The long summer of Gannet parenting

Gannets on Ynys Badrig (James Waggitt)

After the tragedy of bird ‘flu in several of Wales’ seabird colonies last year, it has been a far more successful breeding season, illustrated by gatherings of young terns and gulls. Several fluffy white Gannet chicks occupied nests on Ynys Badrig, off the north Anglesey coast, on Sunday. The thousands of Guillemots have already left their ledges, and just a few young gulls and Cormorants remain to leave, close to fledging. It will be well into September before the young Gannets are ready to fly from this, only the second Welsh gannetry in recorded history.

There were few unusual visitors in North Wales last week: a Black Redstart on Bardsey, Cattle Egret at RSPB Cors Ddyga, Spotted Redshanks at Connah’s Quay nature reserve and a Marsh Harrier over the Great Orme. The first Pink-footed Goose of autumn is on the Dee estuary, but surely it summered somewhere closer than Iceland?

More common birds are clearly moving through, or out. There were double-figure counts of Common Sandpipers at Rhos Point and in the Menai Strait at the weekend, and the rising tide flushed a couple of Snipe from saltmarsh as I walked the Conwy estuary. A passage of Swallows over my village this morning headed southwest with haste, not local breeders feeding. A few days previously, a swirling group of more than a dozen Swifts screamed over the rooftops and gained height, beyond my eyesight. I suspect they’ll already be over France by now.

Cuckoos are even farther head, as they didn’t have to hang around to feed the kids. Five being satellite-tracked by the British Trust for Ornithology have already crossed the Sahara Desert, three on a western coastal route and the others heading out through Italy and now close to the Central African Republic where they’ll spend the winter.