Holyhead

Shag diving for dinner

I had an embarrassment of complimentary travel vouchers burning a hole in my pocket so I used half of them for a day out to Anglesey. It's a lot late for the nesting seabirds at South Stack so I decided I'd have a proper explore of Holyhead Harbour and the breakwater.

Newton-le-Willows was a new addition to my list of railway stations what have a buzzard sitting in a tree, a chunky, earth-brown bird that glared at the train as it left the station. It was a day for seeing buzzards, there were a few more in the Cheshire countryside and yet more flying low over the fields of Anglesey.

It was a lovely day for a train ride along the North Wales coastline. The tide was high, there was just enough mud left for a few shelducks and a big flock of black-headed gulls on the coast just North of Mostyn, beyond that the waves lapped seawalls. Little egrets and herons haunted salt marshes, carrion crows, jackdaws and rooks rummaged in fields, herring gulls and woodpigeons sat on chimney pots and starlings on wireless antennae. Mute swans and little egrets peppered the big island on the marine lake at Rhyl, a crowd of little egrets clustered by the viaduct over the Clwyd.

Crossing over onto Anglesey the flocks of rooks became more frequent as the train passed through sheep farming country. A big flock of greylags grazed near Llyn Coron just after Bodorgan Station, there was a bigger one near Rhosneigr Station.

The Old Harbour 

I got off the train and wandered over the Old Harbour into Holyhead. I stopped for a look round, as well as the inevitable herring gulls and pigeons there were a couple of shags and a sleeping guillemot. Black guillemots frequent the harbour and I got my hopes up but this bird had all dark upperparts so was definitely a common guillemot. (In Summer, black guillemots are black top and bottom with big white patches on their wings, in Winter they're nearly all white with flecks of black on their backs and a broken black margin to those white wing patches.)

Instead of my usual walk across the town centre and out for South Stack I walked beside the harbour along Victoria Road. At the top of the road there's a gap by the houses looking over an inlet of the New Harbour. Herring gulls and oystercatchers dozed on rocks, a heron was asleep on an island and a couple more shags were out fishing in the water.

Rock pipit

I carried on round the road and dropped down to the promenade next to the Maritime Museum. The sea was lapping at the seawall and a rock pipit was skittering over the rocks by the seawall. One of the shags was fishing close enough to try and get its photo. Unlike the only black guillemot of the day which was out in midwater by the boats. It was in Winter whites, the first time I've seen this plumage, and at first I took it for one of the little buoys marking the harbour pathways. Then I realised what it was then convinced myself I was right first time and was only sure about it when it dived underwater and bobbed back up again fifty yards further out.

Shag 

Holyhead Mountain from the marina 

A nosy round the marina found a lot more herring gulls and a few black-headed gulls and carrion crows, and redshanks and oystercatchers dozed in pairs on the rocks. A way over I could see people walking the length of the breakwater (it's about a mile and a half long). I reckoned I could try a bit of seawatching on there so I took the path to Breakwater Road.

Along the way I took a detour. A rough path led into some woodland so I followed it, adding chiffchaffs and titmice to the day's tally. Then I got to a bit where the path had collapsed down a bank. I'd have crossed the gap in younger, dafter days but I decided not to risk it on untrustworthy knees and turned back. Along the way I spent a while trying to get a photo of an ichneumon wasp that was hunting on a bit of stone wall.

Ichneumon wasp 

The path had evidently been a private road to the castellated Victorian ruin on Breakwater Road. Parts ran along high banks thick with ivy, hart's tongue ferns and polypody. Elsewhere there were high walls thick with ivy and fizzing with insects. Commas, red admirals and speckled woods feasted on the ivy flowers, bees and hoverflies buzzed, Southern hawkers snatched small flies out of the air in passing. It felt very much like Summer.

Red admiral 

Comma

Goldfinches, great tits and robins flitted to and fro between the trees on either side of the road.

Goldfinches
When they sit still it isn't easy to pick out goldfinches from dead leaves but as they never sit still the problem doesn't arise.

A picturesque ruin

The breakwater, the New Harbour on the right, the Irish Sea on the left 

I had hoped that when I got onto the breakwater I'd get a closer look at the black guillemot and perhaps find some more but no luck in either case. In fact nearly all the birds were more distant than they had been from the marina. The seawatching was the typical combination of optimism, patience and frustration tempered by a couple of moments of triumph. Nearly all the birds I could see were gulls, mostly herring gulls with a few black-headed gulls and a couple of passing great black-backs. Just as my spirits were flagging a juvenile gannet flew by one of the great black-backs. Crows had been flying across the harbour. One flying over the sea took my eye as it looked a lot broad-winged, even more so than a rook, but I concluded it was just a trick of the angle I was seeing it by. Then it called a few times and headed off up and over to Holyhead Mountain and I added chough to the year list. How I missed a dirty long red bill I do not know.

