Thursday 31st March 2016

Frost and ice, then glorious sunshine...

This morning must have been the frostiest that I have been out in for a very considerable time, probably over 12months; we were at Oxwich NNR for a few hours.

The morning developed slowly into glorious sunshine and a gentle breeze, the sun on the nets was not helpful but the net in the shelter of some scrub played its part with a slow trickle of birds, mostly retraps but later in the morning a few new (unringed) birds.

The surprise of the morning was a male Sparrowhawk caught whilst probably investigating the male Great Spotted Woodpecker that was already in the net, and judging by the mess that it made of the net it was not happy having the Sparrowhawk for company.

Male Eurasian Sparrowhawk

Wednesday 30th March 2016

Great day to be alive....

The weather this morning was cool and blustery and after a heavy shower at 8am the rest of the day turned out to be one of the best so far.

I checked the camera trap in the reed bed, and although no Otters were on film there was a rear view of a Badger, a Meadow Pipit and a full on male Pheasant ( there are three Pheasants living in the marsh which is of courser the natural home to these birds). I can't get the video to upload and play in the blog but I will keep trying.

I then updated the information in the shelter and had a Barn Swallow cross my path. Whilst talking with a visitor a redshank flew in from the beach and started to display flight over one of the grazing fields!! magic.

As if that wasn't enough whilst talking to Adam Dare, one of the local birders, and his wife a flock of c175 Golden Plover flew across the reserve quite low, the reason was soon revealed to be the Peregrine which was in hot pursuit and looked like it had made a kill of one of the birds so c174 now!

With a small passage of Barn Swallows and a Northern Wheatear on the dunes it was a really great morning and all before 10am.

The rest of the day was spent on tasks including fixing another potential breach in the cattle fence...

...shall we drive over to get the fence post?, its too boggy says Veronica so we walk over

solid ground for 1/4 of a mile pick up the fence posts and walk back 1/4 mile...!

That should hold them...

Work on the stile into our "control of dogs" field will have to wait (wrong saw), then we went off to look at the lakes in the Millennium Coastal Park to check on the litter situation and any fishing activity.

At just one lake we picked three bags of plastic between us a swell as a full bag of landfill waste, why would anglers want to sit in trash?

There was no fishing activity on any of the four lakes  but we did find a dead fish looking suspiciously like the invasive non-native Top-mouth Gudgeon, we know this is in one of the lakes but thought the others were clear....

possibly a Top-mouth Gudgeon

Monday 28th March 2016

Storm Katie blows through.....

Storm Katie didn't affect this part of the world too much, although it did rain a lot last night.

This morning consisted of an early call at WWT with the CES team of Gower Ringing Group to set up for the new CES season as we have had four new nets given to the group.

With that task sorted in double quick time I set off to meet Veronica, who donated the camera trap last week, to set the camera in the reed beds at the reserve. With that task done and dusted we had a walk along the beach and over the dunes, spending time searching for our special beetle the "Strandline Beetle", alas we didn't find any but did come across another "black" beetle, the Strand-line beetle, and what we think is its larval form.

Strand-line beetle and larva

Last year, Common Ringed Plover nested on the upper beach so it was great to see one bird stubbornly refusing to move until we got a bit too close, fingers crossed lets see what this year brings.

Common Ringed Plover with obligatory ocean debris

A late evening walk around Sandy Water Park was accompanied by this male Blackbird with the softest of song......

champion songster