Old Haunts

With lightish southerly winds and rainfall early doors, I headed over to the Point of Ayr in anticipation of a decent flush of migrants.

As I entered Talacre a showy Tree Pipit suggested early promise, but any hopes of a decent fall soon evaporated as I walked further into the dunes. Three Wheatears and four Common Whitethroats was as good as it got and with the numbers of dogs and people increasingly looking like Crufts meets the Kumbh Mela, I headed for the sanctity of Garth Wood.

Eerily quiet for late April, things soon picked up when I heard a male Pied Flycatcher singing further up the path. When I got close to where it was scratching away, I realised it was from the precisely the same spot that I had seen a male bird last year!

I watched it for a good fifteen minutes, but with the bird retreating higher and higher up into the canopy, I left it to keep working on attracting a lady.

The area of farmland behind Garth Wood had been extremely productive for Yellowhammers last year, but worryingly they are absent this spring, despite yards of suitable hedgerow.

With a spare hour remaining, there was just enough time to pop into Connah’s Quay on the way back. Around a hundred Blackwits were feeding on the edge of a retreating tide and six Wheatears flitted around the surrounding sheep fields.

The bunded pools were largely empty, but a quartet of cracking Greenshanks made up for the absence of any other birds.

Until later.