A Shag even closer

27 Saturday Sep 2025

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As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog about the Common tern, there was another bird that held my attention during that walk around Cardiff Bay; it was, in fact, the reason I had walked that way in the first place. The previous evening, news reached me of a Shag that had roosted and was fishing in one of the old docks, providing exceptionally close views to those who chose to stop and watch.

After the close views I had enjoyed of the Common tern, I did wonder as I walked in the Shag’s direction whether I had already used up my luck for the day, but no. The Shag was still there, constantly diving for fish, at times surfacing just a few feet away from where I was standing. And, once it ventured out of the water to perch on the rocks for a short time, regurgitated some fish it had just caught, swallowed them again, then returned to its watery home.

As the old dock where the bird was is a relatively small body of water, now permanently closed off at both ends, I was surprised at how many fish it was catching. I was also very relieved to see that the fishing line it seemed to have swallowed was not affecting its feeding. Another wonderful close encounter of the avian kind!

A Common tern up close

26 Friday Sep 2025

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It was Friday 26 September, about 10:15am – a late start for me, and I had just begun walking across Cardiff Bay Barrage when I heard someone call my name. That doesn’t happen very often, so I looked in the direction the shout had come from and saw two chaps standing at the lookout point, gesticulating madly. I knew them, of course, two of my local birding buddies but, for the life of me, I couldn’t work out what they were trying to get me to look at.

Then, as I walked over to them, the penny dropped – there was a Common tern flying around so close to where they were standing that they could almost have reached out and touched it. Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration, but this was certainly the closest I’d ever been to a Common tern. The views were phenomenal!

The close proximity actually made photography difficult, as terns are fast and agile fliers, effortlessly weaving and turning, before hovering and plunging to the water to pluck up a fish, all in the blink of an eye. So, I just had to stop and watch, and enjoy the spectacle this bird was providing.

Eventually, we three birders went our separate ways. I walked across the Barrage, spent some time watching the bird that will feature in tomorrow’s blog, then retraced my steps. Luckily for me, the tern had relocated to the northern side of the Barrage, so I plonked myself down on a bench at the water’s edge to watch it some more. I took a few short video clips of it, only one of which was in focus, and was shooting photographs in burst mode, which produced several series of images that show the bird’s flight quite well, so I stitched them all together into one video. If you want to see what had so enthralled me, you can watch it too.

A juvenile Garganey

25 Thursday Sep 2025

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It’s all about the birds at the moment, with autumn migration in full swing and with my local area fortunate to be enjoying visits by some stunning birds, like this one.

The day I saw the three phalaropes there was another cracking bird at Cardiff’s northern reservoirs but it was a bit overshadowed by the three rarities, and I doubt many birders bothered to walk to the far end of the adjacent Llanishen Reservoir to see this one, a beautiful juvenile Garganey (Anas querquedula).

An explanation is necessary here; I actually visited the reservoirs the day before I saw the Grey and Red-necked phalaropes, as one Grey phalarope had been reported that day. But it was literally blowing a gale so I had difficulty staying upright, let alone trying to scan the choppy waters with my binoculars to find a small grey bird. In fact, it was so windy that a marquee, which had been pegged close to the visitor centre, had come loose from its pegs and blown across the path to the reservoir where the phalarope had been reported, so the path had been closed off for safety reasons. Seeing that, I gave up looking but, enjoying the fresh air and wanting the exercise, I stomped briskly around Llanishen Reservoir. And, during that walk, I spotted the Garganey (the photo below was taken that first day) but, as I’m a bit hopeless with female/eclipse/juvenile ducks, I didn’t initially trust my identification skills. Amazingly, I’d got it right this time.

Two Grey phalaropes

24 Wednesday Sep 2025

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This is a follow up to yesterday’s blog about the amazing sighting of three phalaropes on Cardiff’s Lisvane Reservoir last Tuesday – in fact, the birds stayed at the site for several days, giving happy birders from miles around the chance to see them, though, incredibly, there has been a much larger number of Grey phalaropes than normal in the waters around south Wales over the past ten days, driven inland by stormy seas.

