COED HAFOD (WOODLANDS) - CAPEL CURIG WOODLANDS - RSPB CONWY
WEATHER: another wet and windy day with plenty of rain showers and lots of wind, how nice!
It was a woodlands day today, we were after the Wood Warbler and anything else that co-existed in the beautiful oak woodlands all around us. We had a lie-in, no early morning walk (it was raining), and so we set out just after 9am.
Our first venue was a fifteen minute drive away, towards Betws-y-Coed , we crossed the river at Llanrwst and soon arrived at Coed Hafod woodland. (I think Coed is Welsh for woodland). This beautiful; mixed woodland is on a steep slope and it is always windy there. Today was no exception, it was also raining!
However, despite the weather it was full of singing birds, we quickly logged about a dozen species and over the next hour we saw most of them, except for our most wanted, Wood Warbler. We had good views of Goldcrest, Chiffchaff, Coal, Blue and Great Tits, Jay, Song Thrush, fleeting glimpses of a Treecreeper, we only heard Nuthatch Spotted Flycatcher, Willow Warbler and Common Redstart. We climbed to the top of the wood and rested a while, we then heard a Wood Warbler calling but it never showed or even came near to us.
don't you think that these Welsh Long-tailed Tits have much longer tails than the UK version?
On the way back down we spent some time scanning over the surrounding fields and along the sheltered edge of the wood. There we found Song Thrush and Mistle Thrush, Pied Wagtails and a very showy pair of Pied Flycatchers.
On the other side of the wood we found a pair of Common Redstarts that were equally confiding and gave us some great entertainment.
Once back in the car we drove through Betws-y-Coed and stopped a few miles further on just before Capel Curig, we took a quick coffee break in a local cafe before taking on the wind and the rain once more. From the main road we saw Grey Heron, Mistle Thrush, Great Spotted Woodpecker and a female Mandarin Duck flew along the River.
The River - Afon Llugwy - was bursting its banks with so much rain water coming down from Snowdonia, we had little chance of a Dipper or a Common Sandpiper sighting.
The walk we took was along a lane and then a track, we saw lots of birds, many of them in family parties there was a lot of noise going on. Blue, Great and Coal Tits, Long-tailed Tits, Pied Flycatchers, Common Redstarts, Chiffchaffs and Chaffinches were all seen during the walk.
At one point one of the group was playing the Merlin App, listening for species, but it kept detecting a Common Sandpiper, well, we were deep in the woods by now and thought it was a miss-call by the App, it could have been a party of Long-tailed Tits that were making all kinds of noises. Then Debbie suddening shouted out "there is a bloody Common Sandpiper, and its up in a tree"! Well that was a surprise, a new species, instantly named as a Tree-Piper, sitting in a tree, calling constantly from about 4 meters off the ground perched on the trunk, how bizarre was that?
a new species? Common Tree-Piper
We moved on and not long after we heard a Wood Warbler calling, we waited patiently and finally it came near enough for all of us to see. Debbie got it first and even Brenda had good views of it. The bird called for about 30 minutes whilst we watched it, lost it, and relocated it, several times. It made our day as we had put a lot of leg work in today to find this little bugger.
Wood Warbler
To top our sighting we had some great views of a pair of Pied Flycatchers and another Common Redstart on the way back, we also bumped into a large family of Long-tailed Tits.
By this time the rain showers had increased in fequency and a more consistent downpour began as we walked back to the car. We then decided to get out of the valleys and drive up to the coast to RSPB Conwy.
It was dry and sunny at Conwy but the wind was much worse, very strong. We made a stop at the entranceway to scan the Conwy Estuary during a rising tide, it was a good decision because we found our first Great Egret of the trip, we also saw 5 Little Egrets, Grey Heron, Oystercatchers, Cormorants and Common Shelducks.
Greenfinch with a newly fledged youngster
Lapwing with two of its four chicks
On the reserve we saw all the usual suspects with nothing new to report. We watched Greenfinches on the feeders and lapwings with chicks. There were no new waders on the scrapes and all the wildfowl were the same species as seen two days ago.
Bee Orchid
Pyramidal Orchid
We did find two more Orchid Species, Pyramidal and Bee-Orchid, both were near the main centre buildings. We left before 5pm and got back to the hotel in good time for our bird-log which was at 7pm.