Little gull

03 Tuesday Mar 2026

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Yesterday’s post about Siskin was the last from my recent mini break in Weymouth (though I have already booked a return visit in a couple of weeks). Luckily for me, no rare birds turned up in my home area while I was away; miraculously, the first, this Little gull, arrived the very next morning (Saturday 21 February). And it’s been present every day since, so I’ve managed to see it, albeit distantly, several times now, which has been good practice for my birding skills, picking out a single small gull among several hundred, mostly Black-headed gulls.

This year’s Little gull (Hydrocoloeus minutus) is a 2nd winter 3CY bird. If you don’t speak ‘birder’, that means the bird has just lived through its second winter, which means it was born in the summer of 2024, and, as it’s now 2026, is in its third calendar year. I am not experienced enough to have worked that out for myself but our local experts can tell from looking at the bird’s plumage. There is a very detailed description of the precise details on the Gull Research website but, in summary, at this stage the bird looks quite similar to an adult Little gull but still has some black feathers towards the tips of some of its upper wings.

During last Monday’s walk around part of Cardiff Bay, the wind was blasting across the water from a westerly direction. That didn’t make for very pleasant walking, or birding, as my eyes stream in the cold wind, but the weather did have one good point – it pushed many of the gulls closer to the Barrage pathway, which is how I managed to get these few photos, before the heavy rain came in and saw me stomping quickly homeward.

A tree full of Siskin

02 Monday Mar 2026

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The RSPB Radipole Nature Reserve in Weymouth was quite disappointing for wildlife during my recent visit, except for the presence of a large flock of Siskin (Carduelis spinus), their distinctive happy chattering audible from quite some distance along the path. (If you’re not familiar with their call, the RSPB website has a sound file you can listen to, though be aware that I could hear a Blackbird singing in the background, as well.)

Siskin are traditionally found in coniferous woodland but I’ve noticed that, especially in the winter months, they can be found wherever there’s an abundance of Alder trees, as they seem to love using their sharp beaks to prise open the cones to extract the tasty nutritious seeds.

I was interested to note in Fauna Britannica that two of their several vernacular names are black-headed thistlefinch (though I’ve never seen them eating thistle seeds) and tea leaves (sadly there’s no explanation given for the origin of this Cheshire name, which seems quite extraordinary).

Up they pop

01 Sunday Mar 2026

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Happy Spring to those of you in the northern hemisphere, and what better way to celebrate the passing of winter than with an iconic spring flower!

Colt’s-foot (Tussilago farfara) is a member of the Asteraceae, the family of daisies and dandelions. It flowers most commonly appear in March and April, though can sometimes be seen as early as January; I spotted these flowers on Thursday, 26 February, which is about usual hereabouts. The colt’s-foot-shaped leaves won’t appear above ground until much later, perhaps in April or May.

After a long wet winter, these little droplets of golden yellow are a very cheering sight when they emerge, and it would be very easy to take just a cursory glance, smile and move one. If you take a moment to look closer though, they are very interesting little plants, with stems covered in white woolly fibres and an abundance of sepals that are a very pale maroon with green stripes up their centres.

The centres of the flowers are surrounded by petals that are fine and delicate but plentiful and, as they age, the flowers develop a soft reddish tinge that looks to my fanciful eye a bit like the colour of a setting sun, though, in this case, on the ground rather than in the sky.

A Shelduck or two

28 Saturday Feb 2026

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I’ve blogged about our local Shelducks (Tadorna tadorna) before, in How many Shelducks?, 9 October 2019 and Hoovering Shelduck, 25 February 2025. They’re stunning waterfowl that look a bit like a cross between a duck and a goose, coloured by an enthusiast child with bright paints and a vivid imagination.

It’s only occasionally that I manage close views of them, as the Cardiff Bay birds spend most of their local visiting time on the distant mud flats between the Barrage and the Bristol Channel, so I appreciate all the more the times when I can sit on a bench and watch them going about their day, as happened last week at RSPB Lodmoor.

