Storm Amy adds to Welsh seabird autumn

Leach's Petrel (Steve Culley)

Weekend storms brought passage seabirds to North Wales, with hardy birders at storm-lashed watchpoints to see skuas, shearwaters and petrels perfectly at home in these conditions. Sabine’s Gulls were seen from several locations, adding to the record year for sightings of this high-Arctic gull. Leach’s Petrels, pushed into the mouth of the Mersey, made their way west after the storm passed, seen from Rhos Point, Anglesey and Bardsey, with several Long-tailed Skuas and 22 Grey Phalaropes in one day among the suite of seabirds recorded by Bird Observatory staff.

A Wryneck was a great find on the Great Orme’s west side on Monday and a Turtle Dove was photographed in Cemaes Bay. Both species were also on Bardsey last week. A Hoopoe landed in a birders’ garden at Burwen, near Amlwch, on Monday, presumably one reported at Bull Bay recently. Two Slavonian Grebes are off Aber Ogwen, where a Glossy Ibis stalked among the waders and gulls; another Glossy Ibis was behind Porthmadog football club on Monday.

As Storm Amy arrived from the west, a few Redwings progressed from the east, crossing the North Sea. Step outside on a clear night this week and you should hear the high-pitched ‘tseep’ of the thrush vanguard using the full moon to head southwest. From the same direction, the first Yellow-browed Warblers were at Holyhead and Bardsey last week and Whooper Swans have crossed our shoreline from Iceland in recent days too.

The British Trust for Ornithology has announced that it will organise a Bird Atlas over four years from autumn 2027. It will be the fourth Britain & Ireland atlas of breeding birds and the third undertaken in winter, a 20-year stocktake of birds in every 10-kilometre square. I love ‘atlasing’ as it takes me into places I might never visit, looking and listening for all the birds in villages and towns, woodland and cropped land, coast and mountain. There is much to organise and success will need involvement from everyone able to identify birds. For the first time, the BTO will partner with the Welsh Ornithological Society to help recruit and train volunteers.