A Pied Flycatcher was a nice find for me at Halsey's Farm on Friday before we left for Pembrokeshire, a welcome year tick for "a right place-right time" species. At Pagham Beach there were a couple each of Painted Lady and Clouded Yellow, the latter a surprisingly late year tick given the influx this year..no Long-tailed Blues though perhaps because the Everlasting Pea is on it's last legs due to the drought.
In Pembrokeshire the first bird I found as we got out of the car was bizarrely another Pied Flycatcher and later on we had a couple of Clouded Yellows..deja vu indeed! Rock Pipits a plenty at Marlowe and two cronking Ravens gave a marvellous low flyover, nice lot of Banded Agate on the beach too.
A boat trip to Grassholm was fun and we managed to tick off Minke Whale and Common Dolphin, also plenty of Manx Shearwaters out there, a good mix of adult & juvenile Kittiwakes and of course thousands of Gannets now fully recovered from avian flu.
Fishing for mini species has been hard going due to the shear number of people mooching around the jetties but we did manage a good haul of Sand Smelt on the size 16 lures as well as a decent mix of crab sp. and a bucket full of Netted Dog Whelks
