LLANDDULAS
Easy access from the North Wales Expressway to the shore
Liverpool Bay, throughout the winter months, plays host to some 300,000 Common Scoters, making it their main wintering site in Great Britain. At times more than half this number are located in the Welsh section, extending eastwards from the Dee Estuary to the coast of Anglesey, at the centre of which are the waters off Llanddulas. The attraction to them is the huge densities of molluscs on which the Common Scoters feed (Blue Mussel, Razor Clam, and, in the UK since 1979, Atlantic Jack-knife Clam).
DAVID SAUNDERS
WHERE TO WATCH
1 The shingle ridge has been well described as the ‘the most regular site for Snow Bunting in North Wales’, where in the past up to 40 wintered. Now, as elsewhere in Wales, there has been no double figure count since 2013, so the sight of this visitor from Iceland becomes more special as each winter passes. Oystercatcher, Curlew and Turnstone frequent the shore.
2 Roosting gulls are always worth careful attention, the first record for the county of the Mediterranean Gull being in 1971, now they are regular visitors from continental Europe. Glaucous, Iceland, Little and Yellow-legged Gulls have also been recorded.
3 Find a comfortable spot and search the offshore waters where flocks, large and small of Common Scoter should be feeding, others in tight groups fly past, a wonderful spectacle. With patience and a trifle good fortune maybe you’ll add Velvet Scoter to the days’ list, and what price a Surf Scoter? Others present should include Red-breasted Merganser, Great Crested Grebe and Cormorant.
4 Fulmars have long occupied these quarry cliffs, up to 60 pairs in the past but now less than 20, the only colony in Denbighshire, gliding majestically to and fro above the town and busy roadways to reach their nest ledges from January until September.