Snowdonia from the end of thf breakwater

The New Harbour

Wheatear 

A rock pipit jumped over the seawall on my approach. A wheatear kept its nerve but also kept its distance. It was a young bird in fresh plumage and the white tips of the tail puzzled me until I worked that out.

Wheatear

I walked the length of the breakwater and walked back. An adult gannet passed by on the open sea about a quarter of a mile out. Glancing down at the path I realised that despite the island being made up of Pre-Cambrian gneisses that had been folded and compressed and partially melted under high pressure the breakwater has been dressed in fossiliferous Carboniferous limestone.

Rugose corals, possibly Lithiostrotion

The walk back to the station was uneventful except the bit where I was forcibly reminded that the roads on this end of town have some steep stretches both up and back down into the town centre. I was glad of a sit down when I got to the station.

There were yet more corvids, greylags, buzzards and woodpigeons as the stopping train to Shrewsbury made its way across Anglesey. Mute swans cruised on the Cefni at Malltraeth while a kestrel hunted along the bank. The tide had ebbed and beyond Llanfairfechan the gulls on the beach were joined by little egrets and pied wagtails.

Great Orme from the train

I changed at Llandudno Junction where a couple of dozen house sparrows settling to roost in a bush by the pedestrian bridge contrived to sound like a couple of hundred. As the train back to Manchester trundled through the twilight I was the old man with his nose pressed against the window looking for owls.

Anglesey

Choughs, South Stack

I've been putting off a trip out to Anglesey for three weeks, the weather looked okay for it today so off I went. I'm a couple of months late for the nesting seabirds but my intention was to get choughs onto the year list, do a little seawatching, have a walk and do a bit of birdwatching from the train along the beaches and salt marshes of North Wales.

I got the Holyhead train from Oxford Road and settled in for a two and a half hour journey, making sure I was on the North side of the train so I'd be facing the coast. The wind had blown some of the leaves away from the trackside trees, making it easier to see some of the woodpigeons and corvids that had been playing peek-a-boo all Summer. A flock of stock doves in a field near Godscroft reminded me that for some unaccountable reason I've been neglecting Frodsham this year, something I must amend.

As we moved up the Flintshire coast the salt marshes were peppered with starlings, carrion crows and black-headed gulls. Little egrets started appearing on the approach to Mostyn, ones or twos at first then groups of a dozen. Shelducks dabbled in the mud and a flock of a hundred or more dunlins (and who knows what else) rose from the beach as the train passed. The train also flushed a snipe from the trackside embankment as we passed through Ffrith, not something I was expecting on today's list. Kimmel Bay was heaving with black-headed gulls, little egrets, tufted ducks and a pile of other stuff we zoomed by too fast for me to identify. It was black-headed gulls, herring gulls and carrion crows all the way to Bangor with cameo appearances by oystercatchers, cormorants and woodpigeons. On Anglesey the gulls and crows were mostly accompanied by jackdaws.

By South Stack Road

I walked out of Holyhead town centre and down South Stack Road. Halfway down the road, in the field by the small reservoirs, a few dozen greylags grazed and honked in the company of a flock of jackdaws. A dozen herring gulls and a mallard dozed in the next field but the only bird actually on the reservoirs was a sleeping heron.

By South Stack Road 

I reminded myself that the first stretch of the minor road up to South Stack would be steeper than I'd expect but it still came as a shock. I was whispering soothing words to my knees when I realised that not all the flock of jackdaws were jackdaws, there were a couple of choughs in there, too. They were quite close and didn't mind me taking photographs of them so long as they were pictures of their rear ends or their suddenly lunging into a tussock of grass chasing some tidbit or other. 

I noticed a smaller bird further up the field when it rose and fell then flew off into the hedgerow. It was a big, but not chunky, bunting with a pale chest and belly. Not a yellowhammer or corn bunting, not yet a reed bunting (and definitely not a cirl bunting!). It must be a Lapland bunting but I was only getting underwing views and getting no sense of chestnut wing coverts. Then it called. A strange wader-like cheep. I looked up some flight calls and yes, it was a Lapland bunting. Here's an example. Sadly it was too quick into the cover of brambles for me to get a photo.

