First for Britain draws the crowds

Western Reef Heron (John Riley)

Caernarfon residents woke on Sunday to an array of expensive optical equipment lined along the harbour wall. Britain’s first Western Reef Heron has attracted birders from across the country since it was found on Saturday morning on the nearby Foryd. With bluish-grey feathers, including wispy plumes on its body as well as several long feathers from its crown, this is a dark-morph individual, substantially easier to distinguish from white-morph birds that can easily be overlooked as Little Egrets. It has spent much of its time feeding on the muddy shores of the tidal bay, but also comes to the Seiont estuary, especially at high tide when it perches in trees that line the western bank.

The Western Reef Heron originates in West Africa, so most birders’ have only limited experience of the species, most usually in The Gambia, but like most herons, they can travel widely. The number of records has increased in southern Europe and, since the 1980s some have crossed the Atlantic, but the Caernarfon bird is one of, if not the, northernmost ever. The enormity of the find, by Simon Hugheston-Roberts who also found Wales’ first Bufflehead at the same site last December, is illustrated by the fact that of the 636 species on the British List, only five have their first records in North Wales – although a White Tern at Llanberis last year awaits confirmation as a sixth.

One visiting birder found a Blue-headed Wagtail on Sunday along the coastal road west of Caernarfon. Elsewhere, a female Woodchat Shrike has entered its second week at RSPB South Stack, feeding on the plentiful supply of insects on the reserve’s heathland. A Black Redstart was reported below the A55 at Penmaenmawr and up to 15 Mediterranean Gulls have been on Porthmadog’s Llyn Bach.

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