North Wales birder, journalist and author Julian Hughes reported on social media on Sunday: ‘With several sites in Wales hosting multiple Grey Phalaropes over the weekend, 2025 is now the best year this century, with 112.’ Surprisingly, this is not the highest number on record; it seems 1960 ‘will take some beating, however. 227 were seen from The Smalls lighthouse alone in just 12 days, during 18-29 September’.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog about the Red-necked phalarope, the Grey phalarope is slightly larger than its cousin, and its bill is slightly thicker. The photo below shows all three phalaropes together, the Red-necked is the bird in between the two Greys.

Although these three birds were mostly foraging along the edge of the reservoir, phalaropes usually feed while sitting on the water and their feeding style is quite unique for wading birds: they often swim round in circles, which disturbs the water, stirring up insects, midges or other water-loving invertebrates. Amazingly, since seeing the three phalaropes on Lisvane Reservoir last week, we’ve had another local sighting, a single Grey phalarope on the River Taff near central Cardiff. This bird was a little more distant but I took a few short video clips of it feeding – not spinning right round due to the force of the water, but actively, constantly weaving from side to side as it picked at tasty titbits.

Lifer: Red-necked phalarope

23 Tuesday Sep 2025

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Last week was a red-letter week for Glamorgan birds. I didn’t get to see all the rare birds on offer but I did spend several wonderful hours at the Lisvane and Llanishen reservoirs in north Cardiff last Tuesday, in the company of smiling birders and interested locals, as we feasted our eyes on the three visiting phalaropes, two Grey (more on them tomorrow) and my first ever Red-necked.

The Red-necked phalarope (Phalaropus lobatus) is a bird of contradictions: it’s a wader that prefers to swim; the female is the more brightly coloured gender; she fights other females for the most desirable males to mate with; she lays her eggs then leaves the male to raise their young, sometimes even finding another male to breed with.

You may notice that this bird has no sign of the red neck it is named for; the characteristic rusty coloured neck band can only be seen on female birds during the breeding season. The presence of yellow stripes on this bird’s back marked it as a juvenile; in fact, looking at the illustrations in my guide book, this looks like a juvenile bird moulting to first winter colouring.

It can be difficult to tell Red-necked and Grey phalaropes apart so it was particularly informative, especially for folks like me who had not seen both species before, to see both species together. The Red-necked phalarope was noticeably smaller than the Grey, and it had a thinner, sharper bill. (There will be a photo of the two species side by side in tomorrow’s blog.)

Due to a significant decline in its breeding population in Britain, where it nests in very small numbers in northern Scotland and on the western isles, the Red-necked phalarope is red-listed. The bird also breeds in Siberia, Scandinavia, Iceland and North America, and the very rare sightings we’re lucky enough to see in southern Britain are birds on migration; apparently, European breeding birds winter in the Arabian Sea. What a wonderful treat it was to enjoy very close views of this rare bird!

Leafmines: Coleophora lineolea

22 Monday Sep 2025

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When I spotted the spiders I blogged about on Saturday (Spiders: Metellina segmentata), they were spinning their webs on two adjacent plants of Hedge woundwort (Stachys sylvatica) (I was actually looking for Woundwort shieldbugs, which I haven’t seen this year). In the process of photographing those spiders, I spotted some leafmines, something I’d not seen previously on these particular plants.

Noticing what looked like tiny holes in the blotch mines, I suspected the miners must be a species of Coleophora moth and, sure enough, when I turned the leaves over, I found two of the little cases that Coleophora larvae construct to shelter in. There is only one Coleophora moth species whose larvae eat Hedge woundwort so, for once, identification was straight forward: these were Coleophora lineolea. The adult moth is a little cracker, a pale orange-and-white striped beauty, a photo of which you can see on the UK Moths website.

As they’re made from the hairy leaves of the woundwort, the tiny larval cases were themselves very hairy, and rather attractive. This moth uses several other larval plant species – Black and White horehound, Lamb’s ear, and a couple of sages – as well as Hedge woundwort, and the mines and cases can be found between September and May, as they overwinter as larvae, snug in their little cases.

Sea aster

21 Sunday Sep 2025

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According to Richard Mabey in Flora Britannica, Michaelmas-daisies were introduced to Britain in the early 1700s from their native North America, and many of those introduced species have now escaped their garden settings to become naturalised in the wider countryside. Not so the Sea aster (Aster tripolium), as this is a native British species of Michaelmas-daisy.

