Make it Snappy

After getting up ten minutes before going to bed on Sunday morning to attend a car boot sale, I was wide awake at six thirty this morning. Puffing my pillow, rolling over and closing my eyes would have been the sensible option, but instead I was possessed by another entity that coerced me out of my warm bed and no more than ten minutes later into the car and heading down to the Point of Ayr.

Not much doing on the marsh so I opted for a trek through Talacre Dunes and up to Gronant. It was fairly quiet with a few Stonechats and a Bullfinch, plus a steady trickle of Swallows.

The loud calling of a Whimbrel then attracted me to a trio flying high over the dunes in an easterly direction – no surprise considering there as been quite a few reports of ‘Whimbrel en route’ across North Wales this weekend.

Gronant beach was bereft, but there was a mummified fossil of the head of a saltwater crocodile that had been washed up on the shoreline (see above)!

Returning back through the dunes I headed over to the small wood behind the horse paddocks where fortunately I bumped into a mixed flock of fifty or so passerines working their way through the vegetation.

Completely ignoring me, I was able to observe the birds at fairly close proximity as they methodically scoured the twigs and branches for food. Almost all juveniles, the flock contained Blackcap, Common Whitethroat, Willow Warbler, Chiffchaff, plus Long-tailed, Great and Blue Tits.

On another note, there are still hundreds and hundreds of waders on the bunded pools at Connah’s Quay NR – a spectacular spectacle. On Saturday there was in excess of fifteen hundred Blackwits with about a dozen Greenshank and four Spot Reds including one in near full summer plumage.

Until later.