randombirder

A quick trip up to the brilliant Frampton Marsh where the pacific golden plover - a stunning adult summer - perked up after a snooze out on the saltmarsh.  In immaculate plumage, it was nice to see another one since my first way back in 1998, a memory which seems to have faded over the intervening period. Summer plumage dunlin were present in good numbers, along with two spotted redshank , five greenshank , at least 15 spoonbill , and a short-eared owl of the notable species. 

A five hour drive is 'just up the road' for a lot of twitchers but for me, driving these kind of distances always feels like a massive effort.  Having been encouraged to go and see the elegant tern , a day-trip to Anglesey is the kind of madness that birders are quite familiar with. But this turned out to be a belter of a day.  The elegant tern wasn't easy to connect with, hiding behind vegetation for periods particularly after the spectacular eruption of terns from the colony. A really fantastic site though with large numbers of sandwich tern , and nice to see plenty of arctic tern with common tern there. A peregrine made an appearance late morning and a red-breasted merganser flew past. Lunch in Holyhead late and a quick scan of the harbour revealed an adult black guillemot on the sea. Was great revisiting Llyn Ogwen - sitting in the warm sun soaking up the scenery. Dinner later enjoying the evening sun at Llidiart-y-parc capped off a lovely day.

A lovely evening cycling though the Hertfordshire countryside close to home.  Heading down to the Wallington Road, corn bunting were jangling away and decent flocks of house sparrow were settled within vegetation along the path connecting Clothall Common and the Wallington Road. Heading along the road, I picked up a marsh harrier flying low over fields in a westerly direction before disappearing over the brow of the hill.  Mike Ilett later confirmed it as a 2nd calendar year male. A pair of spotted flycatcher were active by the church frequenting last years nest - maybe they have bred this year after all. Heading toward Sandon, a young kestrel was floundering along the road.  Sadly it had a broken wing and was unable to fly - so not much hope for this poor individual. A hobby careered past at the peak of the hill at Wallington and a couple of yellow wagtail flew over whilst I was focused on negotiating the hills. Just love these warm summer evenings - shame they are all too brief.

A trip that will live long in the memory.  Thankfully Albert had returned after a few days out to sea.  Always a gamble as the black-browed albatross has a tendency to disappear at the most inconvenient moments. It was quite an anxious wait of around five hours while viewing from the Grandstand, that was until one keen albatross-eyed birder managed to pick out Albert loafing distantly way out to sea - it was actually impressive how he managed to get onto it.  Over the course of around an hour, we watched it as it slowly made it towards the cliffs settling once again on sea further along the coastline toward North Landing. I decided to wander down and stopped at the New Roll-up Viewpoint.  The albatross was flying again and making its way toward the cliff face.  Over the next half an hour or so, this monstrous sea-bird wheeled around the stack flying past on a single occasion, appearing to wait for clearance to land before finally touching down on top of the cliffs close to Staple Newk