A trip to Wales

On Wednesday 30th June, a walk along Cymisfael stream revealed a Dipper flying right down the stream from one of the bridges. A female Blackcap also seen. On Thursday 1st July, a walk up to the high point of Marloes peninsula revealed 2 fine Chough calling from the fields over to the left but they flew over to the cliffs and out of sight. On the journey over to Skomer on the Dale Princess, Jim, the boatman used some food to entice an adult Herring Gull onto the stern of the boat, it then flew up towards me and Jim said put your arm out and incredibly it settled on my arm! My thanks to Nathalie M for sending me this pic (who was sitting beside on the boat!) It was also really heartening to hear from Jim and the wardens on the islands that the islands were hosting a record total of 35,000+ Puffins the most numbers in living memory and well up on the 27,000+ on their in 2017. On the island proper, we climbed up the 86 steps seeing 4 Razorbills and 2 chocolate brown Guillemots seen. After the talk by the Visitor's Officer I was allowed to go down half the steps and photo the Razorbills albeit in poor cloudy light. It was instantly apparent that it was a record breaking sason for Puffins with 35,000 estimated on the island and they were everywhere in suitable cliff habitat, I took a stroll to the Wick, on the way just before the farm I saw a singing Meadow Pipit, but with my "eye on the prize" I carried on, approaching The Wick, 2 dead manx Shearwaters seen just by the side of the path, and then "Keeyah" 6 acrobatic Chough were wheeling about in the sky. At the Wick itself there were a lot of Puffins sitting around and many flying in with sand eels jammed into their colourful bills, we were mindful of getting out of the way so they could run across and go into their hole to feed the youngster. The wind was blowing sand about so I moved a little. Scanning the cliff, I saw a crack where I saw up to 7 Fulmars nesting. Some of the Puffins with sand eels flew around and then landed directly by their nesting hole. Walking around, I saw a Mistle Thrush on a hill. Looked at the marshy area for SEOs briefly, but the finally came out and I raced back to the Puffin colony near where we had to catch the boat back and fortunately several Puffins came in with Sand Eels crammed into tehir beaks and using the 500mm lens was able to get a few decent shots. I was the last one back on the boat and we had an uneventful trip back.