Birding Group Visit to Pensarn : 4th February 2014

Birding Group Visit to Pensarn : 4th February 2014

After the birding group visit to RSPB Conwy we were going to go to Llandullas but I suggested that Pensarn might be a better place to go. This was perhaps not the best choice for those without scopes because we ended up mainly sea watching even though there was plenty of beach to walk along had the non-scopers wished. In any case we all shared our scopes and it pretty certain that a few of the group saw birds they had never seen before. In fact I got two life ticks myself.

As we set up our scopes we could immediately see that there were hundreds of Common Scoters out towards the direction of the wind farm. With the scope at full magnification we could see them reasonably clearly but my attention was drawn to a bird by another of the group who thought it was a Great Crested Grebe. When I looked at it I thought it looked more like a juvenile Cormorant because of the amount of white on its neck. Another birder who was not with our group told us to have a look at another bird in his scope and it became clear that this bird, and the one we had been looking at, were both Red-Throated Divers ! As we scanned the water we found more and more until I personally counted around eight of them. It was only then that I recalled that the last time we had been here, looking for the stray Hoopoe, I had seen three birds that looked like Red-Throated Divers flying away from me towards the wind farm. Since the view was getting poorer as they flew away, I had written it off as too hard to determine positively but this just confirmed my belief that those had probably been the same as these.

I got a pair of these birds in my scope and watched them for a long time as they dived, resurfaced and preened; a fantastic sighting and my first positive id of the bird. As if that was not enough, however, as I moved back to scan the Common Scoters, another of our group called me over to look at a bird in his scope. I just managed to get a very brief glimpse of a Scoter-type of bird but with a flash of white about the head. The view was momentary and then the bird was down with the wave. I shot back to my scope and started scanning the same area and after quite a long time, suddenly a Scoter came up on a wave and I could clearly see a large white patch on the back of its neck – a Surf Scoter and another life tick ! I tried and tried again but I could not relocate the bird. Later in the cafe when I looked the bird up in Collins, Anne mentioned that she had seen a bird like that flying ! As we sat having tea, my phone bleeped and it was a Rare Bird Network text alert and one of the texts that were on the list was – “SURF SCOTER 3 drakes still at Pensarn. Off the cafe” which was logged at 1.25pm – just shortly before we arrived there !! Well that was enough to convince me 100% so we left there to return to Manchester with two life ticks tucked under the belt.

As a postscript, the next day another of our group emailed me to say that Surf Scoters at Pensarn that day had been recorded on the Manchester Birding web site as well. Fantastic !!

A quick look at my UK year list saw it now standing at 77 birds and my UK life list at 216

Bird Sightings : Pensarn