Sunday outing

 

Sunday morning myself and Phil decided to try our luck at sea watching from Porthcawl's Irongate Pointand with the high tide being early we set off at a reasonable time of 6.30. On the way down the Neath Valley we noticed how high the tide was, the salt marsh by Neath Abbey was under water and it looked like the paddy fields we saw in Thailand. On arriving at Porthcawl we had a quick check of the gulls at Salt Lake car park, there were good numbers there but sadly no rung birds. Next stop was to set up for our big watch at Irongate Point, on getting there we could see three figures standing in our spot and straight away we thought we should have come earlier. Walking over it was nice to see that it was Paul Parsons, Dean Mceachen and a young lad called Tate Lloyd. It's nice to see young so keen and very sharp and he's got the making of being a great birder in years to come and dare I say it he could be as good has our very own Mike Hogan. Right back to the birding and sea watching, we had just missed a distant Skua going down channel but not long after we had three more Skuas and apart from one they were all a fair distant out, there were two Arctic Skuas and the third one was a good candidate for a Pom Skua and only if it could have been a little bit closer. There was also a couple of  Gannets about, I saw at least four going down channel, we also had three Common Scoters and some terns which turned out to be be two Sandwich and one Common. As the tide started dropping it got quieter and we thought time to go and do some bush bashing at Kenfig Pools. On the way we stopped for a minutes at West Drive park to check the Gulls once more and we got on to a couple of Med Gulls straight away and eventually found six in total. They were mostly adults in winter plumage and there was one first winter bird. Also  there were a good mixed flock of  Black Headed gulls, Herring Gulls and Lesser Black Backed Gulls. We also noticed one Herring Gull was missing part of its leg from the knee down, this bird must be finding it hard to find food. Just as we were about to leave I thought I better count the Turnstones as well and just as I got onto the last bird they all took to the air and a male Peregrine appeared from nowhere and singled out one Turnstone and chased it low over sea and just at the last minutes the Turnstone broke away and escaped. It was brilliant to watch the chase and see them escape.

 

Kenfig pool was very quiet and  there were more dragonflies and butterflies than birds. We saw double figures of both Common Darter and Migrant Hawker and it was great to find this mating pair in the iris beds and we got really close views of these brilliant Dragonflies. Butterfly wise we saw big numbers of Speckled Wood and a single Meadow Brown. On the pool there were a couple of Coot and Mallard and a single female Tufted duck, I have never seen it so quiet. I bet the WEBS count was very quick this time. One of my best friends said I needed therapy and I should see the doctor  just because two Mute Swans took off and I checked them for rings and with this so called friend I shared my first mince pies of the autumn, the cheek of it and next time we go I will say nothing about my precious rings pmsl.

We did go down to Sker point and it looked really good, the tide was way out and you could see the mussel beds and there were Gulls and Oystercatchers everywhere. The beach was very busy with dog walkers and people walking and at this point I think we were both cream cracked. We had a look for Autumn Ladys Tresses and we found a small amount of this very tiny flower, they are so easy to over look. Next stop was to look for the Yellow Wagtails at Sker Farm which Dave Carrington told us about and as he said they were with the Welsh Black Cattle and when we got the right field we got them straight away. We had about six birds right under the cattle also about half a dozen Curlew. On the walk back up towards the farm we had a really big flock of Starlings, we checked for any pale birds in the flock but sadly no luck. They landed on a blackberry bush and it was covered and it reminded me of the big freeze again when I had that big flock in my garden. The Sker flock must have easy been 500 strong and a great sight to finish the day off.