The Fishguard Cetacean and Carew/Cresswell WinGS

 

This morning we made the pilgrimage to Fishguard to see the Humpback. It was also nice to bump into Ciff Benson, John Green (second time in less than 7 days) Steve Berry and Lyndon Lomax while we were there. It took a while to get on to the whale and it was never very close to our viewpoint on the breakwater. Whale-watchers at the fort would have had better/closer views. However, we were rewarded with several impressive (if rather distant) views of it breaching in fairly reasonable light. 

A couple of record photos - views from the Fort would have been closer

Birds in the area (which we should be reporting here and not mammals!) included at least two great northern divers, red-throated diver, several razorbills in transition from winter to breeding plumage and seven great crested grebes resting in the harbour and a kittiwake with the whale.

This evening we looked at the Carew/Cresswell confluence near Black Mixen and at the outlet to the Daugleddau channel for possible roosting gulls. None roosted here but several hundred (c.500 Herring, c.550-600 Black-headed, 5 Common and 2 Great black-backed) (mostly heading down-channel) had been feeding in nearby fields where slurry was being piped onto the grassland. Some gulls bathed in the river, probably to wash off the horrible sticky stuff from their feet, before moving on downstream. Some of the larger gulls went high over land towards to the coast but the majority of the BH Gulls headed to roost on the Haven, probably in the Llanstadwell-Pennar Gut zone. However, interestingly, about 100-120 appeared to turn upstream at Lawrenny into the Daugleddau. Perhaps they were heading to a  roost that can occur on occasions further upstream. This roost is to be checked by a few of us on Wednesday evening (weather permitting!).  

Colour-ringed oystercatcher left leg orange/metal; was this evening showing its right leg which has orange 58 (now turning black). It was roosting at Lawrenny Quay with 54 others (about half the number that were there several days ago). These included a metal-ringed bird with no colour rings. It was not possible to read the numbers unfortunately. Many hundreds of corvids (mixed jackdaws and carrion crows also gathered to roost in the estuary woodland just before we left the area.

58 is viewable on one side of the ring but black obscures the numbers on the other side