"Quiet weekend"

Having seen most of the good local birds recently myself and Peter met up down at Aberavon Beach on Saturday morning to have a look for the 1stW Iceland Gull found by fellow "Maestegi" Colin Gittins last Tuesday which showed up until Friday but was nowhere to be seen yesterday,bloomin' typical ! We retreated up to the town centre in the hope of catching up with the Goosanders wintering on the River Afan,the male showed briefly but the two females that I had photographed on a previous visit were conspicuous by their absence. We called it a day at 11.00am as I had family business to attend to. With no paticular plans for Sunday I decided to stay local and a browse around Dunraven failed to uncover a Black Redstart although a Common Kestrel hunting over the embankment at the side of the main track gave good if brief views.

On getting back to the car park a Stonechat doing a good impression of a Black Redstart flitted around on the roof of the gatehouse.

I decided to finish off at Ogmore-by-Sea and clambered about on the rocks for an hour where a small group of Turnstones with a single Purple Sandpiper gave good views in nice light despite the attendance of several fishermen and loads of "numpties" with their kids and dogs.

A brief visit to Portobello whilst passing failed to unearth any "white wings" in the gull flocks although one of a small group of three Common Redshanks posed well and enabled me to get a few shots.

I briefly scanned an empty Watermill flood from the car before heading off home to settle down in front of the tele for a couple of hours to watch Swansea win an absolute thriller against Arsenal,"come on you Swans,come on you Swans" !! What a result !!!........