Club-tailed Dragonfly and a frustrating Bee-eater

Our first stop today was the River Dee at Holt, to search for Club-tailed Dragonfly. This is a well known site for the species, but I was a little worried that they may already have emerged and dispersed. However, we were lucky, and saw at least 5 individuals flying over the river, and even found one resting on a leaf just begging to be photographed! Apart from a single Azure Damselfly, the only other dragonfly of note was our old friend the Banded Demoiselle which was present in reasonable numbers.

Club-tailed Dragonfly (left) and Banded Demoiselle (right)

Then we left Holt and headed for Anglesey, because we had just received news of a Bee-eater near Cemlyn Bay, which apparently was showing well. The weather was dreadful on the way, really heavy rain, but in an odd kind of way this raised our spirits, because it surely meant that the bird would not move on. Unfortunately as we neared cemlyn, the rain stopped, the cloud broke and the sun came out, and guess what, the bird was gone. We had missed it by 30 minutes!

We hung around for a bit, and then suddenly we heard it! It was flying overhead! But we couldn't see it. Twenty birders searching the sky, but even though it called several times, none of us could see it. In the end we gave up and went to view the tern colony, and managed to pick out Arctic, Common and Sandwich Terns.

Navelwort at Hen Felin, Cemlyn Bay.

Guillemots and Razorbills at South Stack.

Not wanting to waste our day on Anglesey, we headed to South Stack and saw the usual Guillemots, Razorbills, Puffins and Choughs, as well as Black Guillemot in Holyhead harbour. So in the the end not a bad day.