Re-Tern to Wales. 12/7/2020 With the Gateway to Wales having just been re-opened we thought that it was time to visit the principality and of course a visit to our favourite tern colony, Cemlyn Bay. I picked up Steve B and Kevin C at 7-15am and with a decent forecast of sunny periods we left Castleton. We have been doing this trip to Anglesey for many years and I think that it is always one of our most looked forward to trips. Our first stop was Holyhead Harbour and we were soon rewarded with a couple of Black Guillemots flying about, then an unusual sighting of a Mediterranean Gull swooping serenely around the harbour. It seemed strange that no ferries were in the port but they did eventually arrived from Ireland later as we saw them from our next stop at RSPB South Stack.

As we arrived at South Stack the car park looked like a building site but the new centre is well on the way to being open. A scramble down a path to Ellins Tower for a spot of sea watching was interrupted with the sight and sound of 5 Chough. Such happy birds as they call and tumble around the sky in such a beautiful setting. A few passing Gannet`s and terns was all the sea had to offer but the cliffs had lots of auks to marvel at, always great to watch these birds. Also a single Shag was seen on the rocks below the lighthouse. A walk towards the old radio towers in search of some butterflies was not productive as the sun went in. A Hooded Crow was seen along with a few Stonechat, Skylark, and Linnet etc.

At Cemlyn Bay the sound of the tern colony could be heard in the distance and as we parked up the sight was equally impressive. We had heard that the local tern colony on the nearby Skerries had been abandoned due to a Peregrine Falcon having taken up residence, also that a full time warden has not been there to dissuade predators like this. There appeared to be no warden on duty at Cemlyn Bay, but there were lots more terns than normal, had the Skerries birds taken up residence? Normally its lots of Sandwich Terns with Common Terns outnumbering the Arctic Tern but this year there were large numbers of Arctic Terns present. Less Black Headed Gulls was also strange, we tried to get some photos of the birds as they busily fished to feed their young chicks and enjoyed the sunshine.

Next stop was the Little Tern colony at Gronant/Presthaven Sands, but as lockdown had been relaxed and lots of sunshine could only mean one thing, people enjoying the beach. The Little Terns could be seen from the viewing platform as they fished over the sea and the colony was well barb wired etc so lots of birds were present. As we left Gronant we headed down the old coast road and we ran into a really bad traffic jam that slowed us up, Steve B was very unimpressed!

Our last call was at Pennington Flash to see some Egyptian Geese that had taken up residence, again lots of people enjoying the sunshine. A closed hide didnt stop us from getting good views of these unusual visitors to these parts. All in all a good, long day out! Dave O.