Windy Patching - Bangor Harbour/Bangor Mountain - 10th October 2013

 Migrant(?) Great-spotted Woodpecker on burnt Gorse on Bangor Mountain

 1 of 5 migrant 1st winter Common Gulls

 Very showy Guillemot 'wrecked' in Bangor Harbour.

I've been patching Bangor Harbour a lot this week and I had quite high expectations today with such strong wind. I hoped for some decent migration, so did some vis-mig on Bangor Mountain first thing. I managed single Brambling and Redwing, plus a trickle of Chaffinch and Siskin. Other than that, it was surprisingly quiet.
After lunch I decided to cover Bangor Harbour as much as I could with the hope of finding something decent. There was an obvious small gull migration, with an estimated 650+ Black-headed Gulls in 2 hours, plus 5 1st winter Common Gulls. I also managed to find a winter plumage Slavonian Grebe which is the first one I've seen around Bangor itself, despite seeing several off Llanfairfechan and Aber Ogwen this year alone. A nice record.
I was also nice to get some superb photo opportunities of a couple of Guillemots that appear to have not handled the strong winds especially well, but were actively feeding, so hopefully will be able to wade out the 'storms'. 

Quieter than I had hoped, but managed to get lots of records to input to BirdTrack, so not a complete waist!