Down Pen-y-lan

Two mountain bike-borne circumnavigations of the Pen-y-lan area in the last week or so.  Little of note.  Very few of our nose-diving farmland species present, just a handful of Skylark and Linnet,... no Yellowhammers yet.  Hopefully they haven't started singing and are waiting to leap out atop every hedgerow, I doubt it though.

A few pools of seasonal flooding are still present in the fields, bound to attract something if it's still there in April.

Rancid?

A fleeting lunchtime visit.  Fully-winged (always a positive thing for a bird) and unringed.  Shared the pond with Goosander, amongst other stuff,... mergansertastic.

  Two in the Azores, another in Iceland and one in Wiltshire,...

... it's an invasion!

Also saw a Grey Wagtail minus its tail today,... so, almost literally, a Grey Wag. 

[Addendum: turns out there have been two in Iceland this winter, another in the Faroes and one in Scotland.  This bird also moved on after six days, fed in a natural manner and wasn't ridiculously tame, e.g. the Lesser Scaup at Bryn Bach came just as close,...  half a chance of acceptance?]

It hadn't gone far

Ten years, one month and four days since I last saw Red-necked Grebe in Gwent,... another one! All the better this time for being on the patch. For details of the previous bird click here. Jeebus! Just realised I've been flogging away at this blog for over a decade. What. A. Criminal. Waste. Of. Time.

A nice grebe on a nice sunny late afternoon at Uskmouth.

Mostly grey and green,... mostly

An unsuspecting lone birch mooches in the corner of a rushy field whilst, over the ridge, come the alien hordes.  Run birch! RUN!

Another couple of weeks up and down to a wet and windy Scotland.  Another couple of weeks interspersed by the odd raptor, a few Pinkfeet, increasingly frisky Crossbills, etc., etc. 

Moist, moisten, moistened

Ynysyfro Reservoirs upper basin in the rain today.

Two sodden weekends into the new year, two soggy visits to the mighty Ynysyfro completed.  Not an awful lot doing but, let's face it, one goes to Ynysyfro for the irony not the birds,... I guess two redhead Goosander on the lower basin are the pinnacle of ornithological achievement thus far.  Other delights include the long-staying leucistic Coot, Aythya numbers creeping up toward respectability and the 'Scaup-faced' female Pochard returning for another winter.  Joy!  Untrammelled, if moist, joy.
    

Ynysyfro Reservoirs upper basin just before the rain last week.

The storms keep rolling in

First-winter Kittiwake heading down-channel

More gusts and bluster over high tide, a few more hours atop the sea wall, a few more seabirds bagged.  An adult-winter Mediterranean Gull went up-channel and two each of Great Skua and Kittiwake down.  No divers, no auks.  A very quick look at the pools produced naff all of note.

You know, they do say that climate change will increase the frequency and intensity of storms in the UK,... so, whilst your kids' futures are a total clustf*ck of accelerated sea level rise, rising temperatures, extreme winter precipitation and flooding, endless summer droughts and heatwaves, the failure of critical infrastructure from water supply to healthcare, ecosystem collapse, international instability, mass movements of refugees, shortages of raw materials and commodities, etc., etc., with a bit of luck, in the short-term, we should get a few extra Kittiwakes in the county.

YAY!

Yet more seabirds

Another half-decent few hours at a chilly and westerly swept Goldcliff Point (luckily we were tucked out of it with tea and chocolate biscuits on tap).  Highlights included: adult Little Gull, Great Northern Diver (it's been a good year for these), two pale phase Pomarine Skuas, two Great Skuas (one coming right in over the point) and 22 Kittiwake.  The one member of 'Team Point' doing a Gwent year list was beside himself with glee.  Unfortunately this was the end of the era of comfy seawatching, from now on it's back to the sea-wall with us.  This time next week it will be a flask of lukewarm, metallic-tangy tea; the twin trails of nose across glove; and the creak and squeal of compacted spine and corroded tripod head,... *sob*. 

At Goldcliff Pools conditions were bloody awful (neither tea nor biscuits on tap) and only a Greenshank made it into the notes app. 

 Bonxie coming in to the point,...

... Bonxie passing over the point.

Wholemeal crusts

Popped in on Ynysyfro in the hope that a roaming Whooper Swan (or seven) had dropped in,... they hadn't.  Also fed the ducks at Fourteen Locks, Newport's premier venue for random combinations of polluted Mallard DNA.

Ducky-poos! 

First-winter Mudwangler.

Oh dear.

Barney,... not quite Wilma

 Two of the Great Skuas in the, slightly murky, estuary this morning.  Difficult to be sure just how many were knocking around but 5-10 would probably cover it.

First-winter Shag just off the point, had a standard metal ring on the right leg, same bird as seen at Severnside?