I had noticed some Sea asters in flower during my previous visit to Weymouth in late July but not many were in bloom. During my most recent visit, the flowers were much more abundant, which I’ve now discovered is because the peak flowering period for most species of Michaelmas-daisy coincides with Michaelmas Day on 29 September; I guess that should have been obvious from their name.

As the common name of our native species implies, the Sea aster is most at home in salty conditions, flourishing in coastal saltmarshes, though, apparently, it will sometimes appear alongside roads that have been heavily salted for de-icing purposes during the winter months.

Spider: Metellina segmentata

20 Saturday Sep 2025

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I’m rather chuffed with how many new spiders I’ve managed to find this year; this is the latest of them, two found close together on vegetation along a quiet local footpath just before my mini break in Weymouth, and now verified by our Welsh spider recording expert.

There are three species of Metellina orb web spiders in Britain, all of which are common and quite difficult to tell apart – my guide book includes the dreaded ‘microscopic examination of the genitalia is necessary to confirm identification‘ phrase. The two species most easily confused are Metellina mengei and Metellina segmentata but, fortunately, they can be seen at different times of the year, M. mengei in spring and early summer, M. segmentata in late summer and autumn. As I found these a couple of weeks ago, in early autumn, that has helped to confirm them as Metellina segmentata.

Sandwich terns

19 Friday Sep 2025

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These beauties are the last of the birds I’ll share from my recent trip to Weymouth: Sandwich terns (Sterna sandvicensis). Though some tern species can be tricky to tell apart (Common and Arctic, in particular), with their yellow-tipped black beaks, black legs and black-capped heads, Sandwich terns are a bit more straight forward to identify.

~  Sandwich terns seen here with mostly Mediterranean gulls, Dunlin & Ringed plover

As you can perhaps see in my photos, the black cap on its head is not a permanent feature; it is fully black at the beginning of the breeding season but then quickly begins to develop white speckles above the eyes and, by the end of the summer, the whole of the forehead is white, making the ‘hair do’ resemble more of a monk’s tonsure. I guess the stress of raising young will do that, even to terns!

I didn’t know much about these birds but my guide book tells me that Sandwich terns breed in northern Europe (including in colonies around the coast of Britain), Russia and North America, then move south, which is when they can be seen in southern Britain, on passage to their wintering locations, mostly on the west coast of Africa.

If you’re wondering, as I was, about the origin of its name, in Fauna Britannica, Stefan Buczacki tells that ‘Its association with the town of Sandwich on the Kent coast dates back to 1785, when the naturalist John Latham was sent specimens collected from there by some local boys’.

The sea mouse

18 Thursday Sep 2025

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Having blogged twice already about my recent afternoon at Ferrybridge, between Weymouth and the Isle of Portland, it occurred to me to show you what it looks like. This photo was taken at the end of the couple of hours I spent there, by which time the tide was well out and the weather that was rolling in was looking quite ominous: time to beat a hasty retreat!

Today’s blog is about the third species I managed to get reasonably close to and spent quality time watching that afternoon, a cousin to the Sanderling and Knot, with which it shares the sandy shores and mud flats, the Dunlin (Calidris alpina).

The Dunlin has some wonderfully evocative vernacular names, according to my Fauna Britannica: ebb cock (by the Shetlanders), pickerel (Scotland, in general), sandy (Northumberland), sand mouse (Westmorland), and sea mouse (Dumfries and Lancashire), amongst many others. Each name suggests an image of the bird’s habit of scurrying back and forth along the sandy shores as it forages for tiny sea creatures.

Luckily for me, there were several Dunlin and Ringed plover foraging along the top of the beach when I arrived, and I managed to find a spot, crouched in the lee of a shed out of the blasting wind and camouflaged by some scrubby vegetation where I could spend time watching these wonderful little waders going about their business.

Though the Dunlin seems common and ubiquitous around the British coastline, its numbers are in serious decline here, with the BTO reporting a 24% decline in the over-wintering population between 1997 and 2022. So, although the bird is listed as of ‘least concern’ internationally, here in Britain it is red-listed. It would be a tragedy to lose this sublime little sea mouse so let’s hope its population somehow manages to recover.