Western Reef Heron in North Wales

I'm sure all birders with any kind of knowledge of national birding news are all aware of the recent discovery of a Western Reef Heron in North Wales. It was found on Sunday on a river estuary in Wales just west of Caernarfon and proceeded to delight  all comers for the whole week before disappearing on Saturday for a few days. At the time of writing, it has now just been rediscovered a bit further east near Llandudno. As a first for Britain its discovery of course got hardcore twitchers slavering at the lips and many dropped everything on the news and raced over to Wales to see it that day. Myself, I was a bit more ambivalent about it. Sure it would be nice to see but it was four hours away and I didn't really fancy such a long drive on the off chance. It generally takes me a few days to work up my twitching juices and I like to see if it establishes a pattern of some kind and can generally be considered to be "reliable". So I made no immediate plans. However, as I mentioned in my previous post, my son and I finally agreed a date for fetching his stuff back from York Uni with him going up by train in order to pack and then me coming to pick all his stuff up. So it seemed not too much of a stretch to go up to York "via" North Wales and also the Yorkshire Dales. I've already blogged about the Yorkshire Dales part of the trip in my previous post so here is the North Wales part. 

Going all that way, I wanted to give myself plenty of time to see the Heron in case it went missing for a while. It had two places it generally liked to hang out: either the Y Foryd estuary or the river mouth by Caernarfon castle although sometimes it would go AWOL for a while. So, to give myself a good chance of seeing it, I decided to stay overnight in Wales and then to head onto the Dales the next day at some point depending on how things went with the Heron. I left the house on Thursday morning at around 8am in torrential rain which persisted the entire length of the journey. The M6 is not a nice motorway to drive on at the best of times and it was not fun at all in all that rain. The Heron had been reported up until 11am on Bird Guides as still being present on the estuary but there was no news after that. About twenty minutes away from the estuary, I put out a request on the Twitchers WhatsApp asking for news to be told that there had been nothing since the 11am report. Nevertheless, I was reasonably optimistic - it had been hanging out all week and was still around that day. What's more I had done my research and knew of all the locations where it had been seen so I should be OK. I pressed on with some excitement now that I was so close to my destination. The final stretch was along a single track country road past a village called Saron down some windy roads to the estuary. Finally I came within sight of one of the regular viewing spots, a few hundred metres north of the bird hide by a couple of houses where a side river joined the main one. There I was met with the encouraging sight of some twitchers' cars and also some half a dozen twitchers with their scopes trained on the estuary. That certainly looked promising! Just to be sure, I raced up to them and had a peek through the scope "for the tick". There was the Western Reef Heron, rather distant but quite unmistakable. Then it was back to the car to get my own gear and to set up for watching the bird. 

My first views were rather distant of it working its way along the estuary shoreline

There were remarkably few people there, no more than 10 people. While it was no longer raining, it had been all morning there so I guess people hadn't lingered after seeing it earlier on. To be honest, I far preferred it this way. Huge twitching crowds are no fun at all and just detract from the experience so this was much better. The bird was about 100 metres away feeding actively along the estuary shoreline. Constantly on the move, it seemed to be getting plenty to eat. Also present were a couple of Little Egrets, a Goosander, various Curlew and some loafing gulls. Right in the distance at the mouth of the estuary were a few drake Eider - still recognisable despite the distance.

Just a handful of twitchers

The Western Reef Heron (Egretta gularis), also called the Western Reef Egret, is a medium-sized heron found in southern Europe, Africa and parts of Asia. It has a mainly coastal distribution and occurs in several plumage forms: a slaty-grey plumage; a white form which can look very similar to the little egret; and a black form with a white throat, E. g. gularis, found in West Africa. Our bird was the latter subspecies which was, in my opinion, the most attractive of the three. Certainly with its striking dark feathers contrasting with the white throat patch it made for a handsome bird.

I settled down to watch the star bird while munching on my packed lunch. I tried taking some digiscoped video though in the end settled for some phone-scoped shots though without a proper adaptor it was a rather hit and miss process. I got chatting to the birder next to me who was from Norfolk and who had been down here for a few days already. Our conversation turned to the evolution of birding equipment away from scopes and towards cameras. He was very much in the camera camp and spent some time trying to persuade me that it was the way to go. To be fair, I can see how things are moving that way. What can be done with cameras these days with their built in AI auto-focus is pretty amazing and many IDs these days only come about because of photographs - the recent Black Kite at Otmoor was very much a case in point. Still, so far I have resisted getting a camera though who knows how long this might last.

My best phonescoped efforts of the day

After a while I decided to go for a little walk along the estuary, partly to walk off the four hours driving in the pouring rain and partly just to enjoy the scenery. I am more and more finding that I am enjoying the scenery of the places that I go to as much as the bird I've come for. The Black Stork in Suffolk was a case in point, again tidal salt marsh habitat - I just love the vast emptiness of it! With the place to myself I enjoyed ambling along the shoreline, listening to the calls of the Curlew and doing a bit of botanising.

