St David's Head this morning and briefly at Newgale mid afternoon

We had a cold few hours watching the sea at St David's Head this morning. It was another good auk day. At one point, the feeding flock on the sea between Carreg Trai and North Bishop was estimated to be well in excess of 1,000 birds. Many others were flying (mainly south) but not quite so many as last weekend. There were fewer kittiwakes today and only small numbers of common scoter noted heading south. Black-headed gulls were also on the move along the coast, the largest flock of about 60  included 2 adult Med gulls (heading towards Newgale perhaps?).

More than 30 divers were noted heading south (some resting briefly on the sea for a while off  St David's Head before heading on); most were red-throated but there were at least 3 black-throated.

It was also nice to see our first gannet of the New Year, heading south towards Grassholm. From recollections of the period about 18th to 21st Feb 1996 (the Sea Empress winter!) most of the Grassholm gannet colony had returned by then.

Having warmed up a bit, we had a quick look at the flooded marsh at Newgale. Two mute swans we'd noted on the way up to St David's were no longer in view and neither were the teal or snipe until a hunting hen harrier flushed a lot of birds out of the flooded vegetation. The imm. harrier has a very well marked dark under-wing panel on the secondaries. Unfortunately it never came close enough to us for a good photo. Below is an extremely poor distant shot of it anyway and hopefully there will be have been better ones taken of it today.

There was an all too brief glimpse of the green-winged teal in the teal flock before they went back into cover. The snipe flock was quite impressive too, in excess of 150 noted together in the air. The photo below (unfortunately also a distant shot) is of just part of the flock. All in all a good day in the fresh winter air.