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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JWN Andrewes" data-source="post: 3356549" data-attributes="member: 7131">15th February; part IIIFrom South Stack we headed to Holyhead, where I quite fancied picking up the Snow Bunting, but couldn't figure out how to get to where it was supposed to be. Oh, well, Black Guillemots should be easy enough. And indeed they were, at least four, in various stages of moult, and as luck would have it I wasn't alone in paying them a visit. I met a fellow spotter out with his little lad, and he set me right on where to find the Snow Bunting site, and a few minutes later we’d relocated and bumped into a couple more birders who eventually found the bird in question, uncharacteristically shy in amongst the large chunks of stone that surrounded the pillbox it was feeding by.Next up, lunch. For this we headed off to MacDonalds, hoping for the Hooded Crow that I’d thought was pretty nailed on, but much to my disappointment it was nowhere to be seen. Half a dozen Jackdaws, three Carrion Crows and  Rook all came and went, but no Hoodie. I spun things out for as long as I could, but the longer it took the more aware I became of a voice, way, way far at the back of my head, screaming at the top of its lungs in an effort to be heard over the distance “YOU’RE GOING TO MULL IN SPRING. FOR A WEEK. A WEEK. ON MULL. QUIT HANGING ABOUT AN URBAN CAR PARK IN NORTH WALES AND GO DO SOME ACTUAL BIRDING. IDIOT BOY” In the end, reluctantly, I relented and called it quits. Funny, even though I know I’ll be seeing buckets of the things in a few weeks, it really hacked me off having to give up; whichever way up you look at it, dipping feels bad. The wife’s right, birders aren’t normal.A quick stop off at Beddmanarch to check the Black-heads for Meds (none) and then scan the sea for Slavs (two), and then on one final scan of the Gulls an adult Mediterranean dropped in. Job done. As anyone who has ever visited will tell you, Spinnies is an adorable little reserve, tucked up against the Menai Strait, blessed with some productive little reedy pools, way back when the earth was cooling I considered it well worth the bus ride from Chester to spend the morning here, walking back along the shore to pick up the bus home from Llanfairfechan. Today it provided a tidy little stop off on the way home. The boys managed to miss the Water Rail I kept finding for them (three times), but fared better with Greenshank and Spotshank on the pools, a fly-by Kingfisher, an impressively vocal high tide Curlew roost in one of the fields and a drake Eider out in the Strait.</blockquote>

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