Croeso pawb,
What a benign spell of weather, just a shame the sun hasn't shone on Carmarthenshire.
This hasn't stopped good work being done and inquisitive minds satisfied, especially with Halloween activities taking place.
My ranger colleagues led a walk looking for bats at Pembrey Country Park and whilst there weren't big numbers they did manage to "detect" a couple of Greater Horseshoe Bats, (GHB) which is always a great result, GHB's have a really unique echo location sound descried as warbling in nature.
The wildlife feeding station at Llyn Llech Owain Country Park is, as usual, a hotspot for birders and watchers alike, this week myself and new volunteer Alice ran a ringing session from 6am until 10am, with 45 birds of nine species captured under licence; both Alice and myself hold bird ringing licences, with biometric data recorded in return for a nice shiny ring.
We had two particularly good captures, two Redwing, winter visitors from Scandinavia and a Female Chaffinch which had originally been ringed at a site in Boncath Pembrokeshire on 10th July 2022.The data we collect is entered into a national database, these are the data sets from one of the Redwing and the Chaffinch.
REDWI Age 3, hatched in 2024, Wing length 114mm Weight 56.7g Fat score 1 (very little stored fat)
CHAFF Age 4, at least one year old, Wing length 83mm Weight 19.3g Fat score 0 ( no need to store fat with so much free food at the station?)
Sadly we noted that a number of the Chaffinches we caught were suffering with the Fringilla papillomavirus on their legs meaning we couldn't ring them, after releasing the birds from the nets we disinfected our hands carefully.