Bardsey's Wildlife

Friday, 27 March 2026

A return to being blasted with Westerly winds after yesterday's stillness with winds reaching F6 South Westerly. Visibility remained good with a bit of rain in the early morning before drying up and temperatures managed to reach 11 degree celsius with full blue skies.

The day was spent preparing the Observatory for the guests. Joel spent the afternoon scraping and repainting the toilets whilst Ezra finished up painting the stairways. Steve and Emma moved onto finalising the bedrooms in the North Side of the Observatory in the afternoon having spent most of the morning servicing the Rayburn with help from Gareth. This included bleeding through clean Oil, after some water from a dirty barrel had got mixed in the the oil that Connor pumped into the tanks the day before!

Raburn fire-box all cleaned and serviced © Steven Stansfield

Today we were informed by former Assistant warden, Ed Betteridge, that an Icelandic Merlin had been tracked to the island back in October and remained around Uwchmynydd and Bardsey until the present day. Despite our efforts, we couldn’t locate the bird and the only Merlin regularly being seen lacked the gps ‘backpack’ that would allow us to identify this bird. Likely for bird welfare reasons, the precise location data isn’t updated live so it was a job of heading to the most likely used sites but alas no luck. We’ll remain vigilant and hopefully be able to locate this bird which, if accepted, would be the first confirmed Icelandic Merlin Falco columbarius subaesalon not only for the island, but for Wales!

The initial journey from Iceland

winter movements of our Merlin

With the Westerlies a slightly better seabird day was to be expected. With a Fulmar, 27 Manx Shearwaters, 16 Gannets, three Cormorants, 16 Shags, a Razorbill and five Puffins being seen during a seawatch by Ezra off the North End in the late Afternoon. Seabirds totals across the island were slightly higher with a total of 36 Manx Shearwaters, 20 Gannets, five Cormorants and 28 Shags being seen.

Only one pair of Shelducks were seen today, on Henllwyn. Again five Mallards were seen across the island and the Gadwalls chose to spend the day on Pwllcain.

Only the immature male Sparrowhawk was seen around Cristin and three Peregrines were seen, a pair over the Mountain and the brute of a female down on the South End.

A Water Rail was heard calling in the Wetlands, at the base of the Greenlane, this is the first on the island this season. Elsewhere throughout the greater Wetlands, five Moorhen were recorded. Few waders were seen today with a couple of Redshank down on Henllwyn and the usual large numbers of Oystercatchers, today numbering 80.

61 Meadow Pipits were recorded across the island today with a couple of Rock Pipits down on the South End. Three Pied Wagtails were down on Solfach whilst three 'Alba' wagtails were recorded flying over several sites on the island.

Only one Robin was recorded today, along with six Dunnocks. Two male Blackbirds battled it out, singing at each other from Cristin and the Green Lane. Only four Stonechats were recorded today, with singles in several sites. This could be a sign that the females are starting to settle down as it approaches the breeding season. Down towards the South eight Wheatears were recorded, the majority being male.

Another rather poor day for warblers, six Chiffchaffs and two Blackcaps were seen. But a slight uptick in Goldcrests, with 12 seen around the North between Nant and Tŷ Nessa.

Again a Chaffinch was seen, this time at Tŷ Nessa but almost certainly the same bird seen at Nant Yesterday. A handful of other finches were recorded with one Siskin flying over the Wetlands, three Goldfinch and fourteen Linnets seen across the island.

During the biweekly low tide Seal count, 93 Grey Seals were recorded, with the majority being concentrated down on the beaches and South End.

Venus off the west side of the island © Steven Stansfield

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Click to see inside!

Edited by Mike Archer, Mark Grantham, Peter Howlett and Steve Stansfield and published by T & AD Poyser, this fabulous book describes how much has changed since the first edition of Bird Observatories in Britain and Ireland was published in 1976. There are detailed accounts of the history and work carried out at each of the 18 observatories, with personal accounts by wardens and staff of the excitement of discovering a rarity, watching thousands of migrants attracted to a lighthouse after dark, and the pleasure and experiences that working at some of the country’s most remote and beautiful locations can bring. Click the picture of the book to see inside or to buy your copy.

Migrants

Being sited on the main migration route of many species, Bardsey (or Ynys Enlli in Welsh) is a well-known site for migrant birds, turning up many scarcities and rarities, as well as large numbers of common migrants. The island’s list now stands on 326, after the recent addition of Citrine Wagtail in October 2012.

