Friday 7th October 2106

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An East wind brings a chill and a thrill....

The weather has taken a real turn to autumn, with cooler days and nights and a steady East or North East breeze.

 The reserve is settling down into the quiet time but there is still plenty to see, especially the wide range of Waxcap fungi, and the various trees now laden with berries.
Dune Waxcap

This morning I was surprise to see a "blonde" standing near one of the field fences, especially as yesterday there were only "raven" and "grey" coloured cattle on site!
Wrong side of the fence, and no intention of getting on the right side

Blondie was also on the WRONG side of the fence, it turns out that two weeks ago she escaped while being loaded onto the lorry to be TB tested, well despite the best efforts of the grazier, his wife and myself blondie is still on the wrong side of the fence, only now she has the company of a young quiet bullock who will hopefully calm her down enough to be coaxed back into the field.....

 The morning event delayed a short ringing session until 10am, when I set one 40' net in the most sheltered ride I could find, in the Willow area.

 I played a "crest mix" in the hope of attracting Goldcrest or Firecrest,  I hadn't walked 100m away when I could see a bird in the net, I decided to go back and extract it and believe me when I say I was shaking with excitement to see a YELLOW BROWED WARBLER, incredible.

Yellow Browed Warbler, wing length 54mm weight 6.7g

The wing bars were much "yellower" than the photograph suggests

This bird has made the long trek from the Siberian taiga region all the way to be the 5th  Carmarthenshire record and the first since 2010 (so the county recorder told me). There have been a lot of YBW on the East coast in the last few days, a regular event but this year aided by the conducive Easterly winds...., usually discovered by the distinctive call they may be under recorded in Carmarthenshire but this is 100% a YBW

Bird species 130 for the reserve/SSSI in 2016

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