A warm, sunny spring morning at RSPB Conway at high tide.
Great crested grebes
Canada geese
Shelduck
Coot
Moorhen
Lesser black backed gull
Oyster catchers
Greenfinch
Chiffchaff
Sparrowhawk
Redshank
Buzzards
Tufty duck
Little egret
Grey heron
Mute Swan
Gadwall
Mallard
Blackbird
Robin
Chaffinch
Goldfinch
Dunnock
Reed bunting
Red breasted merganser
Wigeon
Teal
Barnacle goose
Sand marten
Bullfinch
Chaffinch
Blue tit
And last, but by no means least, a little grebe
Distance: 16 miles
Ascent: 600m
Weather: blue skies and sunshine
The world's smallest yellow box junction
Jackdaws, buzzards, kestrel, bunnies, skylarks, pippets, goats, small green bird, guillemots, celandine, forgot me not.
Killer seagulls 1
Slightly aggressive gorsebush 1
Chuffing choughs 0
A visit to Llandudno for the weekend because we'd never been before, I wanted to look for choughs, and the weather forecast was good.
We needn't have worried about parking, there was plenty of on street spaces when we arrived at about 10am. We walked up the zigzag path to the summit of Great Orme, with beautiful views across the bay to Conway and the hills behind, to the visitor centre, where a leaflet was acquired. The nature trail route led us down and around to the toll road, above fine turreted houses, cliff edges complete with goats, and the site of a shipwreck.
Then we headed up over the headland, over grassy paths with limestone rocks, towards an old churchyard and along to the ski slope and down through a park into Llandudno. We walked out to the end of the pier and back, then along the promenade, where I was mugged by a massive seagull. Once I was patched up, we moved along to eat our lunch in a more stealthy manner further along (hoping that the family eating their McDonald's would draw their attention away from us.) Thankfully no more bits of fingers were lost (that we know of...)
We carried on the pavement up to Little Orme, a short steep walk up to the trig point and along the cliff top where there were lots of jackdaws and dog walkers.
We came back along a less busy road and footpath that led back to the promenade, then following the Alice in Wonderland statues across town and back to the car.
Distance: about 16 miles
Ascent: 350m
Weather: sunny, turning cloudier
Hungee canada geese, box for an electric meat grinder, coal tit, grey wagtails, moorhens in trees, squirrels, ferocious beast, mallards, lots o'sparrows, wren
We set off for a walk, finding ourselves on the tram into Manchester from Shaw, then visiting the memorial to Alan Turing in Sackville Gardens, before walking home via the Rochdale canal and Tandle Hill.
There were a lot of canada geese on the canal, when we stopped to eat our sandwiches they were most interested.
It was starting to rain as we arrived home.
