No sooner were we there than did I spot my first bird of the day, a little egret fishing alongside the beach. Its the first of these I have seen for quite some time, and it was also quite close, so I was able to get some resonable photos.
-Little EgretWalking along the harbour wall, my brother spotted this tiny irredescent beetle on top of one of the wooden pillars, so I took some photos of it.
-BeetleAs we walked rond the sea front to the marina my dad spotted these two juvenile gulls roosting on one of the slipways, and they looked rather cute together, but it was difficult to get them both in focus at the sametime so the photos are not quite what I would have liked.
-Juvenile Herring Gulls
I could also see a cormorant in the water, and it was moving towards us. Eventually it moved close enough for me to bother trying to get a photo. And still it came closer, seemingly un-caring that I was there. Eventually it got out at the foot of one of the staircases heading down to the bottom of the sea wall, really close, as I was right at the top of the stairs. It diddnt seem to care so I took around 100 photos of it;
... It is now 2014, and reading through some posts one afternoon I have encountered this post. I have no idea what 17 year old me was thinking but this is quite clearly a young shag. Its a pity I did not notice this at the time, as its a species I do not see very often, living inland. As a result its a good thing I did take so many photos of it...
Actually in the marina there were not many birds, but there were quite a few fish, including a shanny and 3 very impressive thick lipped mullet
-Thick Lipped Mullet
Because it had brightened up we decided to go back to angelsey for the afternoon and so we went to the beach at Newborough Forest, which meant that I could go for a walk in the woods to see if there was anything about. I decided to head off towards the pool I could see on my OS map. Sadly this map was hopelessly out of date, and as a result many of the paths were wrong, and as a result I got lost
I did my best to follow the map, but since I diddnt actually know where I had started in the first place I diddnt have much fun. Eventually I asked some strangers I met in the forest if they could help me.
Luckily these strangers were locals who go into the forest everyday, so knew it pretty well. Apparently even the forest warden gets lost in the woods.
Now on the right track I was able to fully appreciate the wildlife around me, though there was not much. Now that the sun was out there were quite a few buzzards overhead.
-Common Buzzard
where the sun broke through the trees there were lovely patches of flowers, and as a result there were also quite a few insects, including this large skipper.
-Large Skipper
I was now on a dead straight path that would take me to past the turn off for the pond. On the way up I spotted a rose chaffer trying to bury itself into the gravel of the path. After taking a few quick photos I decided to move it off the path incase it got run over by forestry vehicles or cyclists.
-Rose Chaffer
Eventually I reached the pond. It had amazing promise when I was walking to it, as there was a common darter on the path in front of me. There was another on the path furthur up too.
-Common Darter
The pond was actually fenced off, which was quite annoying, but there was a gate, so I climbed over. There were even more birds here than elsewhere in the forest, with green woodpeckers and more buzzards in the vacinity. It was probablky becuase this was a very open area of the forest. The pond was actually in the middle of a "dune-y" field, and wasa an 8 shape with two islands. Or at least thats what it should look like, but it was dry in most of what should have been pond.
On the few areas that were still pond there were a good selection of common blue and blue tailed damselflies. In terms of dragonflies there was a four spot chaser.
-Common Blue Damselfly
-Common Blue-Tailed Damselfly
Exploring the pond I was surprised to find a dragonfly exuvia about 2 inches long, on a pond with hardly any water and the only dragonfly probably had a body length of about 2 inches. I had stupidly left all my collecting pots at the caravan, so I knew returning it to the car, a walk of around 45 mins, with no pot would be difficult. I therfore would have to improvise, and after 5 mins my hands were sweating something shocking, so that was clearly out of the question. I had an I-pod, Nokia Brick Phone, camera and a map, so I decided to store it in the camera lense cap covered by a map on the widest side and my hand on the narrower side. It worked, and I got it back to a safe place in one piece
Walking back along the dunes, so I knew the way, I stumbled across a few wild pansies which looked lovely, so I knelt down and took so photos of them, as a record shot.
-Pansy
After that we headed back to the caravan site. As we pulled into the caravan site we spotted a buzzard perched on a telegraph pole on the far side of the dog walking field. However, halfway down the dog walking field I spooked it and so I diddnt really get any photos of it.
However looking down I spotted a damselfly in the small drainage ditch nest to the field. I was shocked as there was not much water actually in the ditch. Either way, it was another unusual sighting for the camspite.
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