Tag Archives: British birds

Little jokers

09 Wednesday Oct 2024

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I’ve another mid-week time-line cleanser for you today, this time a couple of Little grebe photographs (sorry they’re not the best images but I hope they’ll produce a smile). The more I watch these cute little fluffy bottomed birds, the more they make me laugh. I caught this first one mid shake so its fluffed out feathers make it look like it’s eaten a lake’s-worth of insects.

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And, on my next visit to this same lake, a pair of Little grebes was again close enough to the shore for reasonable photos and some quality grebe watching. I’m not sure what this guy thought it was doing – morning exercises, perhaps?

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Black tern

01 Tuesday Oct 2024

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It’s just over two years since any Black terns (Childonias niger) last visited my local area (Phenomenal fliers, 10 September 2022) so I was both delighted and relieved to learn yesterday morning that the Black tern which had been at Cardiff’s Lisvane Reservoir over the weekend was still present.

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After narrowly missing the first available train, I was even more relieved when I eventually got to the reservoir and almost immediately spotted the tern performing its amazing aerial manoeuvres in a constant search for food.

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It was always distant for my camera, and weather conditions weren’t the best, with grey skies and strong blustery winds, but it was such a joy to spend some quality time watching this incredible flier.

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Three Redstarts

25 Wednesday Sep 2024

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Several Redstarts (Phoenicurus phoenicurus) have passed through my local area during this autumn’s migration, not all seen by me, and there may be more still to come. I may yet get a closer sharper image of one but, judging by experience in past years, the chances are not great. For some reason, these birds can be quite elusive and skittish. So, here are the few that I have managed to get more than a fleeting glimpse and photograph of …

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28 August; all three of these birds were at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park

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30 August

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9 September

Juvenile Great crested grebes

17 Tuesday Sep 2024

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This year’s Great crested grebe chicks are now at that awkward teenage stage, no longer the cute chicks they once were but also not yet the elegant adults they will become.

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The two above are quite fluffy still, and their black-and-white head stripes remain very obvious, whereas the juvenile bird below, which must have hatched earlier, is beginning to lose its stripes, and its body plumage resembles much more closely that of an adult. By the end of the year, all three will have moulted into their adult plumage and all traces of their babyhood will have disappeared.

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A six-Wheatear walk

10 Tuesday Sep 2024

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I can’t recall whether I’ve ever seen so many Wheatears in one day so Saturday’s walk around part of Cardiff Bay, with good views of six Wheatears, was certainly a walk to remember.

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It was a flash of the white rump feathers of a Wheatear flitting from one rock to another that alerted me to the first group of four birds, moving together along the embankment of the River Ely.

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And then, on the other side of the Bay, two more Wheatears were foraging for food along the edge of one of the old docks. What a thrill to see so many of these beautiful birds during their brief migration stopover!

A second Black-necked grebe for 2024

06 Friday Sep 2024

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This little beauty first appeared on Cardiff’s northern reservoirs, with another of its kind, on 31 August. As I’d already seen a Black-necked grebe (Podiceps nigricollis) this year in Cardiff Bay (Another rare grebe, 24 January) and because I’m not keen on the crowds of school holiday visitors, I put off visiting – and crossed my fingers that they would stay a while – until this week.

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One of the grebes only stayed a day or two but the other is still present, despite being frequently disturbed by the human water traffic on Llanishen Reservoir. I was lucky to get close, though fleeting views before the bird was scared much further away by a trio of your paddleboarders.

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Female Garganey

03 Tuesday Sep 2024

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Back in September 2017, I wrote a blog about the experience of seeing a female Garganey on Roath Park Lake (Autumn migration: Garganey).

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Roll forward seven years to last Tuesday, 27 August, and my trip to north Cardiff was almost an exact repeat of that day in 2017: searching but not initially finding the bird; going for a walk and trying again (though this time I had some help from a local birder who’d seen the Garganey earlier that morning); noting how she was feeding so frequently amongst the lake weed that most of my photos were of a headless duck.

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As with so many duck species, the female Garganey (Anas querquedula) does not have the showy plumage of the male of the species but this was a gorgeous, very dainty little duck. And, once I did eventually find her, she was a joy to watch.

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Juvenile Tufted duck

29 Thursday Aug 2024

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Tufted ducklings are still quite a rare sight in the Vale of Glamorgan, though breeding records have increased in recent years – three broods have been recorded in Cardiff Bay this year, for example. Today’s little bundle of now-partial fluffiness, however, was raised, along with its five siblings, at The Knap in Barry, where I caught up with it on Monday when I went to see the Grey phalarope. The Knap is a very shallow, man-made lake, in a heavily managed park, so it’s not easy to see where the nest was – perhaps beneath some thick shrubs and bushes with a stone wall behind. Still, mother Tufted duck has done very well indeed to raise six ducklings in such a setting.

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