Birding Group Visit to The Spinnies, Aberogwen 11th June 2013

Birding Group Visit to The Spinnies, Aberogwen 11th June 2013

After we left Conwy, we drove along the expressway to the Tal-y-bont turnoff and then drove to Aberogwen where the North Wales Nature Reserve of “The Spinnies”  is located. We parked up at the small car park and immediately we could see birds in the distance plunging on o the water and rising quickly up showing the definite characteristics of Terns. As we got nearer we could get a scope on them and this showed them to be Common or Arctic Terns. As we looked at them we noticed at the foot of the cliffs a sumber of large white birds and on closer examination they turned out to be group a group of eight Little Egrets. The tide was pretty much all the way in and there was just a narrow strip of land between the cliffs and the sea. Looking closer at this strip revealed more, however.Though the scope we saw what looked like rocks pebbles all along the beach but, as we got our eyes in, they turned out to be around seventy Curlew. As we scanned this strip of birds from left to right we were amazed to see them turn into a strip of Oystercatchers and this strip went on, and on, and on. There were perhaps some six hundred or so. Another feature of this site is the large numbers of Mute Swans that collect here and, on this occasion, there were around fifty of them.

There were other birds represented by much smaller numbers, Shelduck, Greylag Geese etc. We walked long the path that leads inland to the reserve and we took the short circular walk around the lake dropping in at the two hides there. It was pretty quiet by comparison and there were just he usual Tits, Chaffinches etc there in the woods. A Little Egret flew in briefly before rising up to roost in the trees and a Little Grebe put in a brief appearance. We also saw a Dunnock and, as we left the reserve where it joins the main road for a spell, we got nice views of a Buzzard flying low.

As we returned to the car park we had another look at the sea to see if there was anything new with the receding tide and indeed there was. The Common or Arctic Terns that we had seen earlier were now joined by six Sandwich Terns. All of these Terns were now much nearer the waters edge so we could clearly distinguish that there were Sandwich as well as red billed Terns.

Bird Sightings : The Spinnies, Aberogwen, Tal-y-Bont