No matter what the weather get outside Saturday 18th March 2017

With overnight wind and rain, the morning was still a bit damp and blowing with a westerly wind, the rain had petered out by the time I arrived at the Pembrey reserve.

I did a couple of quick jobs, including counting the new contingent of cattle now in residence in grazing field 1, 16 present and correct.

With high tide around 0920 I wandered over to the end of grazing field 2 and did a bit of sea watching.

In amongst the 2000+ Oystercatchers I found the leucistic bird that Bernie Beck had seen on 9th March, an odd but attractive looking bird in shades of brown and white, hopefully it will hang  around for tomorrows guided event.

Also on the beach were 100+ Bar-tailed Godwit, 35 Sanderling, whilst offshore,  four

Great-crested Grebes, a handful of Cormorants and Common Gulls.

As I looked eastwards into the estuary I saw a long,pointed winged greyish bird in the gloom flying towards me, as it got closer the dark cap and pointed bill could only be one, likely, bird a SANDWICH TERN. it coped with the stiff headwind as it trundled off westwards. It's the first Sandwich Tern of the year for Carmarthenshire.

Sandwich Tern, not from today as indicated by the blue sky!!

It's been a decent week across the reserve for migrant birds, either lingering winter visitors, or arriving summer ones, with Merlin still present, Northern Wheatear a few days ago,  Two White-fronted Geese yesterday (new bird for the reserve), and todays Sandwich Tern.

White-fronted Geese, (not my photograph, just for reference:

the birds yesterday both had dark patches

but not as much as the left hand bird here)

It just shows if you make the effort you never know what will turn up, the bird list for 2017 now stands at 82 species recorded.