A bright weekend morning meant that we could both go out birding together so we headed off first thing to Anglesey, hoping for some good birds.  Our luck birding together hasn’t been great since we’ve back in the UK, did we use it all up last year?!  Separately we’ve enjoyed some great birds: Alan had a good birding day catching up with local specialities while Ruth was at work, and just as she nipped out for some fresh air in her lunch break, Ruth heard and caught sight of a Green Woodpecker heading for a patch of woodland behind the office: a great bird for North Wales.  However, when we’ve gone out birding together, we’ve usually dipped on our target bird causing much frustration.  But undeterred, we headed off today with high hopes. The day started well enough as we stopped at Malltraeth Cob pool.  A large flock of Pintail was gathered there, some 227 birds in total.  It was great to see these handsome duck in such good numbers, unconcernedly going about their business so close to the road.  A few yards further on, we checked the bridge over the River Cefni.  Plenty of birds here:  Dunlin, Knot and Common Redshank pottered amongst the rocks, Curlew dipped their long bills in the mud, Common and Black-headed Gulls preened in the flowing water, and then, success!  Alan picked out a Spotted Redshank striding along the water’s edge, showing off its clean white underparts compared to the grey of its commoner cousins.  Was our luck changing?  Were the birds going to be there for us today?Next stop was Llyn Coron, where local birders Ken Croft and Martin Jones had both recently seen a Green-winged Teal.  It was a typical Welsh early spring morning:  if you don’t like the weather you’ve got right now, hang on a minute and it will totally change.  One minute the sun came out and the wind dropped, and we could convince ourselves it was spring.  A Skylark could be heard singing overhead, even he was fooled.  But then the clouds rolled in, the wind picked up, and winter reminded us that it wasn’t ready to release its grip just yet.  We set up our scopes in the lee of a willow and started to scan.  And there were plenty of birds to scan through:  plenty of Tufted Duck about, male and female Goldeneye dived continuously, several pairs of Gadwall bobbed and upended, two female and a male Goosander cruised along at the far end of the lake, a pair of Great Crested Grebe carried out their stunning spring mating display right in front of us while we could hear Little Grebe calling amongst the reeds.  Gulls, Common and Black-headed, gathered on the banks along with a large group of Greylag and Canada Geese.  But no sign of any teal at all, never mind a Green-winged one.  We decided to brave the wind and head further along the lake so that we could look back into a hidden fold, an ideal place for tiny teal to lurk.  Clomping along through the reeds and boggy ground, we flushed a Common Snipe from right under our feet.  We set up shop again in a new spot where we could scope a small inlet.  At last, teal!  A small group of male and female Eurasian Teal were poking about amongst the reeds.  We checked each individual closely, but each one was quite obviously a Eurasian Teal, no sign of the distinctive vertical white line that would single the visitor out as a Green-winged Teal.We spent a good few hours at Llyn Coron, trying different viewpoints and angles, but the same cast of birds were all we could find.  Just as we were on the point of leaving, another local birder dropped by and we all had another scan together.  His time was limited as he was apparently only out on a morning pass, but he’d already had a great morning’s birding so he wasn’t too concerned about the teal.  Not far from where we were, he’d enjoyed good views of a Bittern.  Now that had our juices flowing! What a great bird to catch up with, and a good bird for our day list.  Our heads said we should head home to carry on writing our book, but our hearts told us we couldn’t pass up the chance of a Bittern so close by!So we headed off for Llyn Maelog at Rhosneigr, just a few miles away.  Here it was even more exposed to the wind and we piled on hats and gloves, with our eyes watering in the sharp wind.  We followed a footpath along the southern edge of the lake, passing a group of fishermen on the way.  Now if anyone thinks we have a strange hobby, they should take a look at fishermen!  How they spend all day, preferably in cold wet weather, staring at the surface of a lake waiting for something unseen to attach itself to the end of their fishing lines, we just don’t understand.  But maybe they feel the same about us!  Once again we set up the scopes and started to scan the reed fringe on the far side of the lake.  Slowly we scoped from left to right, and back again from right to left.  Nothing at first, then on the second pass, a shadowy shape half-concealed amongst the reeds moved.  A Bittern!  It was only when it moved that it gave away its position.  From gazing straight upwards like a reed itself where it had been all but invisible, it crouched down and peered out, poking its slim bill through the reeds – what a giveaway!  We zoomed in on the bird and, holding our scopes steady against the buffeting wind, we filled our boots with views of this elusive but charismatic heron.  We shared the news with Birdline Wales so that others could enjoy the spectacle, and then, listening to our writing conscience at last, headed for home and the computer!Is that the end of our run of bad birding luck together?  Have we broken our duck, metaphorically speaking of course?!  Hope so!  Spring and an influx of migrants is just around the corner, and we want to be out in the thick of it.