Rare raptor makes a flYing visit

Pallid Harrier (Filip Jarzyński)

The two rarest birds of the week made the briefest of appearances. An RSPB warden on The Skerries, the important seabird colony off northwest Anglesey, photographed a Pallid Harrier circling over the island last Friday. It is the second seen in North Wales, after one on the Dee estuary in 2017. A major rarity in Britain until 20 years ago, records have increased as its global distribution has shifted northwest, with one or two pairs breeding as close as The Netherlands. However, that probably disguises a huge decline in the Pallid Harrier’s eastern European and Central Asian strongholds, thought to result from cultivation of natural steppe grasslands for crops.

A Short-toed Lark at RSPB South Stack on Friday could not be relocated, but the site also produced a Ring Ouzel on Monday, bound for Scandinavia several weeks after Eryri birds arrived on their breeding sites. A late Fieldfare there is probably heading for the same destination, but a Snow Goose on nearby Tŵr Reservoir, a species kept in wildfowl collections, has perhaps not travelled quite so far.

Elsewhere, up to 40 Great Northern Divers and several Scaup are in Caernarfon Bay, pausing en route to Iceland, while a Pomarine Skua off Dinas Dinlle will be heading for Russia. Garganeys were at Connah’s Quay, RSPB Burton Mere Wetlands, RSPB Cors Ddyga and Llyn Llywenan, two late Waxwings at Eryrys, below Nercwys Mountain, and a Honey Buzzard flew up the Cefni Valley.

Scarborough birder Nick Addey, holidaying in Beaumaris, spotted a pair of Starlings nesting in the base of a gondola on the town’s Ferris Wheel, posting a message on social media site X, formerly Twitter. It will be a race against the clock for the Starlings to raise a family, as the “Beaumaris Eye” is only at the Anglesey resort until 4 June. Starlings incubate their eggs for around two weeks, and the chicks will fledge around 20 days – and many hundreds of revolutions - later. How do the parents know in which of the 24 carriages to serve food?

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