North Wales bumper bundle

Llanddulas 

I still had an itch to do a bit of seawatching so I decided on a trip out to Llanddulas to see if the scoters were still being obliging on the North Wales coast. I got the train to Prestatyn then bought a Wales day saver ticket on the 13 bus  to Llandudno, getting off in Llanddulas. (It's slightly cheaper but slower than getting the train to Rhyl, catching the 12 at the station and getting off at the same stop. Come the longer daylight hours there's a good explore to be had with one of those saver tickets.) It's all of five minutes' walk from the bus stop under the overpasses and onto the beach. I was dead lucky, it was a nice April's day with daisies and speedwells in bloom and a mild wind coming in from the sea.

Having a sit down

It was high tide so I had a sit down at the top of the steps to the beach and settled down for a bit of seawatching. There were plenty of herring gulls flying about but most of the rafts of gulls out on the water were common gulls. It didn't take long to find some red-breasted mergansers, the drakes chasing each other away from the ducks. 

Llanddulas 

The first scoters I found — all common scoters — were far out, flying past the wind farm. It took a while to find some more, and some more mergansers, a little closer in. [At this point, where I was about to take some pretty poor photos of distant black blobs, I found I'd forgotten to put the camera card back in last night (again!). On the plus side it spared this blog a lot of pretty poor photos of distant black blobs, there wasn't much closer in for anything better.]

All told there were a couple of dozen common scoters floating or flying about in twos or threes. It took half an hour to find one of the velvet scoters that were around today, and then only because it had a stretch of its wings on the water and I noticed the white secondary feathers. I put another half hour in before giving up on trying to identify the birds in the mid distance, they were definitely scoters of some sort but I couldn't get further than that.

I visited the gentlemen's conveniences and set off for a walk along the shingle. A hundred yards down I found some seats and settled down for another seawatch, enjoying the luxury of not sitting cross-legged on a stone step (I'm getting too old for that). More common scoters and common gulls, some cormorants, a red-throated diver… then I had another look at a raft of half a dozen scoters that had been baffling me earlier. The change of angle worked a treat, even though they were further away. The moment my binoculars were on them I saw two birds I almost thought were coots, a pair of drake surf scoters with their foreheads blazing white in the sunlight. At half a mile's distance I couldn't tell if the birds they were with were common or velvet scoters.

Llanddulas 

Kimmel Bay 

The afternoon was young so I walked down to Beach House Road and got the number 12 bus to Rhyl, getting off at Kimmel Bay for a bit of an explore. The beach was fairly busy with people and dogs but that didn't stop a few redshanks and curlews from feeding in the pools or a flock of a dozen light-bellied brent geese loafing at the tideline. Herring gulls and black-headed gulls were out on the water, a great crested grebe bobbed about offshore and a few cormorants flew by.

River Clwyd, Rhyl

I crossed the Clwyd into Rhyl and had a nosy at the marine lake which was busy with lapwings, dunlins and black-tailed godwits taking refuge from the crowds on the beach.

The salt marshes by the railway line were littered with little egrets on the way in. On the way home they were nowhere to be seen, evidently following the tide out. Just after we passed Ffynnongroew a dozen shelducks were dabbling on the seashore. As the sun set over the Cheshire plain I kept my nose pressed against the train window in the hopes of seeing an owl over one of the fields. To no avail, which serves me right for being greedy after a very good day's birdwatching.