Isle of Anglesey Birdwatching Trips Custom Tour For Two 18 To 22 September 2023

We love seeing Red-billed Chough on our Birdwatching Trips tours in North Wales.

We first met Tony and Eva a long time ago when we were leading a guided walk at Rutland Water at the Bird Fair. We have kept in touch ever since and have enjoyed many birdwatching adventures together here in the UK and in Finland and Norway. This month they joined us for a five-day custom trip on the Isle of Anglesey here in North Wales. We love running our custom tours as we can tailor make the itinerary to suit our guests perfectly. Tony and Eva requested a relaxed pace tour on Anglesey with the opportunity to take in some of the island’s other attractions, and that is what we did.

During the five days we not only enjoyed a lot of wonderful birds, but we also visited the Charles Tunnicliffe, bird artist, exhibition in Llangefni and enjoyed the other exhibits here, visited historic churches, a lifeboat station, and a beautiful garden at Plas Cadnant. We also enjoyed wonderful food throughout the tour.

But of course, the birds were the real stars of the trip, and we enjoyed a wonderful variety of species – resident, summer visitors, arriving winter visitors and passage migrants September is a wonderful melting pot for species! One of the birds to see on Anglesey is the Red-billed Chough and we were lucky enough to have several encounters with these lovely corvids, even seeing them flying over our hotel.

The Isle of Anglesey has many habitats and we explored many of these from dramatic sea cliffs, coastal lagoons, estuaries, woodlands, freshwater marshes, sand dunes and more. Tony and Eva where keen to learn more about bird identification and as a custom tour we could really take our time and look at species in great detail to help them identify again in the future.

Just a few of the highlights on this wonderful Anglesey tour included finding a Pectoral Sandpiper, rare bird in North Wales, at RSPB Cors Ddyga. This American wader dropped in as we were watching some Ruff and Common Snipe in a flooded grassland. Unfortunately, the sandpiper only touched down briefly before flying on and over the Cefni River. We headed after it and from the bridge over the river had a great view of another flooded area where lots of birds were feeding. We quickly spotted a sandpiper but not the Pectoral one, there were two Curlew Sandpipers feeding here, wonderful. The field held so many Common Snipe it was amazing, and the telescopes allowed super views in the autumn sunshine. Then bingo there was the Pectoral Sandpiper feeding near two Ruff and again the telescopes provided super views of this rarity. With strong winds at times, we did some sea-watching and enjoyed seeing Manx Shearwaters skimming over the rough seas along with wonderful Gannets, lots of Kittiwakes, Common Scoter, several newly arrived Red-throated Divers and departing Sandwich Terns. A trip to Moelfre on the east coast of the island, to see a lifeboat station, happily coincided with a juvenile Little Tern, rare bird on Anglesey, and a Black Tern feeding offshore with Arctic and Sandwich Terns. Cemlyn Bay on the north coast of Anglesey is a favourite place of ours to look for birds and we enjoyed several visits to this beautiful area. A flooded field right next to the car park, at Cemlyn, produced super close views of waders – juvenile Ruff beautifully marked birds, Dunlin, a juvenile Bar-tailed Godwit, and gorgeous Golden Plover. This same field also attracted beautiful Northern Wheatears, Stonechats and Linnets. Cemlyn lagoon attracted Goosander, Greenshank and Little Grebes while offshore we enjoyed great seabirds passing close to the beach. Other highlights included watching two Little Owls posing in the sunshine, a very helpful Dipper that allowed very prolonged looks, a fantastic afternoon spent watching red squirrels and confiding woodland birds with huge thanks to our friend Hugh for this. A Peregrine Falcon was watching chasing a Common Snipe almost right above us, breath-taking stuff, twisting, turning, diving, the wader finally made its escape. Picking out a Little Stint amongst a big flock of Dunlin was fun as was watching lots of newly arrived Pale-bellied Brent Geese at very close range. We did well for Mediterranean Gulls encountering them at four different locations. Huge numbers of Barn Swallows were on the move across the island, and we picked out a few House Martins and Sand Martins amongst them. The trip finished on a real high as on the last afternoon, just before we headed back to the hotel, we found a Leach’s Petrel! Normal view of this ocean-going tiny seabird would be of it whizzing past on a sea watch, but not this one. We had been enjoying really close views of Pale-bellied Brent Geese and even closer looks at a fine adult Mediterranean Gull we had one last scan of the Beddmanarch Bay and there was a Leach’s Petrel fluttering over the water! Panic as we all tried to get on to this wonderful bird. As it happened, no need to panic the bird kept going back and forth over the sea allowing us plenty of time to enjoy the rarity in the late afternoon sun. It even stayed long enough for our friend, Andy, who happened to be nearby to come and join us to watch this storm blown seabird. What a fantastic bird to end a tour with!

A really great fun trip and a huge thank you to Tony and Eva for their lovely company. It was not quite over as in the evening the four of us met up with our mutual friends Richard and June. By an amazing coincidence they had just arrived on the island for a holiday, so lovely for us to catch up over dinner.

We run our Birdwatching Trips throughout the year a mix of set departure tours and custom-made trips perfect for you! To book your custom tour or any of our set departure trips please email us here….

info@birdwatchingtrips.co.uk

We can then make all the arrangements for your perfect Birdwatching Trips tour.