Dark-bellied Brent geese

27 Friday Feb 2026

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Today we have more birds that I don’t get to see very often in my part of south Wales. These are Brent geese (Branta bernicla), Britain’s smallest goose, their bodies not much bigger than a Mallard duck. They come in two colour variations: though they all have black heads, necks and beaks, with grey-brown backs, some are pale-bellied (subspecies Branta bernicla hrota), whereas others, like the ones shown here, are dark-bellied (Branta bernicla bernicla).

According to Fauna Britannica, ‘the name “brent” comes via “brant” from the Old Norse brandgads, meaning “burned [or black] goose”. The Wildlife Trusts website notes:

Birds that nest in northern Russia and Siberia have darker bellies, and spend the winter around the coasts of East Anglia and southern England. Birds that nest in Svalbard and Greenland have paler bellies and mostly spend the winter around North East England and Ireland.

These particular Dark-bellied Brent geese were near Wild Chesil Centre, at Ferrybridge, on the road from Weymouth to the Isle of Portland. I’m told a good number of them over-winter in this area. The geese in the short video I took were feeding on the edge of the pools adjacent to the Centre car park and, fortunately, there was a single car parked in that area that I was able to use to approach the birds without being seen. Standing behind the car, I took a few photos and, then, very very slowly I moved closer and sat on a huge boulder at the edge of the car park to watch and video and watch some more. They were a delight!

An assortment of egg cases

26 Thursday Feb 2026

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Taking a mini break in Weymouth in the winter was something of a gamble, particularly with the dismal weather we’ve been experiencing this year. I was reasonably lucky except on the Wednesday, when gale force winds saw huge waves rolling in along Weymouth Beach but, as the heaviest rain held off till the afternoon, I managed a quick stomp around Lodmoor, then walked back along the top of the beach to see what the weather had blown in.

First up were several of these egg cases, which have been confirmed as belonging to the Common whelk (Buccinum undatum) though, as the national recorder pointed out on IRecord, the vacant spawn balls float and get blown long distances from where they were laid, so their presence is not evidence of where the Common whelks live.

Next, I spotted this pale-coloured egg case, which I believe is from a catshark, though I’m not sure if it was produced by a Nursehound (Scyliorhinus stellaris) or a Small-spotted catshark (Scyliorhinus canicula). Unfortunately, I didn’t measure the egg case, and it seems the case colour can be variable. The Dorset Wildlife Trust website entry for Nursehound states that ‘Nursehounds [and presumably other catsharks] lay their eggs amongst seaweed. The egg cases have curly tendrils that wrap around the seaweed to prevent the egg case from floating away’.

This last find is proving the most difficult to identify, as there are many similar-looking egg cases – the Shark Trust has an excellent downloadable chart but, once again, I don’t know the exact size of the case. The egg case seems to have been produced by a species of ray and, looking at which rays are found in the waters off the Dorset coast, it may be a Spotted ray egg case (Raja montagui), but that is pure speculation. Suffice to say, I have learned my lesson when it comes to trying to identify beachcombing finds – I will definitely be measuring what I find, and taking more detailed photos as well.

Breaking news!

25 Wednesday Feb 2026

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I’m interrupting the series of blogs on sightings from last week’s mini break in Dorset to bring the best possible news … we have butterflies!!!

Yesterday the temperature in Cardiff reached around 14ºC, warm enough for butterflies to emerge, and, during a walk around Cardiff Bay, I saw my first four Brimstones of the year, two at the wetlands reserve and two more – the two shown here – at the adjacent Hamadryad Park. I find it difficult to express how I feel when I see butterflies in flight; their magic makes my heart sing. If you haven’t seen your first butterflies yet, I hope you do soon!

Wigeon

24 Tuesday Feb 2026

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Like Lapwing, the Wigeon (Anas penelope) is another bird I don’t see very often in my home environment. We get a few occasional Wigeon drop in at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park but they don’t usually remain very long. And, having seen them spending a lot of time grazing in very shallow water and on low grassy areas adjacent to the water at RSPB Lodmoor, I can understand why – Cosmeston simply doesn’t have undisturbed areas where the hundreds of local dogs wouldn’t be able to get to them.

So, as with the Lapwing, it was a real treat to see so many of these handsome birds at Lodmoor. The rich chestnut head and grey upper body of the male Wigeon is a particularly attractive colour combination.

I don’t recall hearing them make any noise (though that may be because their sound was drowned out by the other birds) but the name Wigeon is thought to have been derived from their whistling call. Other vernacular names – whew duck (Northumberland); whewer, whim, whistler (eastern England) – are also imitative of their call, according to Buczacki in Fauna Britannica. Here’s a link to their call on the RSPB website, if you fancy a listen.

Lapwing

23 Monday Feb 2026

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Very occasionally small numbers of Lapwing (Vanellus vanellus) are seen alighting briefly in local farm fields or are spotted passing overhead by keen-eyed birders but, generally speaking, Lapwings are a rarity in my part of south Wales. Which is a great shame because they are stunning looking birds, and their evocative call, the Peewit sound that has given them one of their many common names, is wonderful to hear.

So, you can probably imagine my delight when, on the first afternoon of my most recent Dorset trip, I made my first visit to RSPB Lodmoor and immediately saw and heard large numbers of Lapwings. Sporting the largest crest of any British bird and plumage that flashes with a metallic sheen in the sunshine, Lapwings are very handsome birds.

Somewhat surprisingly, it wasn’t the harvesting of their feathers that caused the Lapwing population to crash in previous centuries; according to Fauna Britannica, the declines were caused by people plundering Lapwing nests for their eggs, which were considered a delicacy. The book cites an example where ‘280 dozen lapwing eggs were taken annually in the 1860s’ from just one estate near Thetford.

Lapwings recovered well after this practice was made illegal in the Lapwing Act of 1926 but numbers are once again declining, this time due to changes in agricultural practices; the birds require fallow fields in which to feed during the winter but the majority of farmers now sow their fields twice each year, in spring and again in autumn. According to the British Trust for Ornithology’s publication Into the Red, the Lapwing population in Wales and southern England has declined by 80 per cent since the 1970s meaning the species is now classified as red-listed. It was a privilege to spend time watching these beautiful birds during my four visits to Lodmoor last week.

Scallop shells

22 Sunday Feb 2026

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In the absence of any new wildflower finds from my break in Dorset, I thought I’d feature seashells this week, in particular the various beautiful Scallop shells I found during a wander along the high tide line. In my ignorance I thought a Scallop was a Scallop, i.e. just one species, but I soon discovered I was very wrong and that I may have seen the shells of at least three different species on Weymouth beach, and that they can be tricky to tell apart.
[** Thanks to a comment from one of my much more knowledgeable followers, I now know that only 3 of the shells shown here (photos 3, 5 and 6) are Scallop species. Obviously, I have a very steep learning curve to climb when it comes to identifying finds at the seaside!**]

I had just thought I would take and share some pretty photos, so I didn’t measure the lengths of the shells, or count their radiating ridges, or examine the size and symmetry of the ‘wings’ on the bottom edge, or even check whether the bowl-shaped shells were attached to other bowl-shaped shells or to flat shells, all features which might have helped with their identification.

From what I’ve read online, the three most likely species of Scallop in this location are Variegated scallop (Chlamys varia), Queen scallop (Aequipecten opercularis), and Great (or King) scallop (Pecten maximus). I’m fairly sure at least two of the shells are the latter species, Great scallop, as they seem to be the only local species that has a bowl-shaped shell attached to a flat shell, and I found a couple of flat shells.

On the Dorset Wildlife Trust website I read one particularly interesting fact about the Variegated scallop that I did not previously know: ‘In common with many other shellfish, the variegated scallop starts life off as a male and changes sex several times during its lifetime.’ Reading about these and the other mollusc shells I noticed but didn’t photograph has definitely piqued my interest in learning more so I’ve just been looking at potential guide books to help with future identification. If you have any personal recommendations, please do share their details in the comments.