The sighting of a possible Sandwich Tern on Anglesey this weekend must have started a few alarm bells ringing, due to the lateness of this species being present. Roll forward until Monday early afternoon when the bird information services said Royal Tern on Anglesey Now this species, for me, has been a particularly difficult one to catch up with after missing out at Porthmadog and twice at Llandudno in June 2009. There was also a few thoughts as to the bird being assigned to either American or African sub species but, it was later confirmed as being American? Was it the long staying bird that has been present on Guernsey and briefly on the south coast of England, doing a tour of the coastline?
The decision to wait for news of the bird at Lligwy Dulas/Lligwy Beach, south of Amlwch was taken by myself and Steve B, so at 9am the Royal Tern was reported as flying across the bay at Lligwy, after a quick call to Steve I had us on our way by 9-45am. The traffic was reasonable for a weekday as we did the normal M56/A55 route towards Anglesey. We arrived at Lligwy Beach just before noon to the news that the bird had been on the beach for a while and had just flown off towards Lligwy Dulas, I thought typical! A couple of groups of birders could be seen scattered around the beach area probably numbering about 40/50, not a lot for such a major Twitch we thought. After 15 minutes or so news of the bird was put out that it was at Lligwy Dulas and giving good views. So without further ado a scene from Wacky Races was recreated as we dashed to hopefully see the bird. We followed the various vehicles and ended up parking up and dashing to look into a waiting telescope at the Royal Tern stood in the water, at last, what a bird!! We walked over a tidal muddy area and watched the bird as it flew up and began fishing and having a good old fly about, until it headed out towards the small island called Ynys Dulas that has a tower/obelisk built on it. I met a couple of older birding mates from the Scillies, a chef from Sunderland and a man from Bexleyheath, Kent who had travelled to see the tern.
We headed back to Lligwy Beach hoping that the tern would come into roost on the beach at around 3pm as the tide went out. The bird was seen in flight a few more times and the general large size and its similarities to Caspian Tern were noted. Our hopes of the bird coming into roost on the beach were being hampered by a constant gaggle of dog walkers, who seemed to be oblivious of all the waiting birders gathered around, how selfish of them. The tern flew fairly close towards us and gave excellent flight views and then headed away. It was going dark by now so we decided to set off for home, the usual rush hour traffic was further hampered by an accident on the M56 that cost us about an hour, reaching Rochdale by 7-25pm. What a brilliant bird and well worth the effort, hope it stays for the weekend.
