Holiday snap

Dinas Head, The Bull and Quies through a glass, darkly.

Reservoir roundabout

Dozmary Pool, Siblyback, Colliford and Porth Reservoirs and a quick jaunt around Towan Head; a Christmas Eve well spent. Nothing new but Lesser Scaup, Ring-necked Duck and Great Northern Diver were ably supported by 1 Goosander, 3 Goldeneye, 80 Golden Plover and several species not beginning with G.

Great Northern Diver, Siblyback Reservoir. The Ring-necked Duck was the best part of a nautical mile away, the Lesser Scaup at Dozmary Pool was none too close either and both left my camera sensor unblemished by their yankee doodle dandyness.

Cornwall has melted

Heading southwest.

 Somewhere in west Somerset.

Entering the submarine Atlantis that was once Cornwall.

We'll have toy fights in the hall

A brief scan of the Usk Valley, in between Christmas shopping stops, produced at least 20 Bewick's Swans and a few Wigeon this afternoon.  And then it was off to spend money on brightly coloured paper and adhesive tape of a brand whose name you have probably heard before; both of which, in a few days time will lay strewn on a carpet having been removed by an excited human and then, in all probability, shredded by an over-excited dog.  Money well spent I think we can all agree.

“Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.”

Saw this on Peter's blog and, given that creativity is almost extinct and should probably not be wasted on blogs, I stole his theme and twisted it to my own nefarious ends [NB. Click on the images for larger versions,... or squint].

The patch 1945, Uskmouth A power station is already in gestation although it wouldn't open until the early 50s.  Even by this point, it would be a bit late for breeding Red-backed Shrike, Cirl and Corn Bunting; maybe the odd Corncrake would have been hanging on, but I'd bet any of these species would have gone in the notebook in capital letters.  Yellow Wagtail, Spotted Flycatcher, Tree Sparrow and Yellowhammer must all have been reasonably common breeding species; less sure about Grey Partridge and Turtle Dove, though they couldn't have been any rarer than today.  Given the nearby populations, Marsh Warbler must have snuck through on a semi-regular basis. Was Quail regular?  Did Snipe breed?

The patch 2012, definitely a greater diversity of species, and a reasonable number of local 'notables' at any time of year (sometimes even a national doozy) but I bet the intervening years' erosion of our avifauna means today's overhead passage is crap in comparison; and the amounts of breeding and wintering farmland dross (Skylark, etc.) must be much reduced.  On the up side, at least birds are in colour now and the vast majority of Gwent is no longer living with sugar rationing. 

PS. If your time machine did rock up in 1940s Gwent, I'd suggest you get your arse up country and bag a real county blocker - Black Grouse.

Not quite www

Had a day in the field across the water; one Woodcock and a couple of Water Rail were the best on offer. Was hoping for a flyover Waxwing,... never happened.

Buff-bellied Pipit drive-by

Returning from the office Xmas party involved driving by this little gem, seemed a shame not to pop in. Not having taken my camera or recording gear to the party, I had to make do with recording the event for posterity via the iPhone. If you do ever find a rare without a camera I'd suggest banging the iPhone into video mode and lifting pictures off that, worked OK here, certainly well enough to convince a rarity committee. Mind you, it did help that the bird was showing in the open down to less than two metres.

The video can be seen here, I warn you though YouTube's compression process appears to be awful, and dealing with moving pictures filmed in portrait mode seems beyond them too.

PS. Also Long-tailed Duck and Red-necked Grebe knocking about the reservoir too; and all being overflown by passenger jets every 30 seconds,... lovely.

"What the hell you got there?!"

Twitched TC's Waxwings today in the hope they'd be in a nice quiet cul-de-sac and offer up a reasonable opportunity of a recording or two. Found them easy enough, even managed to get within ten metres of the pwetty ickle things but the recordings are only memorable for their comedy value. Front doors slamming, car doors thudding, car engines revving, van engines chugging, fan belts squealing, bicycles whirring, pedestrians scuffing, contractors building (hammering, sawing, 'tidy jobbing'), gardeners gardening; overhead light aircraft towing gliders not yet gliding and passenger jets just fucking the entire soundscape. My favourite end to a recording was a bloke wandering up and providing me with a blogpost title by means of introduction.

Did manage a short recording in which I bagged three different contact/alarm calls in about seven seconds albeit accompanied by a couple of passing nippers,... 

Click on the spectrogram for a reasonable sized version and/or, if you can spare 18 seconds in your busy lives, the recording can be heard here.

Post Waxwings, I had 21 Bewick's Swans (including seven juvs/1st-winters) in the Usk valley near Llangybi Bottom and a couple of Goldeneye on the river at Llanllowell [NB. Yes there are six, count 'em, ls in Llanllowell,... madness].

Swift, Pope, Hogarth,...

Damn! I was gonna do one of those hilarious lookalike posts (like this one), where I'd put something along the lines of "One of these is a vegetable with little or no grasp of climate change or the necessary measures to minimise its impacts,... the other is celeriac" and then put "celeriac" under the picture of John Hayes and "John Hayes" under the picture of the aesthetically challenged root vegetable; unfortunately, I have forgotten which image is which, therefore totally buggering this opportunity at political satire.

I fear I have let everyone down; my readership, my family, myself. Apologies one and all.

Duck!

Another random post to keep you going whilst I'm busy trying to get my computer to count birds so I don't have to,...

One of the terribly pretty, though single winged, Falcated Duck at Slimbridge from March.

Falcate: /ˈfalkeɪt/ adj., curved like a sickle; hooked. Early 19th century, from Latin falcatus, from falx, falc- 'sickle'.