13 Tuesday Nov 2018
I wasn’t the only one watching the Great crested grebe fishing at Cardiff Bay wetlands on that sublime autumn day. This juvenile Grey heron flew in half way through the fishing session and settled itself first on one side of the small pool, then on the other.
And the heron watched in awe as the grebe caught fish after fish so effortlessly and in such a short space of time.
I’m sure I detected a look of jealousy, and perhaps hunger, on that wide-eyed face!
12 Monday Nov 2018
Tags
bird fishing, birding, birdwatching, British birds, Cardiff Bay, Cardiff Bay wetlands, Great Crested Grebe, grebe fishing
It was a lovely late autumn day, with a bit of a nip in the air but gloriously blue skies overhead and still a little heat in the sun. It was the perfect day, in fact, to stand on the boardwalk at Cardiff Bay Wetlands Reserve and watch this Great crested grebe catching itself breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and supper, all in the space of just 6 minutes (I can tell from the times on my photographs).
No wonder this successful little fisher-bird was grinning so broadly as it headed into the reeds for a snooze!
10 Saturday Mar 2018
Tags
birding, birdwatching, Cannop Ponds, Forest of Dean, Glamorgan Bird Club, Great grey shrike, Hawfinch, Mandarin duck, snow
For my latest birding adventure, I joined 21 other members of the Glamorgan Bird Club and ventured across the border to England, to explore birding sites in the beautiful Forest of Dean, where the glorious tree-clad countryside was made even more lovely by the covering of snow that still lingered from the previous weekend’s weather bomb.
The snow also meant two of the car parks we tried were closed and necessitated a long stomp along the forest trails to the viewpoint where we could search the skies for Goshawk – unfortunately, the birds weren’t seen, but what a wonderful walk it was! There’s just something about that snow-white coating that makes a landscape look magical.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. We started off at Cannop Ponds, where I got my first sight of Mandarin ducks in the wild. These stunning birds are native to Asia – and I had first seen them in a bird park in Kuala Lumpur – but escapees from parklands and zoos have established breeding populations in Britain and, in 1971, the bird was added to the official British bird list, under category C1 (although introduced, the birds now derive from the resulting self-sustaining populations).
At the ponds we also enjoyed good views of a resident Marsh tit before heading off along the forest trails. In a large clearing, one of our eagle-eyed younger members spotted another of our target birds for this trip, the Great grey shrike. Using bins and ’scopes we were able to watch the bird catch a tiny lizard and, its trademark action, impale its prey on a sharp twig.
After our Goshawk-less stomp to New Fancy viewpoint, we returned to the cars and drove on to Parkend, where the local Hawfinches proved more cooperative, obliging with distant but dark views under the conifers by the cricket ground. They were the icing on the cake of another thoroughly enjoyable outing with my bird club buddies.
My list of species sighted is as follows: Mute Swan, Greylag Goose, Mandarin Duck, Gadwall, Teal, Mallard, Tufted Duck, Little Grebe, Cormorant, Buzzard, Moorhen, Coot, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Woodpigeon, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Great Grey Shrike, Magpie, Jay, Carrion Crow, Raven, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Coal Tit, Marsh Tit, Long-tailed Tit, Goldcrest, Nuthatch, Treecreeper, Blackbird, Robin, Dunnock, Chaffinch, Goldfinch, Siskin, and Hawfinch. And I was obviously not paying attention when others in the group saw (or heard) the Grey Heron, Stock Dove, Jackdaw, Mistle Thrush, Grey Wagtail, Greenfinch, and Bullfinch.
08 Thursday Mar 2018
Tags
#StormEmma, #TheBeastfromtheEast, birding, birdwatching, British birds, cold weather effect on birds, Fieldfare, Green woodpecker, Redwing, Song thrush, thrushes
Nature’s cold weather events may be lovely to look at – and I freely admit that, as a Kiwi unused to snow, I absolutely loved the heavy snow we had last week as a result of ‘The Beast from the East’ and Storm Emma – but such events come at a high cost, particularly to wildlife. The extreme cold and gale-force easterlies blew across from Europe thousands of Fieldfares and Redwings, and displaced a myriad of other birds: Golden plovers and Lapwing, Woodcocks and Snipe were all reported in parklands and farmers’ fields, all desperately looking for food.
I’d not seen many Fieldfares before this storm hit but a walk around local parks and Cardiff Bay on Sunday and Monday gave me the opportunity to see large numbers of them and Redwings.
In Penarth Marina Park, I spotted five of Britain’s six thrush species grazing (Song thrush, Mistle thrush, Blackbird, Redwing and Fieldfare) (accompanied by a Green woodpecker), and in trees alongside the River Taff, I got my closest views yet of Fieldfare – such beautiful markings.
Let’s hope they now have the strength to head back to where they came from and that the cold blast won’t have any long-term effects on their populations.
06 Tuesday Mar 2018
Tags
birdwatching, Black redstart, British birds birding, passage migrant, Penarth marina, Phoenicurus ochruros
On the first day of my recent short break in East Sussex, I got a text from a birding friend, checking that I’d seen the news that a female Black redstart (Phoenicurus ochruros) had been seen in the Penarth marina area. As I’m probably one of the few people these days who doesn’t have a smartphone, I was offline throughout my holiday so, no, I hadn’t seen the news, and I just had to cross my fingers that the bird stayed around for a week until my return.