Storm Barney produced a few seabirds off Goldcliff Point today including two Gwent tart-ticks: Razorbill and Shag.  Had I not got stuck in traffic it would have been three but Guillemot eluded me again, definitely my Gwent list bogey.  Bird of the day, however, was probably a brief Slavonian Grebe on the water just off the point, all the briefer for me thanks to a show of despicable blocking tactics by the former county recorder (ungentlemanly conduct, bringing the game into disrepute, etc., yellow, borderline red, card behaviour).  The best non-seabird was a late Swallow heading off towards Weston-super-Mare.

Haven't had a bad few days 'channel-watching' with Common Scoter, Great Northern Diver, Leach's Petrel, Gannet, Shag*, Slavonian Grebe**, Arctic Skua, Great Skua, Razorbill*, auk sp., Black Guillemot* and Kittiwake all putting in appearances.  Just waiting for the Surf Scoter to come and visit now. 

* - Gwent and patch tick; ** - patch tick.     

The perfect wave of improbability

Remember me, Captain?

There are many obstacles placed before the frustrated seabirders of Gwent, dubious geographical location (does that count as sea?), distance to the deepwater channel, a limited choice in observation points, etc.  However, it is the evil conjoined twins of disbelief and self-doubt that are the most impassable impediments.  Anything half-decent flying up or down-channel is instantly trailed by a dense fret of vacillation.  But add the slightest imperfection of viewing conditions, or brevity of sighting, and the water at the foot of the sea wall broils and froths, spray fills the air and a nigh impregnable wall of watery irresolution rushes skywards.  And there you are, at the foot of an impossibly vertical torrent of unlikelihood, clinging to your possible penguin or probable petrel.  Momentarily a troubled, colourless face peers back then,… the wave breaks and crashes down, crushing down, pummelling the olive clad body without and the ornithological spirit within.  The under-current swirls around once planted, sliding, slipping, flailing feet.  Swept out into the sea of not-quite-knowing, gasping, thrashing, turning to see,… to see nothing but unbearable wave after wave of incredulity, bearing down, barrelling down.  Submerged, wide-eyed, white-eyed, silent screams; brine-filled convulsions, lungs burst and from your grasp slips the prize find; down, down into the weedy, eely-mouthed darkness to a silty-soft, cold as death, hagfish-filled (thats-what-you-get-for-birding-on-the-)bed.

How’s it above?

And so it was.  An auk, arse-on, going away, Avonmouth-bound at a rate of (no [knots], only Barwit of note on the wader front).  White below, black tail, white rump, WHITE RUMP!  Get on this!  There's white on the upperparts, THERE IS WHITE ON THE UPPERWING!  GET ON THIS!  It ploughs on towards blighty.  GET ON THIS!  Directly away, following an upriver furrow, lost amongst the frothing white horses.  PANIC!  A squall murks the background, landmarks blur, ill-formed directions are ineffectually blurted.  The arse is lost in the distant foam and all that remains is an alcidic etching on the retina.  A resignation settles on the flock, a helplessness learnt of innumerable unidentified feathery specks.  The one has all but got away. 

Tiddlers in a jamjar?

But it couldn’t be anything else.  There is nothing else it could be.  Solace?!  Who will give me solace?  The good book is sought, offered and, once found (in a glove-compartment beneath the sticky tin of sugar dusty sweets), consulted.  And from the bible-black-backed tome comes forth the flickering light of faith.  No, really, there is nothing else it could have been.  A phone call to Severnside and tweet to the ether (carefully caveated with ‘possibles’, ‘maybes’, ‘keep your eyes open fors’ and ‘he’s not 100% buts’) and,… and that’s all that can be done.  Not that that knowledge halts the wind-whipped waves of despair and self-loathing.  AAARGH! Didn’t nail it.  F***CK!  A county first.  Definitely didn’t get enough to get it accepted.  Jeeebus!  Single observer.  No photo.  Didn’t happen.  Sob.  

When she smiles, is there dimples?

[Ping]

“Thanks… Just had close views of Black Guillemot off Severn Beach”

Oh, Twitter how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.  Get in!  I’m bloody having it!  Will it come back down?  Keep flipping looking. 

Rock-a-bye baby?

Then,…

[Ping]

“Black Guillemot showing well Blackrock… on the rocks.”

Slamming of car doors, revving of engines, screeching of brakes and passengers, then brakes again,… Blackrock.  It was here three minutes ago,… it’s here now!  Lappage, photographage, rejoicage, oh-bugger-it-just-flew-offage,… more birding, then home. 

Oh, my dead dears!

First-winter Black Guillemot, Blackrock, Gwent.  If it had flown by Goldcliff Point in this fashion much less anguish would have ensued.  Photo by Tom Chinnick. 

First-winter Black Guillemot, Blackrock, Gwent.  It climbed out of the water on several occasions, maybe not 100% healthy.  Again, photo by Tom Chinnick.