Wood Sandpiper
On Monday John Small and I had planned to spend the day on Anglesey. However the news of a Wood sandpiper at Conwy RSPB persuaded me to drag John round there first! We were rewarded with some good birds there were many Common Sandpipers on the reserve as well as the hoped for Wood Sandpiper. This wader is only found during periods of migration and is certainly not very common at all in North Wales. So we were please to see it. There were also Ruff, Black Tailed Godwits and Dunlin about. As well as the more usual suspects. It was also nice to catch up with some young Willow Warblers and Chiffchaff as we walked back to the car.
Dunlin
Ruff
We then moved on to Anglesey first calling at Afon Alaw. Here we again found plenty of common Sandpipers as well as a few Greenshank.
Whimbrel
Next port of call was Cemlyn were we caught up with the few Sandwich Terns which remained on site. The highlight here was the Whimbrel ( which looks like a small curlew!) again this is a passage migrant so we were very please to catch up with it. Other birds of note were a good gathering of Red Breasted Mergansers and a buzzard who posed for us. We also were did a quick sea watch and spotted lots of manx shearwater as the passed by and a good number of gannets. I was also very please to see some Rock Pipits on the beach.
Rock Pipit
Our final site for the day was Llanbadrig for a sea watch. We had similar birds to Cemly plus lots of auks swimming around of shore. We where also delighted to catch up with a family of wheatears on the headland.
