Finding a calm and dry weather window to make the December visit to my BTO Winter Bird Survey above Conwy has been a challenge, but it was wonderful to hear the chatty, bubbling subsong of Redwings when I did. You may be familiar with the high-pitched “tseep” calls made by these thrushes as they migrate at night, but fewer hear the song associated with their taiga breeding habitat in the Arctic. Friday’s sunshine prompted some enthusiasm for next spring. Afterwards, a scan of Conwy Bay revealed almost 250 Red-throated Divers, also seeking refuge from northern ice, and many dozens of Razorbills, unusual here in midwinter.

Other winter refugees included seven Slavonian Grebes and six Great Northern Divers in Beddmanarch Bay and Inland Sea, a Long-tailed Duck at Llyn Penrhyn, at least one Surf Scoter off Old Colwyn and several Velvet Scoters off Pensarn. A Black Redstart is at Point Lynas and a Scaup in Foryd Bay, while a Firecrest foraged at RSPB Conwy and a Red-necked Grebe in Holyhead harbour at the weekend.

Meanwhile, Swifts that scream over our villages in ever-diminishing numbers feed somewhere high over central African rainforests. Swift supporters in Wales reacted angrily to Welsh Government’s rejection of a proposal to require new buildings to incorporate hollow “Swift brick” nest sites, backed by North Wales Wildlife Trust and RSPB Cymru among others. Senedd members pushed again for action during the Committee stage of new Welsh environmental legislation last week, as MSPs voted in favour of mandatory legislation in Scotland.
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To celebrate the first anniversary of Cudyll Cymru, BTO Cymru’s raptor monitoring initiative is inviting people to its inaugural Wales Raptor Convention at Aberystwyth on 31 January. Topics include plans for the reintroduction of White -tailed Eagle, raptor monitoring in the uplands, a workshop on identification of birds of prey and a talk by the National Wildlife Crime Unit. Tickets are just £10, available from the BTO website.

As the Daily Post is not published on Christmas Day, this is the last BirdNotes until the New Year, so my opportunity to thank readers for their comments, and especially the photographers who have kindly let me use their images during 2025. I wish you all a peaceful and enjoyable break if you have one, and good birding in 2026.

A colour-ringed Purple Sandpiper at Cemlyn on Sunday is the same one seen in the Anglesey bay last winter, having been ringed in June 2024 at Nidingens bird observatory, an island off southwest Sweden. Only a handful of ringed Purple Sandpipers have moved between Sweden and Britain, and this is the first to Wales. It almost certainly spent the intervening summers in Svalbard, the Norwegian island archipelago north of the Arctic Circle, since that is where most Purple Sandpipers ringed at Nidingens go to breed.

Ringing provides valuable information on breeding success, survival rates and other data to inform conservation, but movements are the most immediately fascinating. The latest Ringing Report from the British Trust for Ornithology, to be published in the forthcoming 2024 Welsh Bird Report, includes a Dunlin that winters in the Menai Strait which was recaught by a ringer in Estonia in August; a Sandwich Tern chick ringed at Cemlyn that was found sick at a Congolese wetland later that autumn; and a Pied Flycatcher ringed as a chick in Denbighshire’s Ceiriog Valley in 2015 that was bred in a wood south of Welshpool in 2024, making it one of the oldest British Pied Flycatchers on record. The report’s most bizarre record is a Red Kite from Ceredigion, ringed as a chick in 1998, whose legs were displayed in a Sussex antique shop last year labelled as a racing pigeon… What story lies behind this?

Ringers train for years to ensure the birds’ welfare is paramount, but we can all contribute to the collected knowledge by reporting colour-ringed birds and checking dead birds for leg rings, mindful of current advice to avoid handling birds with bare skin.

With the autumn pulse of migration over, much of what is seen in North Wales over coming months will depend on weather conditions across northern Europe. A brief stop at Llyn Trawsfynydd en route to the Welsh Ornithological Society (WOS) annual conference was my first encounter this winter with large numbers of Fieldfares, while a couple of Scaup fed on the reservoir among similar but smaller Tufted Ducks. Both signs of the year turning.

Scarce visitors elsewhere included Curlew Sandpiper and Spotted Redshank at RSPB Conwy, a Spoonbill up the Conwy estuary and Snow Bunting on the Great Orme. Autumn’s Yellow-browed Warbler passage dribbled to an end with singles near Pwllheli and, unusually, inland at Betws-y-coed. Evidence of proper winter came with the first half dozen Purple Sandpipers at Rhos Point, back from a summer in western Greenland. From the same area came small groups of White-fronted Geese flying past Pen Llŷn and Bardsey, heading for the Dyfi estuary or the Irish Republic. A paper in the journal British Birds reports the global population of Greenland White-fronted Geese has fallen 58% in 25 years, with repeated spring snowfall the most plausible explanation of breeding failure. The problem in their northern breeding areas is localised cooling, a vivid example of the challenge posed to migratory birds of the differential chaos of a changing climate.

Weekend storms brought a handful of Pomarine Skuas and Little Gulls to our coasts, Leach’s Petrel past Rhos Point and Sooty Shearwaters off Bardsey, Porth Ysgaden and the Great Orme. While many hundreds of Great and Cory’s Shearwaters passed Pembrokeshire, one of each past Tonfanau were the sole reports in North Wales. Late Sandwich and Arctic Terns were seen from watchpoints around Anglesey with a Common Tern off Rhos Point; a Long-tailed Duck is on Shotwick Lake.

Bardsey Bird Observatory staff are kept busy in October with daily census and ringing effort. Large numbers of birds migrating over the island last week included over 1000 Chaffinches counted on one day. A recent highlight was Little Bunting, a visitor from northeast Europe that should have been well on its way to winter in southern China. Of the 39 accepted Welsh records, 16 were from Bardsey.

But rarity is a matter of perspective. Bardsey’s 17th Little Bunting makes it far more common than the island’s fourth Cetti’s Warbler that also landed last week. The explosive call of Cetti’s Warbler is familiar to birders visiting wetlands on the coastal fringes of North Wales, although it is a hard bird to see. The chestnut-coloured bush-warbler is unique in Europe, the other three members of the family all live in south or east Asia. Although the first Welsh record was also on Bardsey, in October 1973, since Cetti’s Warblers don’t migrate, it took more than 25 years for the breeding population to spread from Kent to Anglesey, one wetland at a time. It’s a bird taking advantage of habitat restoration and the warming climate; on holiday in Brittany, I noticed they are now common away from water. Will that be the case here in a few decades?

Other highlights on Ynys Enlli/Bardsey were Siberian Chiffchaff, Lapland Bunting and several Yellow-browed Warblers, with others across the water near Uwchmynydd and at Holyhead’s Breakwater Country Park. Bird of the week on Anglesey was a showy White-rumped Sandpiper at Malltraeth Cob, while a Hoopoe was seen at Llanfachraeth and a late Arctic Tern at Porth Cwyfan.

On the mainland, a Dartford Warbler reported at Sealand on Monday is the first Flintshire record for decades; a Glossy Ibis fed in fields near Aber Ogwen and a possible Central Asian Lesser Whitethroat foraged in bushes at Porth Meudwy.

Finally, I was honoured to be awarded the British Trust for Ornithology’s Dilys Breese Medal at a ceremony in London last week for, among other things, communicating the world of birds and the work of the BTO, including through the Daily Post BirdNotes column over the last 17 years. More information in this post.