Whiteford Point - Expect the unexpected - 16/01/2016

A hardcore 12 of us made it to the day of the trip, but after a nice early start from Coryton Asda,disaster nearly de-railed the staff trip to Whiteford this morning, when Ai-lin's Berlingo unfortunately met with an untimely breakdown problem just before Pencoed. A quick hour wait in the frost while the AA turned up meant that the car had to be taken to the dealership, which meant that Ai-lin had to tap out, but the rest of us re-jigged the car arrangements and the trip was back on. 

A big flock of lapwing and golden plover in the fields near to Whiteford was the first spectacle. After arriving it was soon obvious that it was a great location, with conifer plantation, saltmarsh, coastline, and dune systems and we were soon racking them up. 

En route we flushed a few jack snipe, my first lifer of the day, along with lots of common snipe. There were also lots of brent, eider, teal, redshank, to name but a few.  

Jack snipe - honest! 

We met up with the early arriver's out at the point, and I was shocked just how much there was to see, not just in the sense of species variety, but also in the sense of sheer numbers. There were several great northern divers,  and a distant Slav grebe finally came down the channel giving some decent views. 

Along the shore towards the lighthouse we stopped again to watch the divers, one catching a crab, and more flocks of eiders, the males throwing back their heads in display. 

Next target was snow buntings! And we were off en route to where they were seen last. A quick flurry of movement out of the corner of my eye, and they were unmistakable. A male and a female scrambling through the high tide debris.

After Whiteford we went to Llanrhidian where Dan had us straight on to ring tailed hen harriers, followed by Geth's Great white egrets and a Merlin! and then swiftly on to shorties. The quartering shorties and hen harriers even clashed on a couple of occasions. With the barn owl a no-show we called it a day, and went to the Greyhound pub for a few beers and a some good pub grub.

Top day.