Rest Day and Holyhead to Trearddur Bay

Today was a day I had been looking forward to in one way and dreading in another, each for a different reason. The exciting part was an excursion with Ken Croft, birdman of Anglesey.  He picks you up, takes you to a place where you get out of the car and start walking.  You see grasses, clover, heather, gorse, the usual stuff, but Ken stops, sets up his tripod upon which is mounted a telescope, looks through it, turns it a bit this way and that, tells you to jump in to look, and, like magic, there is a splendid creature, whose name, alas, you do not remember, but a few were:  chough, egret, guillemot,—lots and lots of guillemots—mallard, egret, oystercatcher, plover, puffin, manx shearwater, and mute swan.

A number of the birds of Anglesey migrate to Africa; some partially.  This does not mean that they stop in Spain, it means that some migrate and some stay.  (How they decide who will stay and who will go, is one of nature's mysteries.) This does not empty the island of birdlife in the winter, however, because some birds from the arctic migrate here, so it all works out.  BTW, a documentary anyone and everyone would really enjoy is Winged Migration.  Try to watch it on the biggest screen you can because it is so beautiful.  Anyway, my birding day was full of delight, an experience to remember.

The dread had to do with my having to upload data to the GPS.  I figured out, thank God, that I had better take out the map from the GPS before uploading data.  This is because the map is locked to the GPS-that-died, therefore the computer won't recognize it in the new GPS.  So why am I not using the map that I had to buy with the new GPS? Because the new GPS won't recognize IT!  This is a delicate situation, to say the least.  I breathed a huge sigh of relief when the data loaded—after I figured out some of Basecamp's quirks—and the map, reinserted into the device, showed itself.  As it is said, "It's all good!"

Today's walk, from Holyhead (a depressed town if ever there was one, but it does have a good bakery), to Trearddur Bay was not as navigationally challenging as the walks of previous days. Speaking of navigation,  I was lamenting to Ken yesterday my frustrations, and he was quite in accord that the signage and barriers, etc., were thorns in one's side!

Well, dragonflies and birds are given directions:

Nature's bathroom; it comes in many varieties.  This one offered excellent visibility in all directions, allowing one to determine whether or not another human is within viewing distance.  Notice the convenient spot for resting your poles:

A sculpture by the path:

And, in the same style, a bench:

From the top of a cliff:

A different kind of cliff and a different perspective:

This is a very bad photo, but if you were in a field with many large HE bovines, how hard would you try, and how long would you linger to get a good shot?

Goats, or maybe not goats, but definitely not scary: