Category Archives: walks

Birds of Forest Farm

07 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by in birds, nature, walks

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I had a meeting at Forest Farm last Friday so, of course, I took the opportunity while I was there to have a wander around the trails and along the Glamorganshire Canal. And it was wonderful, though I did come away feeling a little guilty. We’d had a week of low temperatures, with overnight frosts, and there was a bitterly cold wind blowing. It was obvious the wee birds were cold and hungry but I hadn’t taken any seed with me. Here are a Long-tailed tit, a male Bullfinch, a Dunnock, a Robin and a Great tit.

171207 Forest farm birds (1)171207 Forest farm birds (2)171207 Forest farm birds (3)171207 Forest farm birds (4)171207 Forest farm birds (5)

The water of the canal was sheltered from the breeze and very still, making for some stunning reflections (thank you little Moorhen). And I was treated to excellent views of a female Kingfisher, who sat for at least 15 minutes on her branch. From the way her feathers were fluffed up and she was hunched over her ‘toes’, I figure she was feeling the cold as well.

171207 Forest farm birds (8)171207 Forest farm birds (7)

The Great spotted woodpecker was a treat, as were the Treecreepers – at least four of them, perhaps a family group, were actively scuttling up the branches in one small area by the canal. It was a grand day – my meeting went well and the birding was even better than expected!

171207 Forest farm birds (9)171207 Forest farm birds (6)

On a grey Bay day

04 Saturday Nov 2017

Posted by in birds, nature, walks

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

171104 1 Cardiff Bay fog

Thick fog hung over Cardiff Bay as I set out on a round-the-bay circuit yesterday morning and, though the fog thinned as the day went on, the day remained grey. Still, never let it be said that grey is boring. Birds there were aplenty (and wildflowers, too … but that’s for tomorrow’s post).

This cormorant was enjoying a successful spot of fishing in the old Penarth dock area, though it was slim pickings for the three Little grebes around the corner in the River Ely.

All around the Bay, on almost every man-made structure and clump of rocks near the water, Pied wagtails bobbed, wagged and ‘chisicked’.

Coots were even more numerous, and an occasional Moorhen prospected along the shoreline.

171104 5 Cormorant171104 5 Flock of Canada geese

As I was watching this Cormorant drying its wings, our peace and tranquillity was interrupted by the loud honking of a large skein of Canada Geese flying in from the west.

Where concrete and buildings dominate the shoreline and there’s a notable absence of trees, the birds have adapted and perch on tree-like things.

I saw perhaps half a dozen Great crested grebes around the Bay: I always admire how long they can stay underwater when fishing. Mute swans were more numerous. They are birds of such contrasts, looking anything but decorous when flaunting their glorious white bottoms as they feed, yet the picture of elegance when preening.

171104 8 Black-headed gull (3)

The most abundant came at the end of my walk. It was standing room only for the Black-headed gulls on the Barrage.

October on the Ely embankment

31 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by in birds, coastal fauna, nature, walks

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

At least once a week I take a turn along the embankment where the River Ely flows out into Cardiff Bay as it makes a nice circular walk from my home on the cliff-top above in Penarth. (It’s good exercise too, as what goes down there must walk back up!) I always record what I see – usually birds – so thought I would share my sightings in an end-of-monthly post.

A variety of birds make their home in this stretch of water, which they share with a yachting marina and associated water traffic coming and going. There are almost always Turnstones in varying quantities (from one to nine), Mallards, Mute swans, one or two Great Crested Grebes (including their progeny this year), a proliferation of Coots, the occasional Cormorant fishing, usually a couple of Grey wagtails and a couple of Pieds. Gulls fly overhead and there are plenty of hirundines, in the season.

2 October: A Wheatear, an unusual visitor, almost certainly on a migration stopover, was dotting about on the embankment stones; a Pied wagtail was doing its morning stretches, and a Rock pipit was browsing for titbits.

171031f Little grebe

16 October: This was the day before ex-hurricane Ophelia made her presence felt, the day of the jaundiced yellow sky and the rusty red sun, which you can see reflected in my photo of the four Little grebes that were sheltering from the incoming weather. A juvenile Grey wagtail was dotting along the embankment, calling incessantly for its parent; and a Great crested grebe was enjoying a very successful fishing session, coming up with fish in two successive dives.

171031h Linnet

22 October: The day after Storm Brian I walked the embankment to see if any unusual birds had been blown in. The usual suspects were present, except that, most unusually, there wasn’t a single Turnstone. A solitary Linnet flitted back and forth from pavement to stones, and three rather exhausted-looking Redshanks dozed warily along the water line. One of these was colour-ringed and might possibly be the bird I saw back in March but I couldn’t see its rings well enough to be sure.

171031i Redshank

Birding on Gower

10 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by in birds, coastal fauna, nature, seaside, walks

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

It was a wild and windy but not wet day last week when I ventured for the first time to the incredible Gower peninsula, on a birding trip with my Glamorgan Bird Club friends.

171010 Glamorgan bird clubbers

We parked near Mewslade Beach, then walked a circuit from there along the cliff-top coastal path, across the medieval field system of The Vile, through the little village of Rhossili and then back to the car park. Most of the birds were best viewed through binoculars or ’scopes so I don’t have many images of them to share but the scenery was just stunning! High stone cliffs honed in places to a razor edge by millennia of wind and rain, secret little coves nestled between tall protective hills, the long stretch of golden-sand beach at Rhossili that was recently named the best beach in Britain and one of the world’s top ten – Gower really does deserve the adjective ‘awesome’!

Oh, and getting back to the birds – I saw a total of 34 species: Cormorant, Sparrowhawk, Common Buzzard, Kestrel, Peregrine, Oystercatcher, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Herring Gull, Woodpigeon, Collared Dove, Pheasant, Magpie, Jackdaw, Carrion Crow, Raven, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Coal Tit, Long-tailed Tit, Chiffchaff, Goldcrest, Wren, Blackbird, Robin, Stonechat, Dunnock, House Sparrow, Pied Wagtail, Meadow Pipit, Chaffinch, Goldfinch, Linnet, and the two highlights for me, Common Scoter (a group of perhaps 20 floating together on the sea – seen through a ’scope) and several Gannets, flying low to the waves not far offshore, plus a bonus sighting of at least one Grey seal lolling about in the waves in one of the bays.

The group total was 46 species as I was too busy admiring the scenery to notice these: Shag, Kittiwake, Guillemot, Razorbill, Green Woodpecker, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Chough, Rook, Bullfinch, Song Thrush, Common Gull, and Great Black-backed Gull. Thanks to John and Glamorgan Bird Club members for yet another fantastic day out!

171010 Rhossili beach

Rambling with reptiles

03 Monday Jul 2017

Posted by in 'Dedicated Naturalist' Project, nature, parks, reptiles, walks

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

If you’ve been following my ‘wild’ life for a while, you’ll remember that, in August last year, I went on a reptile ramble at the Wildlife Trust of South & West Wales’s Parc Slip Nature Reserve. Well, last Wednesday our team of trusty Mary Gillham Archives Project staff and volunteers went for another ramble, partly because we enjoyed the last one so much and partly as a way of farewelling the lovely Natalie, a university student who’s been working with us since last September. Though tinged with sadness at saying goodbye to Nat, we had an exciting ramble.

I thought perhaps the persistent drizzle might mean we wouldn’t see many reptiles but I was wrong. In fact, the reverse might actually have been true – the rain may well have encouraged the beasties to stay put under their refugia – except, that is, for one large adder, which I almost stepped on, as it was lying in the grass close to one of the shelters. So, though we didn’t see any lizards this time, we saw more adders, grass snakes and slow-worms than last year. Oh, and the bird’s-nest-shaped dried-grass vole nests under some of the refugia were really cute too.

Square-bashing: SS9073

02 Sunday Jul 2017

Posted by in fungi, insects, molluscs, nature, walks

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

170702 Square-bashing SS9073 (1)

A few days ago I posted about my square-bashing adventure near Llanbeder, in Gwent. Hilary and I have now also square-bashed another under-biodiversity-recorded 1-km square, this time near St Brides Major in Glamorgan.

170702 Square-bashing SS9073 (2)

As the seagull flies we were within a kilometre of the sea and the geological substrate was very different, so the habitats we surveyed were more diverse. One public path led us down a heavily wooded driveway to an old house, another ran between the edge of that same woodland and fields sown with cereal crops (and there the hogweed was flowering which greatly improved my insect tally), and the third took us over paddocks of rough unimproved grassland, with patches of low rushes, all bordered by a wild old hedgerow.

170702 Square-bashing SS9073 (3)

Interestingly, this time Hilary’s plant list was about 20% lower than that from our previous square (though she still had around 80 species), whereas my list of everything else was about the same percentage higher (at around 100 species of insects, fungi and lichens, molluscs, etc).

National Meadows Day

01 Saturday Jul 2017

Posted by in flowers, insects, nature, parks, seaside, walks, wildflowers

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

170701 Lavernock Reserve (3)

Happy National Meadows Day!

170701 Lavernock Reserve (2)

I had a slightly premature celebration by joining a Wildlife Trust walk around Lavernock Reserve on the south Wales coast yesterday. It’s an interesting place that has only become a reserve relatively recently. Due to its prime coastal position, a gun battery was built here back in 1860s and added to during the Second World War – these now form a scheduled ancient monument.

170701 Lavernock Reserve (1)

The meadows sit upon a substrate of clay over Jurassic limestone and, thanks to the tremendous efforts of dedicated volunteers who work constantly to contain the invading scrub, the grasslands are home to many lovely plant, insect and animal species, as well as a succession of migrating birds in spring and autumn.

Square-bashing: ST3990

28 Wednesday Jun 2017

Posted by in fungi, insects, nature, walks

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

I spent last Friday square-bashing with my friend Hilary, and what a brilliant day we had.

170628 ST3990 square-bashing (1)

For the uninitiated, square-bashing consists of taking a square kilometre that has very few existing biological records and walking the roads, tracks and paths through that square to see what you can find. Each month, my local biodiversity records centre SEWBReC publishes the details of just such a square in the counties they cover, Glamorgan and Gwent, in the hope that keen folks like Hilary and I will rectify the lack of records.

170628 ST3990 square-bashing (2)

Although the term square-bashing is not meant to be taken literally, we did have to bash our way through one field in our square kilometre, where the public footpath was completely overgrown (spot Hilary in the photo below), but on the whole the countryside was beautiful, with rolling farmed fields, old narrow lanes and, the best part, an ancient holloway (more on that in a future post).

170628 ST3990 square-bashing (3)

Hilary’s something of a whizz when it comes to plants so she recorded those and I did everything else – insects, fungi, birds, you name it! As I’m not a whizz at anything, I mostly take lots of photos and then have to work out the IDs when I get home, which takes time but helps me learn. I have just a couple of outstanding queries but reckon my total will come to around 80 and Hilary has about 90 plants on her list, so it was a very good result indeed. Here are some of my finds – can you identify them?

Birding at Lliw Reservoirs

25 Sunday Jun 2017

Posted by in animals, birds, insects, nature, trees, walks, wildflowers

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

170625 Lliw Reservoirs (3)

I celebrated the solstice with an outing with my Glamorgan Bird Club buddies to Lliw Reservoirs north of Swansea or, perhaps that should read, I sweated through the solstice – it was one of the hottest days of the year and the middle of a mini heatwave. Still, you know what they say about mad dogs and Englishmen (and Welshmen and a Kiwi) …

170625 Lliw Reservoirs (1)

It’s a superb location. The two reservoirs were built in the second half of the 19th century, and still supply water to communities throughout south Wales. We only walked up one side of both reservoirs, through broadleaf woodland and then out onto open areas of grass and scrub and moorland, but there’s an 8-mile circular walk, which would be brilliant in cooler weather and includes large open commons of heath moorland on the hilltops.

170625 Lliw Reservoirs (2)

We heard more small birds than we saw (but that’s helping me learn their songs); buzzards and magnificent red kites were soaring overhead; we heard then saw the elusive grasshopper warbler in flight; dragonflies and damsels and the odd butterfly flitted about; and there were lots of lovely wildflowers (my particular favourites were the foxgloves, tormentil and bog pimpernel). Oh and, most importantly, the locals were friendly and the cafe serves delicious ice cream!

Two go cuckoo at Camber

25 Thursday May 2017

Posted by in birds, coastal fauna, nature, walks

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I celebrated my birthday, with my friend Jill, with a quick morning romp around the bird hides at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve, followed by an afternoon Sussex Wildlife Trust guided walk around the inland part of the reserve, including a peek inside the normally locked Camber Castle. And what a superb day it was!

170524 Rye Harbour fauna (10)

I’ve already blogged about one of the highlights, the gorgeous Avocets and their chicks; another was hearing, and catching a fleeting glimpse of my very first Cuckoo. Here are a few more (not so crisp) photos of the wonderful (but mostly distant) wildlife we saw: Common terns, Skylark, Oystercatchers and Dunlin, Black-headed gull, Ringed plover, Gadwall and Shelduck, Lapwing and a Pied wagtail, Marsh harrier, and a number 72; plus, not pictured, Redshank, Coot, Cormorant, Tufted duck, Mallard, Little ringed plover, Grey heron, Kestrel and Whitethroat, as well as the more common birds. A birthday to remember!