I got lucky! The morning after I got back, I was up and out early, down the hill, bins out and looking. She took a while to find but find her I did.
The Black redstart is a spring and autumn passage migrant and an uncommon winter visitor to Glamorgan, though in recent years birds have been seen in and around the Cardiff Bay area during the winter months. It’s a small bird, about the same size as a Robin, and, as you can see, the female is rather nondescript, mostly grey, with a reddish tail. As she positioned herself on the rooftops so she could spot any passing insects and was almost constantly on the move, my photos are not great but it was a real pleasure to catch up with this little beauty.
04 Sunday Mar 2018
Tags
birding, birdwatching, British birds, Buzzard, chaffinch, Cosmeston, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, Great tit, Lesser redpolls, Malard, nuthatch, Redpoll, Redwing, Reed bunting, treecreeper, Tufted duck
2 February A stride was required so I passed through Cosmeston as part of a longer walk. I did, as always, keep an eye out for unusual birds, though the only bird that fitted that category was a Buzzard in a tree by the dipping pond, exactly where a friend had reported it the previous day.
I scattered some seed around for my small and hungry feathered friends, and I did linger a while by the lake to take some photos of gulls. (I’m attempting to learn to recognise gulls of different ages but I’ll post separately about that when I’ve got more photos and information.)
4 February There are various routes I can take when I walk to Cosmeston; on this day I approached from the north, which produced a couple of Bullfinches near Old Cogan Farm and, further down Mile Road, a couple of Redwing feasting on ivy berries.
To escape the Sunday crowds, I headed off piste and almost immediately spotted a Green woodpecker and, seeing it fly to the ground, started stalking it. It flew off but then a mixed flock of tits and finches flew in, amongst which, to my very great delight, were 3 Lesser redpolls, a bird I’ve only seen once before and which is not often seen in these parts. They were feeding in an alder tree, moving often, doing acrobatics while suspended from cones, flitting from branch to branch, all of which made them difficult to photograph. But what a delightful 30 minutes I spent watching their antics.
9 February I was hoping to spot the Redpolls again today but lucked out, though I did spot a flock of perhaps 8 Redwings in the trees nearby. A handsome male Reed bunting was enjoying the seed a kind passerby had left on a fence post by the west lake, and it wasn’t just me who was finding the winds strong and gusty – this Tufted duck was having a bad hair day.
21 February This was school half-term holiday week in Wales, not a particularly pleasant time to visit a country park to enjoy the delights of nature as the parks are usually full of screaming children and frazzled parents at such times. I managed to avoid most of that by taking the paths less travelled but still found much of the wildlife was being scared away by the noise.
Still, I thought I’d make a list of what I did see: Great tit, Blackbird, Dunnock, Robin, Magpie, Goldfinch, Redwing, Carrion crow, Jay, Wren, Blue tit, Buzzard, Jackdaw, Long-tailed tit, Woodpigeon, Mistle thrush, Chaffinch, House sparrow, Starling, Green woodpecker, Reed bunting, Nuthatch, Coal tit, Coot, Cormorant, Mute swan, Black-headed gull, Lesser black-backed gull, Herring gull, Mallard, Tufted duck, Great crested grebe, Canada goose, Greylag goose and Pochard – not a bad list, with 35 bird species, and just one mammal, the ubiquitous Grey squirrel.
28 February South Wales was feeling the brunt of the ‘Beast from the East’, a freezing weather bomb from Siberia, when I paid my last February visit to Cosmeston so it was a short visit, partly for the exercise and I also bought a couple of bags of seed from the Rangers’ Office to feed the birds. You know they’re finding foraging tough when you see a Treecreeper come to the bird feeder – most unusual! And it was also unusual to have the sparse remnants of the previous day’s snow on the ground, so I had to get a few photos of birds (Chaffinch and Mallard) in snow as well. Let’s hope spring (re)appears soon.
03 Saturday Mar 2018
Tags
birding, birdwatching, British birds, Coot, Ely embankment, Grey wagtail, Redshank, Rock pipit, Turnstone
My first February wander alongside the River Ely was in the late afternoon of Saturday the 3rd. It was quiet – were the birds all watching Wales thump Scotland in the 6 Nations rugby, I asked myself? A faint peep alerted me to a Rock pipit tootling along the embankment path towards me. It had been minding its own business, looking for a lunchtime snack, when it suddenly realised there was a stonking great human standing on the path in front of it … at which point it flew off to the relative safety of the water’s edge.
Shortly afterwards, I could see a roundish form that might’ve been a rock but was, in fact, a Turnstone, the only one seen that day. And, as well as those two birds, one Pied wagtail and two Grey wagtails were in residence. One of the Greys had an interesting plumage aberration, as you can see below.
