Tag: cemlyn

Immaculate birds, constant activity and plenty of noise!

I might be a raptor nut but I love terns too. Wales is a bit of a “tern desert” and with one exception (little terns near Prestatyn) one must visit Anglesey to connect with them. Cemlyn Bay on the north coast is the Welsh tern H.Q. with its large sandwich tern colony, alongside smaller numbers of arctics and commons. On a good day one might see a roseate as well. I can confidently say that a visit to Cemlyn is one of the finest wildlife experiences in Wales. But your timing needs to be carefully judged.

The ideal time is just after the tern chicks have fledged because their parents then guide them to the shingle spit which divides the lagoon from the sea, away from the chaos of the nesting islands. But leave it too late and the whole damn lot of them will have left altogether! Last year I arrived on July 23rd to find that most had already gone, whereas in 2020, August 1st was just perfect.

This year I discovered that the North Wales Wildlife Trust helpfully posts updates on the progress of the colony on its website. It suggested that a visit sooner rather than later would be advisable. So I headed north late on July 12th. The following morning I was there bright and early for the full tern colony experience. Immaculate birds, constant activity, and plenty of noise! Despite nearly 50 years of birding experience I have never totally got to grips with the differences between arctic and common terns. Many birders refer to them as “comics” because they are so difficult to separate. However after this visit I think I’m getting there! Sandwich terns are comparatively easy, and I have so rarely come across roseates that identifying one would be a real adventure (but see this post…..).

Roseate tern (r.) with three sandwich terns. Note its long black bill and long-ish red legs..

As it happened I picked up my first roseate quite quickly. It was visible on and off on the near edge of the main nesting island during the morning, and around lunchtime there were two together. I was able to get a few (rather poor) photographs of them. One of the tern wardens arrived soon afterwards and I was able to point them out to him. How about that for confidence! But as he had been seeing them throughout the breeding season he wasn’t too excited. He told me that one pair had attempted to breed early on but had failed, while he was still hoping that another pair would soon appear from the denser vegetation on the island with a youngster.*

For some time prior to that I was in “spray and pray” (or point and hope) mode. In other words: point your camera at a bird in flight, press the shutter button and try to follow it. This seems to me to be rather a technical task more dependent on luck than anything else, and I find it rather unsatisfying.

Arctic tern …………probably………

What I found more challenging was to place the terns within the landscape to give them some kind of context. At low tide, during the middle of the day, many roosted on the beach or on rocky outcrops along the foreshore. One could thus place them within an unspoiled landscape, suggesting that all is well with the world, which is perfectly valid. Alternatively, shooting from a different angle, one could set them against the massive hulk of Wylfa nuclear power station , now disused, only a couple of miles away. The viewer can then make up their own mind about the state of the world.

With ……… or without ……..?

As I mentioned this was during the middle of the day when the sun was at its highest. This is never a good time to take photographs of anything in summer so one does one’s best to compensate for it at the processing stage. Some of the newer features in Lightroom are excellent for this – in particular the ease with which “objects” can be selected and processed individually without affecting the rest of the image. And “denoise” is excellent, although rather slow on my PC.

Another thing I noticed very clearly was how the apparent colour of the power station changed during the course of the day. Its colour scheme at breakfast time matches the colour of the lichen covered rocks on the foreshore very well, and it would be uncanny if this had not been part of its design. I included a photograph illustrating this in my book “Wales at Waters Edge”; I wonder if anyone noticed….? But by early afternoon the plant was naturally bathed in blue light and looked quite different. To put it more technically, the colour of sunlight is towards the blue end of the colour spectrum (“cooler”) during the middle of the day, while it is “warmer” earlier and later. This is well known among photographers but I have never known it being demonstrated so clearly as it was that day.

Arriving as early as July 13th was, in the event, quite a close shave. A note on Facebook from the tern wardens on the 18th said that most of the terns (95% of them) had already left the area. I wish them good luck on their travels and hope they make it back to Cemlyn next year.

*N.B. : The second pair also failed …..

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What a little hero!

Arctic tern - the Skerries
Arctic tern – the Skerries

There’s no doubt about it – terns are among my favourite birds. In Wales, the place to be for the tern-watcher is the Isle of Anglesey, and it was here that I headed late last week. There are a number of colonies on the island, and – with the exception of the little tern – all the British species can, with good fortune, be found there.  Common terns are present near Menai Bridge, and they are a delightful sight above the sheltered waters of the Straits between the two bridges. There a number of mixed colonies elsewhere. Perhaps the most well-known is at Cemlyn, on the north coast, where sandwich tern is in the majority together with common and arctics. This is also an ancestral breeding site of the very rare roseate tern, and very occasional birds may still be seen there, including – to my delight – last Friday, when I visited.   Not that I would have picked it out amongst the throng of other terns without the assistance of the Wildlife Trust wardens!

The tern island par excellence is/are the  Skerries, with its lighthouse and colony of several thousand arctic and common terns. For the last few years a roseate tern has paired with a common tern on the island as well and produced hybrid young. During spring and summer the colony is wardened by the RSPB, and it was thanks to them that I was able to visit the island on Friday evening on their regular supply vessel. Visiting a tern colony really is an experience. Arctic terns are stunningly beautiful little birds and can be exceptionally approachable. With their bright red beaks and legs a bird can recall a woman decked out in red lipstick and boots. But move one inch too close and that bird can become a tiny raging little monster, metaphorically spitting blood. They have no hesitation in striking a human intruder on the head so wearing a hat is a necessity.

On a previous visit in June 2010 I found that a telephoto lens was unnecessary as the birds were so close. I stuck to my standard zoom, and told myself at first to be selective when pressing the shutter; still thinking ‘film’ I suppose. After a while I remembered that I had just one hour on the island and how desperate it would be to get back to the mainland with nothing, so I relaxed a little. I got some great images of angry terns in flight at the wide-angle end of the zoom; and one of these featured in the book and exhibition Wales at Waters Edge.

On last week’s visit conditions were slightly different. Weather conditions were excellent but much of the closest section of the colony was in the shadow of the lighthouse. It was about two weeks earlier than my previous visit and the birds seemed slightly less territorial than I remembered. Every few minutes, it seemed, the whole colony rose up together and swept across the island before quickly returning.  I stuck the Tamron long zoom on my 5d3 and concentrated on close-ups of individual birds, and – despite  the incredible experience of being there – my photographic efforts felt strangely uninspired. The warden asked us all if we could be ready to leave in five minutes, so I swapped lenses and packed my gear away. Turning around,  I saw a perfectly-lit bird perched on a rock with a sand-eel in its beak – a cracking image if only I had seen it earlier! Unless…………..

To my surprise it continued to pose for me as I re-fitted the long zoom and took a few images. What a little hero!