Believe it or not, that is actually a juv White Winged Black Tern!Another very long day appeared out of nowhere when I decided to twitch the WWBTern at Inner Marsh Farm. Originally I had planned to get up at 6.45 and get the 7.12 train to Neston, Wirral and then get either a bus or taxi to the reserve. The line from Wrexham-Wirral was not in use so a replacement bus service would take me to Neston from Shotton. I went out the night before with friends and lets just say I had an incident with a 'quantity' of alcohol. I woke up in time for the 7.12 train, but was in no way able to make the changes needed and the effort to get there. As a result, I went back to sleep and decided that I would wait for it to appear and then casually go for early afternoon.
Getting the 12.02 train from Bangor, I changed at Llandudno jn and got off at Shotton. I annoyingly missed the connection bus by about 5 seconds so I made the silly decision to walk the distance to the town of Burton (closest to Inner Marsh Farm)...this proved very stupid as I had no idea where I was going, so it took approx 3 hours to get to the reserve where the juv White Winged Black Tern showed very nicely flying back and forth in front of the hide. For someone that has not digiscoped in a while, you can see by the photo attached, that I found digiscoping a flying tern rather difficult (and I used to enjoy photographing terns!)
Also present on the reserve were 2 Curlew Sandpiper, 1 Little Stint and 4 Whooper Swans which were lovely to see again!
A nice gentlemen called Chris gave me a lift to Neston where I was able to catch a bus back to Shotton, (even if I had to wait an hour and a half at Neston in fading light.
Originally I planned to be out from 12.00-16.00 when I set out from Bangor Station. This turned into 12.00-20.30!
Overall, it was a very stressful twitch, but the bird itself was worth it even if my visit was brief. I ended the trip on 209 for the year and 269 for life.
Getting the 12.02 train from Bangor, I changed at Llandudno jn and got off at Shotton. I annoyingly missed the connection bus by about 5 seconds so I made the silly decision to walk the distance to the town of Burton (closest to Inner Marsh Farm)...this proved very stupid as I had no idea where I was going, so it took approx 3 hours to get to the reserve where the juv White Winged Black Tern showed very nicely flying back and forth in front of the hide. For someone that has not digiscoped in a while, you can see by the photo attached, that I found digiscoping a flying tern rather difficult (and I used to enjoy photographing terns!)
Also present on the reserve were 2 Curlew Sandpiper, 1 Little Stint and 4 Whooper Swans which were lovely to see again!
A nice gentlemen called Chris gave me a lift to Neston where I was able to catch a bus back to Shotton, (even if I had to wait an hour and a half at Neston in fading light.
Originally I planned to be out from 12.00-16.00 when I set out from Bangor Station. This turned into 12.00-20.30!
Overall, it was a very stressful twitch, but the bird itself was worth it even if my visit was brief. I ended the trip on 209 for the year and 269 for life.
3 comments:
It'll all end in tears but well done on another good twitch Zac.
You're beginning to knock off all those rarities, when you're gonna get 400 then?
haha I think i'm a while away from reaching 300 let alone 400! After the Autumn rush, I probably won't be getting too many lifers under my belt!
Zac
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