I was away for a week mid February so my next visit to the embankment was on Tuesday 20 February. A strong cold wind was blowing small waves on to the stony shore and, initially, there were no birds to be seen. But, about half way along the embankment path, I spotted a huddle of seven Turnstones, looking sleepy, enjoying a little bit of warmth from a shaft of sunlight that had reached their roosting spot from between the nearby houses. And, a minute or two later, I noticed one further Turnstone who was already meandering along, turning stones as it searched for breakfast bugs. Two Grey wagtails, hardy creatures, were also dotting about.
The twenty-seventh of February was a bitterly cold day, as Britain was in the grip of a severe blast of polar weather, blown across Europe from Siberia, and even Cardiff had a few snow showers that day (quite unusual in recent years). Hopefully, the birds had found somewhere more sheltered than the embankment, as the stiff easterly was so cold that icicles were forming on branches that littered the shoreline and there was a slab of ice at least a foot wide coating the rocks along the water’s edge.
In spite of those bitter conditions, I spied one Grey wagtail, one Turnstone, a pair of Coots, and a solitary Redshank. It made me feel cold just looking at that lovely bird standing in the icy water!
02 Friday Mar 2018
Tags
birding, birdwatching, British birds, Cors Caron, Dryslwyn Castle, Glamorgan Bird Club, Green sandpiper, Lapwing, Red kite, Tregaron Bog, Tywi Valley, Whooper swan
Up at 6, collected at 7 and off we headed, west along the M4 for a 9 o’clock meet up with our other Glamorgan Bird Club buddies at the foot of Dryslwyn Castle in mid Wales. This was unexplored territory for me and the scenery of the Tywi (or Towy) Valley was simply stunning, with castles and monuments seemingly on every hill top and the beautiful River Tywi meandering through the valley below them. It was clear but cold, with a bitter wind, and heavy frost and thick ice still blanketing those spots the sun could not reach. Later, we moved on to Tregaron Bog, also known as Cors Caron National Nature Reserve, a fabulous area of marsh and wetland. And what a superb day’s birding we had!
A large flock of Lapwing on the fields next to the River Tywi, and a Grey heron flying in.
Ducks, geese and Little grebes in the river.
A Red kite looks for lunch from its perch on this big old dead tree.
Looking towards Dinefwr Castle, with two swans flying off (possibly Mute but we also saw Whooper).
A thrush checks through a mole hill for potential food.
Too distant for clear shots, two Green sandpipers (and a Teal), from one of the hides at Tregaron Bog.
Intrepid birders, well rugged up against the chill.
Beautiful countryside around Tregaron Bog, where grazing ponies help to manage the wetland environment.
A Red kite; one of several seen this day and spectacular birds to watch.
My species list for the day was: Mute Swan, Whooper Swan, Pink-footed Goose, Greylag Goose, Canada Goose, Wigeon, Teal, Mallard, Goosander, Little Grebe, Grey Heron, Great White Egret, Little Egret, Cormorant, Red Kite, Hen Harrier, Buzzard, Lapwing, Snipe, Curlew, Green Sandpiper, Black-headed Gull, Herring Gull, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Woodpigeon, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Magpie, Jackdaw, Carrion Crow, Raven, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Coal Tit, Wren, Treecreeper, Starling, Blackbird, Fieldfare, Song Thrush, Redwing, Mistle Thrush, Robin, Stonechat, Dunnock, House Sparrow, Tree Sparrow, Pied Wagtail, Chaffinch, Goldfinch and Bullfinch. A further 7 species were seen by other members of our group but not by me: Peregrine, Common Gull, Rook, Long-tailed Tit, Goldcrest, Nuthatch, and Greenfinch.
28 Wednesday Feb 2018
Tags
#WildWords, Cardiff Bay, Ely embankment, ice, icicle, ickel, winter chill
Icicle: noun; a hanging, tapering piece of ice formed by the freezing of dripping water (Oxford Dictionary). The word comes from the Old English word gicel, which morphed into ikyl or ikel, and later ickle, a word which is still used in parts of Yorkshire.
My photos were taken on the Ely embankment in Cardiff Bay yesterday, as Britain shivers its way through a blast of chilly Siberian air. The combination of freezing temperatures and the constant lapping of the water on to the branches that litter the shoreline resulted in some beautiful icicles.
13 Tuesday Feb 2018
Tags
bird behaviour, birding, birdwatching, British birds, feathers, feathers as insulation, fluffing up feathers, how birds keep warm, robin
The biting wind seems to find the smallest crack in your several layers of clothing to nip at exposed flesh, your hands feel frost-bitten even though you’ve got your thickest gloves on, and the tip of your nose is so cold that you can no longer feel it. Yet there on a fence post directly in front of you, equally exposed to the wintery weather, is a chirpy wee Robin, singing its heart out, seemingly oblivious to the chill. How does it do it?
Well, the answer is in the fluffing up of its feathers. If you’ve ever slept under a down- or feather-filled duvet, you’ll know how incredibly warm feathers can be, and that’s especially true for our wee Robin. You see, feathers are a brilliant form of insulation material – feathers trap air close to the bird’s body so, in winter, they trap the warmth of the bird’s body heat. The more fluffed up the feathers are, the more warm air they trap, the more cosy is our little Robin.
