Duck And Cover

An air of quiet contentment hung over Llanddulas at lunchtime. Huge rafts of scoters bobbed and dozed on the still water whilst the majority of Conwy County Council’s refuse collection department looked like kings as they sat feet on dashboard - well sated after an excellent pie and chips - inspecting the scantily-clad blurt in the Daily Star.

I had nipped over to try and winkle-out a Velvet Scoter from the rank and file Commons. Unfortunately the majority of the birds were too far from shore on an ebbing tide for me to accurately nail down a Velvet, so I was reliant upon picking one up in flight from the telltale white secondaries.

This was problematic because most birds were quite happy to loaf on the surface and it was not until something spooked them that they all took to the air and despite having a good look at the majority of the four thousand or so birds, I couldn’t flipping find one!

In addition to the masses of scoters, there was an assortment of the usual inshore bric-a-bric including good numbers of Great Cresties and Red-breasted Mergansers, plus singles of Red-throated Diver and a close-in flying drake Goldeneye.

After the rain began to pour and the dustcart boys had finished their final Lambert and Butler I decided to call it a day and head back to Chester.

Listening to the radio on the A55 I heard that the BA cabin crew had made the suicidal decision to go on strike. One industry expert said that BA is currently known by the acronym ABBA – Anybody But British Airways, following on a long tradition of cruel airline nicknames such as:

TWA – Try Walking Across
BOAC – Better Off on A Camel
CAAC – Crashes Anywhere Across China

Still, if the trolley-dollys are reluctant to work for less than thirty large ones, there will always be the bins.

Until later.