Category Archives: winter

Siskins in the Alders

30 Tuesday Jan 2024

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It was easy to hear their sibilant chatter (if you’ve never heard it, SoundCloud has a good recording). With their green, yellow and black colouring, they were well camouflaged so it was hard to pick them out among the Alder branches and cones. And, because of all those twigs, branches and cones, it was even harder to get photographs, which is my excuse for not getting better images of the noisy Siskins I found feeding near the Glamorgan Canal at Forest Farm Nature Reserve last week.

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Lively larva

29 Monday Jan 2024

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I took this short video back in November but had so much other material to share that it never got posted on YouTube until now. You might think hoverfly larva are slow and ungainly but just look at how quickly this little guy can move up the tree trunk. (Sorry it gets a bit blurry towards the end.)

Of course, as we’ve moved in to the colder temperatures and inclement weather of winter, we don’t see hoverfly larva out and about so much. But, as I found yesterday, if you pick up a handful of leaf litter and riffle through it, you can still find these larvae. I’m not sure how long this little creature will remain in its larval state before pupating – I think that depends to some degree on species – but it was certainly a nice reward for getting my fingers mucky.

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Winter 18

28 Sunday Jan 2024

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January’s weather has been all over the place. First, we shivered through a week of colder than average temperatures, then two wild and windy named storms blew away what few flowers had survived the cold, and now our weather is milder than usual. As a result, our flora (and fauna) seem confused about whether it’s winter or spring, and finding wildflowers in bloom has been hard work this week. However, after walking my patch for several years, I know where the more sheltered places are and so have managed to find 18 wildflowers in bloom.

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Just in case you don’t recognise them, these are: Daisy, Dandelion, Field speedwell, Gorse, both the female and male flowers of Hazel, Hoary mustard, Ivy-leaved toadflax, Lesser celandine, Mayweed, the white-flowered version of Pink campion, Primrose, Sea radish, Snowdrop, Sweet violet, Three-cornered leek, Wild strawberry, and Winter heliotrope.

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What a dude!

27 Saturday Jan 2024

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With the slicked-up feathers on top of his head, the dark ear muffs, the stylish plumage in 50 shades of grey, black and white, this juvenile Long-tailed duck is quite the sophisticated dude, don’t you think? He’s a first winter bird, born last summer, so hasn’t yet got the long tail his species is named for but that will soon grow in.

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He’s been hanging out near the Barrage in Cardiff Bay for about a week, spending most of his time around the string of orange buoys in front of the sluices, diving frequently in and around those buoys then startling the perching Black-headed gulls when he pops up right next to them. The Coots don’t much like this foreigner in their patch either, but then Coots are ornery about most things.

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Let it be lichen

26 Friday Jan 2024

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I’ve probably said this before. I’ll probably say this again in the future. Next time you’re passing a wooden fence- or gate-post, particularly an older post, take a moment to look at the top of it because there will almost certainly be a marvellous miniscule landscape, with a dazzling display of diverse textures and lush colours, and possibly even a tiny creature or two.

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Bulrushes

25 Thursday Jan 2024

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As the weather has now turned unseasonally mild, I had hoped to find a Water vole when I meandered past the dipping pond at Cosmeston but none had ventured out of their holes. So, instead, you get bulrushes – not quite the same, I admit, but I’ve always liked their flowerheads, particularly when, like these, they’re shedding their fluffy seeds.

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Though other plants are also called bulrushes, the ones shown here are what most of us recognise when we hear that word. This is Great reedmace (Typha latifoli), a tall, long-leaved plant that typically grows on the margins of freshwater ponds and ditches.

Another rare grebe

24 Wednesday Jan 2024

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For the past week or thereabouts, a Black-necked grebe (Podiceps nigricollis) has been making its home in the middle of Cardiff Bay, visible to those well versed in identifying distant specks of black and white through their telescopes but not so easy for the likes of me, deficient in those skills and with old eyes and mere binoculars. However, I did wonder if perhaps the battering and raging of Storm Isha overnight last Sunday might have encouraged the grebe to shelter close to the western side of the Bay.

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And I was right! There it was, with a large flock of Tufted ducks, a few Goosander, Coots, Mallards and a couple of Gadwall, and several of its grebe cousin the Great cresteds. With the Red-necked grebe still present on Cardiff’s northern reservoirs, it’s a real treat to have another rare grebe visitor this year already.

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The BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) website says that, on average, just 115 birds overwinter in Britain, and some 50-odd pairs breed here, though they are both secretive and mostly kept secret, so as to prevent interference with this amber-listed beauty. I would certainly not want to disturb their breeding but I would love to see one of these grebes in its summer plumage – it’s a far cry from the smudgy black and white our local rare visitor is currently sporting. (The Bird Guides website has a page that provides excellent information and includes stunning images of all our local grebes in both winter and summer plumage).

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Pale-bellied Brent geese

22 Monday Jan 2024

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Four Pale-bellied Brent geese (also known as Light-bellied) (Branta bernicla hrota) have been present, mostly distant, in the waters around Sully Island on the Welsh south coast for a week or so and, during last Friday’s walk, I was very fortunate to find them feeding along the shore line in Swanbridge bay.

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There are four distinct races of Brent goose, depending on the colour of their bellies (some are dark-bellied – see my November 2022 post A rare visitor to Cardiff Bay) and where they breed (the Bird Guides website has a good article on the different sub-species). Pale-bellied Brents found on the western shores of Britain are almost certainly from the population that breeds in Canada, and they usually overwinter in Iceland.

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However, population expansion (the Canadian population doubled between the mid 1990s and mid 2000s, according to one article I found) has led the excess numbers to find other overwintering locations, including sites like Anglesey and Morecambe Bay. There has for some time been a very small population at Aberthaw approximately 10 miles west of Sully Island along the south Wales coast. Perhaps, if numbers continue to increase, more Pale-bellied Brents will move further east, and we will be lucky enough to see these beautiful birds in my neighbourhood more often.

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Red-necked grebe

18 Thursday Jan 2024

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This handsome bird, a Red-necked grebe (Podiceps grisegena), was first sighted on north Cardiff’s reservoirs last Thursday 11 January by our county bird recorder, who lives very near this location. He says this bird is only his ninth ever at the site and the first since September 2001 – by anyone’s definition, a local rarity.

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The reservoirs are just a train ride and a half mile walk from where I live so I headed up on Thursday to see if I could spot it. I did, firstly on the much larger Llanishen Reservoir from where it flew across to neighbouring Lisvane Reservoir but, at least while I was there, it remained very distant. As is the way with birding, later that day the grebe moved very close to the reservoir edge nearest the café, so afternoon visitors got very good views of the bird.

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As I needed to go to north Cardiff again this past Monday on another matter, I thought I’d visit the reservoirs for a second look. And this time my luck was in, both with the sunny, less windy weather and with the grebe, which had returned to Llanishen Reservoir but, fortunately, was cruising around much closer to the western edge.

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According to the RSPB website, ‘Less than 20 individuals spend the summer in the UK each year, with numbers increasing slightly in the winter when birds move here from colder Europe’, so I feel particularly privileged to have spent time observing and photographing this Red-necked grebe. Oh, and if you think its neck doesn’t look very red, it’s because the bird is in its winter plumage. Take a look at the RSPB website for photos of how stunning this bird is in breeding plumage.

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