Although Bardsey’s reputation for rare birds may not quite match that of some observatories, it is almost certainly the best site in Wales for rarities. Among Bardsey’s rarer visitors are the first Summer Tanager (1957) and Yellow Warbler (1964) to have been recorded in Britain and Ireland, as well as American vagrants such American Bittern, Sora, Kildeer, Spotted Sandpiper, Grey-cheeked Thrush, American Robin, Song Sparrow, Dark-eyed Junco, Red-eyed Vireo, Black-and-white Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, Rose-breasted Grosbeak and Blackpoll Warbler. To add to this impressive list of rarities, Black-winged Stilt, Lesser Yellowlegs, Lanceolated Warbler, River Warbler, Western Orphean Warbler, Booted Warbler, Blyth’s Reed Warbler, Eyebrowed Thrush, Thrush Nightingale, Red-flanked Bluetail, Isabelline Wheatear, Black-eared Wheatear, Collared Flycatcher, Blyth’s Pipit, Pine Bunting, Rock Bunting, Yellow-breasted Bunting and White-throated Sparrow have all been recorded.

Besides the rarities, Bardsey regularly attracts large numbers of weary migrants during 'fall' conditions in Spring and Autumn, largely a consequence of the fully operational Bardsey Lighthouse. In 2011, for example, a single grounding of migrants resulted in over 1000 Willow Warblers making groundfall on the island in August. In the not-so-distant past, a single attraction of 40,000 Redwings occurred in late October at the end of the last century.

Breeding birds

Bardsey is home to some 26, 000 pairs of Manx Shearwaters, which can be heard on dark nights from mid-March to August. They breed in their excavated burrows, which are scattered all over the island. Chough is the most important species of conservation concern, with between four to eight pairs nesting around the coastal cliffs most years, and a wintering flock of up to 50 individuals. A pair of Peregrines breed on the island, and a 1-2 pair of Ravens also nest most years. There are several species which nest only occasionally, such as Sparrowhawk and Little Owl, along with Afro-Palearctic migrants like Sedge Warbler, Blackcap, Chiffchaff and Willow Warbler. Up to ten pairs of Stonechats can nest in the isolated gorse patches around the island, along with many Linnets and Meadow Pipits. Corncrakes were once a common breeder on the island, although since 1970 there have been no confirmed pairs nesting. In recent years the likes of Lapwing, Yellowhammer, House Sparrow and Starling have also all become extinct as breeding species. In contrast, Shelduck, Puffin, Long-eared Owl, Grasshopper Warbler and Goldcrest have been added to the breeding bird list since 1998.

Ringing

Ringing is a very important part of the observatory’s role on the island. Since 1953, the observatory has ringed over 315,00 birds of 198 species. The highest number ringed in a single year was 1988, with a total of 11, 301 birds ringed of 93 species. There have been many days in the observatory’s history when several hundred birds have been ringed in one day; these occasions have mostly involved breeding seabirds, although these numbers can also easily occur with migrant species.

Lepidoptera

A total of 561 species of moths have been recorded on the island. Bardsey is not an overly good location for scarce moths, although the existence of Thrift Clearwings (Nationally scarce) has been established on the Thrift plants around the coast in recent years, after first being recorded in the years 1980 and 1996. Migrant moths arrive in small numbers every year, for example the annual arrival of Hummingbird Hawkmoths in the autumn; rarer immigrants in the past have included Death’s Head Hawkmoths, Vestals, Crimson Speckled and Red-necked Footman.

In recent years, a greater emphasis has been placed on recording and identifying the so-called ‘micro-moths’, which has resulted in the finding of 41 new species for Bardsey since 2011. In 2012, the coastal subspecies of Eana penziana (E.p.colquhounana) was re-found on the island, which was the first time that this Nationally Scarce species had been recorded on Bardsey since 1966. Apotomis semifasciana is also amongst the scarcer species of micro-moths to inhibit the island (also Nationally Scarce).

Butterflies are present on the island in small numbers, with species such as Common Blue, Small Copper and Small Tortoise-shell being the most common. A scarcer breeding species is the Grayling, which can be found in small numbers on the top of the mountain. Migrant butterflies such as Painted Lady can arrive in their hundreds, although other migrants such as Clouded Yellow and Dark-green Fritillary are quite rare.

Bardsey's Wildlife

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Friday, 27 March 2026

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