Paul's Blog - All comments and views are my own,

A bright morning with a chilly E-NE breeze but still pleasant to be out. The Green-winged Orchids are spectacular at the moment with a good showing across the reserve. The theme of today's event was "signs of Spring" and we had plenty to see. A heads up from Bernie about a fall off Wheatears in Sandy Water Park a few miles east of the reserve. At Pembrey it was soon apparent there was a movement of birds and very quickly the numbers started to mount up, there were at least 20 birds on site with the majority being females, only three males were noted. Staying with birds three Whimbrel which were quite approachable seemed to be newly arrived, a few Swallows passing through plus the mix of resident birds such as Stonechat, Meadow Pipit and Skylark made for a decent morning. Whimbrel The highlight though came in the form of the GREEN HAIRSTREAK butterfly, with four seen on the food plant, Gorse,a stunningly colourful butterfly; a couple of Speckl

With a perfect forecast for this morning, overcast and little or no wind, I was on site at Pembrey by 05:30hrs for a ringing session. I set up in the recently created reed bed ride, deeper into the reeds, and with a bit of bush craft and luck soon had a GRASSHOPPER WARBLER, (Grawa) in the net, another trans-Saharan migrant with the unmistakable "reeling" song. The tail of this bird shows "growth bars" which may indicate poor feeding in the wintering grounds. I also caught seven SEDGE WARBLERS, (Sedwa) including a bird already carrying a ring, it's always interesting to find a ringed bird in the net, although usually they are birds that have been ringed in the area on previous occasions---- not today though this Sedwa was wearing a FRENCH ringing scheme ring, my first control of a bird ringed outside of the UK. The information has been sent to the BTO who will forward the ring number to the French scheme and in the future

I was joined, again, today by Simon Jones on work placement, with another pair of willing hands we tackled the rather unsightly entrance fence at Pembrey LNR, what started as a simple job took 2.5 hours of huffing and puffing trying to remove a few posts. We actually gave in trying to remove two of them leaving one and cutting one off below ground level, the wire used on the fence was designed for Rhino control. Interestingly whilst attempting to dig out one post we discovered four Slow Worms some 20cm below ground I managed to move three to a safe location whilst the fourth disappeared even deeper, hence why we cut the post off. We then tackled some of the Sea Buckthorn that the machinery couldn't reach back in the winter its easy to make an impact with a pair of loppers and a saw... Enough hard labour, we set off to do some monitoring of Shelduck drawing a blank we then tripped over some MOONWORT or rather 20 spikes of this unique looking fern with a liking for ca

Most naturalists, especially birders seem to start looking for signs of spring in darkest February, and of course nature is thinking about the rising temperatures, and longer hours of daylight, but it's still winter, then the first green shoots appear maybe the first Brimstone, Sand Martin and is that Chiffchaff "new in" or a wintering bird.... Well the past ten days have seen a surge in the appearance of the real spring with decent arrivals of Swallows, my first House Martin, Sedge Warbler, Grasshopper Warbler and a few Sandwich Terns. The Common Shelduck have been displaying all week the males play a "king of the castle" routine with head bobbing and calling. Whilst I haven't seen a Brimstone "on patch" I have seen Holly Blue, Small Tortoiseshell, Peacock and Speckled Wood. On the flora front, from one spike of Green-winged Orchid there are now hundreds in flower in F3 alone, as well as Wild Pansy, and Heath Dog Violet.