Better late than never

Sunday morning was down to where do we go, the couple of decent birds which had been around had gone by Saturday. So Phil and myself decided to head down to Gileston and Aberthaw and do a bit of bush bashing. We started at Gileston, the tide was right out but we picked up 1 adult winter Med Gull and dozens of Black Headed Gulls flying inland. We started our search to our right and worked the fields and hedgerows and it was nice to see that the Linnet and Goldfinch's flock was starting to build, there were about half a dozen Stonechats,  2 Whinchat and 3 Wheatear. However there was not really much passage overhead apart from a couple of dozen Swallows and 3 Ringed Plovers heading high going west. Also of note were three Common Whitethroat,  it was great to see they have put more gates in and you can now walk to Summerhouse Point. Back to the car for a quick coffee and start our next walk towards Aberthaw. Checking the Gulls we had our Second Med Gull of the day and this time a juv, it blended in quite well with the Black Headed Gulls and also in the rocks were a couple of dozen Oystercatchers, two Little Egrets and a third near the river mouth. At Aberthaw it was very quiet, on the pool there were just two Little Grebes and three coot and boy was this place dead. The only excitement was a single Sedge Warbler and a couple of Migrant Hawker Dragonflies. The walk back went pretty quick, we had a two flocks of Turnstones one had 28 and the other had 9 also two more Ringed Plover and about a dozen Curlew and more Med Gulls, this time we had two first winter ones and a flock of 6 winter plumage adults heading east and for me it was the highlight of the walk with the light beings brilliant on the gulls has they flew by lighting them up. The only disappointment was all the gulls I checked had no rings. It always a great walk and maybe a mega next time.

When I got home I took my dog and daughter for a walk up Craig y Llyn and a hunt for Black Darter. We got loads of butterflies, the kid always seems to come up trumps and my daughter said dad what is this butterfly, she had found a Brimstone and I don't  remember seeing a Brimstone this late before. We also  found a couple of Common Darters and just when you think we not going to see one we found three Black Darters, what a stonker and always brilliant to see them .

 We also had two Common Blues

 Only a single Comma

At least 4 Painted Ladyies

 Two or three Red Admiral

 And the same numbers of Peacocks

This photo was from the day before up at Bryn Du, there were no Small Tortoiseshells seen up at Craig y Llyn

 Common Darter

 Teneral Black Darter

It been a couple of years since the last one.