Tuesday 16 July 2013

Shear madness off mid Wales

The last few summers have seen amazing numbers of Manx Shearwaters of the coast of mid Wales, near Borth. This is what Russel Jones saw this morning Another morning at Borth and Ynyslas amongst thousands of sea-birds. Getting to Borth at 6am there were thousands of manx shearwaters already rafting in the bay with thousands still coming in. By 8 there must have been 25-30,000 manx shearwaters. A quick count of gannets got me to 760 with 16 Meditteranean gulls sitting by the lifeboat station. A quick stop at the turn to watch a feeding frenzy was an absolute joy (though not if you were a sprat); hundreds of herring gulls, the sea black and white with shearwaters, a great skua joing in and over 200 kittiwakes and a dozen sandwich terns. All this, and with at least 10 bottle-nosed dolphins, birding cannot be any better! If you have not been it is a totally wonderful sight and I have never seen anything like it here or abroad, just brilliant birding! We are heading down again this weekend, we went early last week too, and have space on a trip on Sunday 4th August if you don't fancy driving down yourself. Be great if you can join us! Email info@thebiggesttwitch.com For details of this trip. Also if you fancy Finland and Norway May/June 2014! Alan and Ruth www.thebiggesttwitch.com

2 comments:

  1. If you go onto YouTube and google - Manx shearwaters - borth you should get some film footage I took of the spectacle a few years ago.
    Truly amazing and as Russel says one if the most amazing wildlife spectacles this country has to off - a world class spectacle I would say.
    Alan- worth getting the BBC down there?

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  2. Good thinking Marc will make some noise...

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