A day at the seaside
With the chance a Steller’s Eider might be floating off the North Wales coast, only one place to be today, Morfa Nefyn. We picked up Mike Duckham and Robert Hughes and headed west beyond Caernarfon to reach the cliff top car-park overlooking the sweeping bay. Not another birder to be seen, that suited us fine, we wanted the glory of relocating this mega bird. The view from the cliff top was stunning, the light pretty good and sea calm, so it all looked good. We scanned and scanned and then scanned again. No Steller’s. Another birder appeared on the beach below, our friend Andy Clark who we had not seen in a long time. We made our way down the icy steps and joined Andy to walk west along the beach to the jetty where the bird had been seen. Even with an extra pair of eyes to help still no sign. A young guy, who had driven down from Glasgow arrived to join the hunt, still no sign. On the beach a beautiful Golden Plover flew in and joined the Ringed Plover, Turnstones and Redshank. Great to see this lovely wader close up but however much we talked up the plover it just wasn’t a Steller’s Eider, not even close! By early afternoon we had given the whole area a thorough going over and were sadly convinced that the bird had moved on, gutted.
On the way home we stopped briefly at Dinas Dinlle and scanned the sea just in case, we were rewarded with a fine flock of c200 Pale-bellied Brent Geese feeding on the beach. At nearby Foryd Bay we watched mixed flocks of Pintail, Eurasian Wigeon and Teal, four Little Egrets and a single Black-tailed Godwit.
With the light fading we called it a day and headed for Llandudno.
Posted Llandudno, North Wales, 7th January