Brian's birding blog: Western Reef Heron

Saturday, 13 June 2026

Western Reef Heron

Since the Western Reef Heron was found up in north Wales last weekend I've been watching news and admiring peoples ability to drop everything and go to see it. For me time is rarely on my side with these things unless they're close enough for a dash that still allows me to fulfil my family commitments. I've found myself less ready to put in the hard miles required for some of the distant twitches and of course there's also an equation to be made over cost too. All that said and I still very much wanted to see the Reef Heron and with Friday free I told the Jims I was thinking of making the trip and they were willing and even committed to stopping overnight if two days were required.

Setting off at 2am we covered the 282 miles with just a quick coffee stop on the way and arrived at Foryd Bay for 7am. On arrival at the hide we found only familiar faces. All that way from home and I bump into Essex birders, Mike, Steve, John and John along with Chris from Herts and Shaun from Staines plus a couple of Herts/Essex guys who's names I didn't know. News was that the bird was present at 5.30am when they arrived but the tide had pushed it off and it hadn't been seen for over an hour. We set about checking the area and within moments Jim had found the bird out to the far east corner from the hide. We had our lifer! The bird was first found according to a face-book post in Pembrokeshire on 13th May and appeared next at Foryd bay on 5th June. It's the first record of this species for Britain and as such has caused quite a twitch throughout the week. We enjoyed the bird and the company for a couple of hours before heading off to make the most of the miles we'd put in to get to the area.

South Stack was just 45 minutes drive away so we decided on that as our next target hoping to get Dad some much wanted coastal ticks. On arrival we had two Chough before we'd even got out of the car and then walked down to the Lighthouse where I thought it a good idea to walk down the steps to the bottom of the cliff not thinking about the climb back up. Here we picked up thousands of Guillemot, hundreds of Razorbill, Kittiwakes, Gannet and Fulmar. Puffin were hard work but we found two and three Shag. Four Raven flew around the Lighthouse calling and I picked up a few Manx Shearwater out in the bay. From South Stack we headed a bit further round the coast to Holyhead Fish Quay in search of Black Guillemot which we quickly found. Our last venue of the trip would be Cemlyn which is home to the largest Sandwich Tern colony in Wales. Among the Sarnies we found a few Common and a few Arctic Terns along with five Med Gulls. Ringed Plover, Dunlin and Oystercatcher made up the best of the rest. Great place to visit. From here we headed for home arriving back at about 9pm after what was a good days birding.