Short Attention Span

Talk about saving the best ‘till last.

I undertook another hike from home at Lloc to Prestatyn yesterday with the aim of rendezvousing with the high tide at the Point of Ayr and then moving over to Gronant to look for some Short-eared Owls.

This time I was fully tooled up with my telescope and foldaway chair and after a two hour yomp of Goose Green-esque intensity I was in situ at the old hide site.

It was glorious. Thousands of waders thronged the shoreline including surprisingly high numbers of Bar-tailed Godwits – perhaps due to the prolonged South-easterlies the birds had been pushed further east?

Sadly – as is increasingly common at the POA – the high tide roost was disturbed by a cretin with a camera. Not a craparazzi, just s casual with a basic camera grinning gormlessly at the scattering Oystercatchers. Prat.

Next up was Warren Fields that held good numbers of Lapwing a gross or so of grazing Wigeon and a pair of dozing Pochards.

En route to Gronant I pitched-up on top of the highest dune for a scan of the drink. It was very quiet, but persistence (actually more of a reluctance to move my backside) paid off eventually with a distant flyby Great Northern Loon.

Close inspection of the strandline all the way to the Little Tern watch-point at Gronant produced nowt – something I considered a little unfair considering Snow Buntings seem to be popping up everywhere else!

Moron of the day number two was loose though. Sharing the same gormless retarded grin of the aforementioned, he delighted in watching his Whippet chase every element of birdlife on the beach.

Exhausted I collapsed into the dunes at Gronant and waited for dusk. As it happens I didn’t have to wait that long.

A tick past three and the first Short-eared Owl began its first sortie. Seemingly determined to cover every inch of territory it flew back and forth up and down the gullies in the dunes – sometimes very, very close.

After thirty minutes it was joined by another bird and soon after a third. The light was fantastic and the next twenty or so minutes I spent burrowed in the vegetation watching the birds hunt was the best birding I’ve had all year. And, I flushed a Woodcock too – superb.

Until later.