Our last day in Wales . . .

Sunrise over the Malltraeth River

As I had never been to North Wales or Anglesey before I was given the choice of where to go on our last day. I opted for Snowdonia in the hope of ring ouzel and twite - you can probably guess already that it was the wrong decision for that count. However we couldn't have had a nicer last day. The weather was bright and sunny and although a mist hung over the woods early in the morning, the sun soon burned off the worst of it and the mountains started to appear.

Red Squirrel at local takeaway

As we passed local woods we stopped to look for red squirrel - as we had done twice previously - on this occasion however we were met by one on a feeder right in front of the car.   It went behind the tree when it heard us approach, but using the car as a hide and staying quiet it was soon tempted back to the seeds.    We watched for a while, the gorgeous fragile looking squirrel watchful but enjoying the takeaway.   When a dog walker came past it just moved up the tree for a while and then cautiously moved back down again.   Fantastic.

We decided to take a similar route to that earlier in the week, along the farm tracks parallel to the A5 up through the Llanberis pass and into the pastures.

Newborn lamb

I will admit now that we added not one new bird for the trip, but we had a lovely day.     We saw a new born lamb take it's first steps and attempt its first suckling - not altogether successful as the mother was more concerned with cleaning up her young offspring.  

We stopped several times but apart from some lovely pied wagtails, a white wagtail, several wheatear and meadow pipits there was little to distract us. 

Snowdonian fields

Our picnic lunch was taken in yet another beautiful setting with trees all around us and birds singing.   Blue and great tit were most numerous, with robin and wren joining in.   A goshawk - our second of the trip flew along the tree tops and gave us time to grab our bins and watch it's distinctive flight.  Having not seen that many of them I was delighted to be able to actually watch one for a while rather than grab a quick snatch of it disappearing along a ride between trees!  

Wood Anemone

A quick comfort stop at Castle Curig where we also watched dipper on the local stream, had treecreeper and nuthatch in the trees, and it was time to move off to one last site where lesser spotted woodpecker had previously been known to breed.   We walked in dappled shade as the trees were still leafless, great spot called, blue tit and great tit were all around us.   Wren and dunnock sang, and a blackbird shot away from us as we continued uphill.   Wood anemone, celandine and early violet were delicate spots of colour in the sun.   Moss and lichens covered the wood in this ancient forest and some trees even had ferns nestling in their branches.

So, all too soon, it was time to make our way back taking hundreds of photographs (me) and thousands of memories with us.

New friends made, and thanks to their generosity lots of new sights and experiences for me.

Thanks to one and all - you know who you are. x

p.s. on the journey back we saw 45 red kite and about a dozen buzzard - a far better count