South Stack Lighthouse

The wind was fierce so I decided not to do the clifftop walk, choosing the path a hundred yards in instead. Mind you, it felt like anyone throwing themselves off the cliff would safely find themselves in the garden of one of the holiday homes down the hill. The choughs and jackdaws bounced about in the breeze but everything else kept its head down. A flock of sparrows sat at the base of a stone wall and chirruped at passersby.

Gannet, South Stack

I settled down for half an hour or so's seawatching. I tried to find a spot in the lee of the wind but whichever side of Ellis Tower I went the wind was blowing a hooley. In the end I went and sat down on a bench in the open, I could at least use it to steady my binoculars. Seawatching is a very Zen thing, like as not you're looking at nothing but waves. There was a lot of looking at nothing but waves then a passing gannet demonstrated I had the scale of the waves all wrong: they were huge. This seemed to help and soon I'd found a few gannets, a couple of great black-backs and a possible Manx shearwater (couldn't be sure, it was flying the troughs of the waves so I only got tantalising glimpses of a dark bird). It took a while to work out that the dark shape breaking the water was a harbour porpoise, especially as I was having problems with the scale of things at the time.

I made my way back whence I came, stopping to admire a buzzard wind hovering by the cliffs. A kestrel was hunting over the fields by the road and a couple of choughs had joined the greylags in the field.

Chough and greylag, South Stack Road

I considered having a nosy round the harbour but my feet and knees were making representations about the effects of all that road walking along steeply inclined planes so I wandered over to wait for the train back. It was getting on so most of the bird life on the way back was corvids and gulls with a few egrets showing up in the gloom. There were a few pairs of oystercatchers in the fields and beaches round Llanfairfechan, the egrets on the Conwy Estuary included a great white and there was a large flock of redshanks roosting at Kimmel Bay. The light was too dim to see much by the time we passed Shotton and the only bird I saw in England on my way home was a pigeon waiting for a tram at Manchester Victoria.

It had been a long day but a very productive one. And I do need to go and visit Frodsham.

South Stack

Chough, South Stack

I've had my Senior Railcard a couple of days so I decided it was time it got christened. The other week's timetable changes have brought back the Manchester to Holyhead train so I thought I'd have a trip out and walk down to South Stack.

I was reminded how long it is since I last did this trip: I was baffled by a "new" bridge from the station into the town centre that turned out to have been built in 2008. What surprised me greatly was that once I'd got my bearings in the town centre I could walk up to South Stack from memory (though I'd forgotten how steep that last stretch of South Stack Road is!)

A hopeful scan round of the harbour before setting out netted the inevitable herring gulls and pigeons and a great crested grebe.

Starlings, Llaingoch

Once I'd passed through Llaingoch the country started to look wild, with rolling farmlands on my left and the heather-thick base of Holyhead Mountain on my right. Dozens of herring gulls passed overhead and the hedgerows were busy with goldfinches and linnets. I could hear buzzards calling but it took ages to find them: they were soaring and dipping over the brow of the hills on the other side of the valley.

View from South Stack Road

About half a mile beyond Llaingoch there's a small reservoir or four large square ponds, I'm not sure of its function. A flock of a dozen each of herring gulls, lesser black-backs and greylag geese loafed on the field by the ponds while a couple of dozen herring gulls bathed in the water.

Buzzard, South Stack Road

I'd almost reached the point where you turn right for South Stack when I saw my first two choughs of the day as they tried, and failed, to mingle with a large flock of jackdaws. A buzzard made an even worse fist of it.

South Stack Lighthouse

South Stack was busy. Very, very busy. It's too late in the season to hope for auks nesting on the cliffs, though there were still a few kittiwakes and plenty of herring gulls. There were a few too many loud voices around to hope for many small passerines but a large flock of spadgers took advantage of the dust raised by all those feet.

House sparrows dustbathing

I found a quietish spot and did a bit of seawatching. Plenty more gulls. An adult gannet passed by in the mid distance and a dozen Manx shearwaters seemed to track the fishing boats' buoys past the cliffs. A scan through a crowd of gulls at the base of one of the cliffs added shag to the year list.

Holyhead Mountain

The walk back to Holyhead was more of the same though I was largely distracted by the air sea rescue helicopter landing in a dip in the side of the hill by the road. I hope it was a training exercise and not some poor devil hurt themselves.

Holyhead Harbour

I walked down to the harbour at Beach Road and had a nosy round. More herring gulls and pigeons, a great black-back with a large youngster and a passing curlew.

Back off home on the stopping train to Chester which doesn't connect to anything anywhere and so was nice and quiet.