Sea Beet

 

Lovely tidal landscape

After a while I headed back to the Heron and spent some more time watching it as it worked its way around different parts of the estuary. Some birders left and others arrived but there were never many around. At one point the bird got quite close along the shoreline but an over enthusiastic mother of a young twitcher got too close while waving a picnic blanket around and the bird flew off to a safer distance. My Norfolk birder friend was not at all amused! He'd waited all day for the bird to come closer so he could get his frame-filling shot only to have it flushed so quickly and carelessly. This is, incidentally, one reason why I hesitate about getting a good camera: it's very easy to see how one can become obsessed with getting a better picture all the time. With my crappy photographic gear, I'm pleased if I can just get any photo of the bird at all. Still, each to their own.

Another birder turned up, asking if there bird was here. Apparently he'd been waiting all day (!!!) further up the estuary without any luck. I was somewhat bemused by this as the bird news services had all been very clear with their pin drops as to exactly where the bird was. I wondered if perhaps he was just going on free headline-only news from the front page of Bird Guides and only had "Y Foryd" to go on - it was a big estuary if you didn't know where to look. Anyway, I let him look through my scope so at least he got to see it in the end.

Gradually the tide crept in and the light started to fade. Eventually the bird hopped onto a little grass island and settle down, largely hidden behind a large tuft of grass. It was about 6pm by this stage and I decided that it was time to head off to my AirBnB for the night. 

The scenic side river near the houses

So I went back to the car and headed first off to Caernafon to Tescos to by some food for the night before heading off to the village of Waunfawr, in the foothills of Snowdonia. My accommodation turned out to be a nice little house tucked away in a small village amidst rolling hills by the start of the Nantle Ridge. My hostess was out for the evening so I rustled up some dinner before retiring to my room for the evening. I was very tired after a long day and soon fell asleep, dreaming of exotic herons  and empty tidal landscapes. 

The next morning I actually met my hostess and in the end we had quite a long chat over breakfast. It was good to learn about her passion for the local landscape and also her love of poetry and the Welsh language. The Heron had already come through on the news services as still present at the same place but having spent so long watching it I was in no particular hurry. Eventually I headed off back along the windy Welsh roads towards the same place as yesterday. 

Navelwort growing on the stone walls along the lane from my AirBnB
- I know this plant well from Cornwall but I don't think I've seen it in flower before

There were many more cars along the road this morning so I parked up and headed towards a much larger crowd to ask about the Heron. They said that it was down the other end hidden in a gully. I soon noticed just how windy it was - it was blowing a real gale down the length of the estuary and not at all pleasant. Still I was here so I thought I'd go and at least try to see the bird again. I walked the few hundred yards back down the estuary to another twitching crowd at the other end of the section of road that tracked the estuary shore. 

Crowds of twitchers, looking for a Heron in the strong wind

Here I was told more precisely where the bird was hiding and after a little while it did a little fly up and down into a neighbouring gully so I got to see it again. Still, the crowds, the wind and the difficulty in seeing the bird all rather detracted from the experience and I wasn't really feeling it. Eventually, as the tide started to fall, the bird did move further north back to where I'd been watching it the day before and, with it at least being much sunnier today, I was able to take some more phonescoped pictures. But I didn't linger too long and soon wandered back to my car. 

In the brighter light I was able to get some acceptable phonescoped shots

 

More tidal inlet porn

I decided to take a little drive along the northern half of the estuary to see what it was like. This was where the bird spent some of its time on the day of its discovery. However, this area was far less scenic than the spot I had been and the wind was very troublesome so in the end I gave it up as a bad job. 

I did have one more activity planned in Wales before I headed off to the Yorkshire Dales for the evening and that was to do some hill walking up to an old stone circle called Cefn Coch Circle (literally red ridge circle if I can remember my smattering of welsh correctly), known locally as the Druid's Circle. This was located at Penmaenmawr some half an hour away in the direction I was heading anyway so it all fitted in nicely. After turning off the main road, I found myself driving up a tiny narrow road that rose steeply up towards the hillside. There was a parking area half way up where I stopped and got ready for my walk. 

The view from the parking spot. It was incredibly windy here

 

The walk itself was a fairly gentle affair up some rolling hills along a rough track. In a little more than half an hour I arrived at the stone circle which was a rather sad and neglected affair compared to the ones at e.g. Cornwall. Still I spent some time marvelling at the ancient history of it and found a convenient spot for my lunch out of the wind with a nice view. It was all very pleasant. 

Above and below, all that remains of Cefn Coch Circle

Then it was back down to the car and off towards the Yorkshire Dales which I have already blogged about in my previous post. The Welsh part of my trip had been very successful and enjoyable. I had a shiny new tick to my name and had spent a very enjoyable time in the ancient landscape of north Wales. I couldn't ask for more!