

Mind you Black headed gulls were a little more cunning in their approach to the free feeds.

Right along the coast young Terns were moving along the beaches and of shore searching out the elusive Sand Eels, for many it took several attempts.

Spotted one?
We moved along the coast to the Tern colony at Cemlyn bay, which was well down in numbers over the previous years. But continued to be entertaining.


A quick shake after a dive and it's back to the chick feed and back to it.
The availability of sand eels was evidently low, as more pipe fish were brought in as food and with little nourishment no wonder the colonies of Common, Arctic and Sandwich Terns were again suffering.


Holyhead habour is always worth a scan as it often holds not only Slavonian Grebes, not this time, but Black Guillimots were around but elusive in terms of the camera.

Not good but perfectly suitable as record shots until next time.
One of the things about Cemlyn, is not just the excellent food at the pub up the road, and of course the colony, but the dropping tide can often present you with opportunities for some good photography.
As in the following set of Turnstone pictures. Be prepared to get down and dirty, oh! and wet!
What a difference summer plumage makes.


They proved really confiding and the Ringed Plovers proved no different, the Spotted Redshanks were another story


The period we were there we counted over 50 Manx Shearwaters, 60+ Gannets a few Petrels and loads of Razorbills and Guillimots moving down the coast past the headland.

So another little look into what and where I have been.

More to come

Paul

1 comment:

  1. You make envious Paul, I just have not set up yet for Bird Work.

    Charles R Kerr

    Great Blogg Mate

    ReplyDelete