Ickle fins

A few hours at Goldcliff over the afternoon high tide produced three Golden Plover, one or two Spotted Redshank, three Greenshank and 47 Black-tailed Godwit.  Very little in the way of small waders though with only one Dunlin and three Ringed Plover.  The best passerine migrants were 15 Sand Martin, one Wheatear and a dose of Chiffchaff.  However, trumping all the birds were two or three Harbour Porpoise feeding close-in off the point. 

Dropped in at Boat Lane/Redhouse Barn on the way back.  The Glossy Ibis continues to potter around and a Willow Warbler plus more Sand Martins and Chiffchaffs added to the haul of incoming migrants.

A late post on the fun we had last weekend

Popped in on the Gloucestcestcestcestershire Penduline Tits, then went on to take in the mixed Whitefront flock and feed the ducks at Slimbridge.  The pendies showed well, as did the geese but, as usual, the Slimbridge seed junkies stole the show.

Gorgeous but, unfortunately, this was not part of the mixed Whitefront flock referred to above.  Have seen a proper one at Slimbridge though,... in 1995, just before the combination of tragic population decline and farcical reintroduction gubbins (including the release of birds "contaminated" with Whitefront genes!?) turned the species into a mythical/untickable enigma.  

Leucistic Pintail, just one of the many gems you can bump into whilst wandering the highways and byways of restricted gene pool land. 

Another one for Project Splatter

Barn Owl, near Avonmouth.  Click here for information on Project Splatter.

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.