Thursday 1st September

I will be on a short break on the island of Majorca, from 3rd to 11th September

Blog will be internet dependent while away....

Wednesday 31st August 2016

Bees....................

Last week we discovered that Honey Bees had moved in on the Barn Owl box in Pembrey Forest, given that both Barn Owls and Honey Bees are in need of a helping hand a small dilemma loomed, what to do?

The answer was quite easy the bees possibly came from one of the many hives in the forest and should be moved on to make way for any prospective Barn Owl.

As chance would have it I ended up talking to a visitor who turned out to be one of the local bee keepers and put him in touch with Simeon to make further arrangements.

This found us in the forest admiring the skills of John, the bee keeper, as he put in place the steps to encourage the bees to move from the nest box into a temporary hive for onward travel to pastures new, they will need to be ,moved about 3 miles to stop them coming back to the nest box.

Opps that's a lot of Honey Bees

It was very interesting to hear about the lives of the Honey Bee directly from someone who clearly is very passionate about these industrious insects, apparently the only farmed insect in the world.

Honey Bees are excellent parents, so part of the plan involved moving the brood chambers from the nest box into the temporary hive, the bees would instinctively look for the eggs and grubs and continue caring for them... well that's the plan!

Brood chambers

The one thing that we and John were impressed by was how docile the bees were despite the disturbance being caused, I was particularly pleased!!!

Calm or not John still had his smoker ready

difficult to see in the photo but the bees on the roof were "waggling" ,

waving their bodies/bums

With John satisfied that he had done all he could we stopped for lunch before continuing with our Wednesday tasks......

a more mundane job......

Monday 29th August 2016

Don't forget the extra net.......!

With limitations due to public access; I had this mornings ringing planned with military precision, nets planned last night pegs in place all I needed to do was put an extra net, with the two already in the bag,  ready to pick up this morning, on site for 5:30 and ready to go when I thought where's the extra net?? I know on the table in the house....

With just two nets and contemplating "what if.." a short session ensued, the clear conditions over night and the fact that there were NO hirundines at the roost last night should have been a clue to the quiet time I had.

Quality prevailed with a stunning Lesser Whitethroat in the first round with Blackcap and Common Whitethroat to follow.

Hard to beat I think..........

Lesser Whitethroat

Lesser Whitethroat

Blackcap

Saturday 27th August 2016

Early start pays off.....

Well it wasn't that early really, on site for 06:00 and just two nets set in the Sea Buckthorn/Gorse scrub near the information shelter., with a distinct nip in the air and a real autumnal feeling.

A steady run of birds including, Willow Warbler, Dunnock, Blackcap and Whitethroat, with the star bird of the session being a Pied Flycatcher, not only the first ringed at Pembrey Burrows, but the first I have ever ringed.

Common Whitethroat

Pied Flycatcher, aged on a combination of features

but middle tertial clinched the age as a 3, hatched
this year (hard to see in the photo's)

This bird was different to the bird I saw on Wednesday, which after discussing the photo with a friend was most likely and adult bird, while today's was definitely a bird of the year BTO code 3.

Pied Flycatcher

With Wednesday's bird being the first for the site and then today a second I wonder how many of this under recorded, (away from its breeding woods) summer migrant pass along the coast.

Pied Flycatcher

Wednesday 24th August 2016

You just never know what will turn up.....

I was just pottering along in the van this morning thinking about the day ahead when it occurred to me that there were quite a few birds in the scrub along the track to the information shelter.....

Then a bird flitted into view and landed in front of the van  and flew straight back up into the bushes, it took a few seconds for it to register that the bird was in fact a Pied Flycatcher, a ♀ type and a cracking record for the reserve.

Pied Flycatcher, record shot

The rest of the day was spent with the "Wednesday Crew" doing a range of tasks that seemed to involve a fair bit of dog poo!!!!, as well as rummaging through refuse skips for useful objects like an old bath.... (water trough for cattle).

On the wildlife front a Barn Owl box with a Honey Bees colony in residence was a startling sight, just as well we didn't have a ladder to check the box.

The sight of two quad bikes emerging over the top of the dunes brought smiles, (of course we were smiling not the idiots on the quads)....there is never a dull  moment in the countryside..

19th - 21st August 2016

A taste of autumn....

The past few days have seen a real good mix of weather, culminating in a day and night of gales with wind speeds at Pembrey of 63mph, and yes its still August.

The Carmarthenshire Bird Club event on Thursday saw 21 members enjoy a mixed bag of waders and gulls but only low numbers of terns, Sandwich Terns being the only species seen

Amongst the waders the surprise was 6 or 8 Bar-tailed Godwits, also present were over 4000 Oystercatchers, 84 Ringed Plover, a handful of Dunlin and Knot. A Common Sandpiper was new for the reserve 2016 bird list.

Gulls were present in good numbers with Black-headed the most abundant, Herring, Lesser and Greater Black-backed, Common and Mediterranean all in reasonable numbers, A couple of Gannets offshore, and a Fulmar which came in very close off the estuary completed the seabirds.

Black-headed Gull

Land birds included  2 Northern Wheatear, Linnets, Stonechat, Rock Pipits and Pied Wagtails, and an adult and juvenile Peregrine.

Stonechat ♂

On Friday I was joined by eight people for another look at the high tide, a similar range of birds were seen, but Black-tailed Godwit was new however the highlight was undoubtedly a Kittiwake first found by Veronica.

Saturday saw a good friend, Nick, come and stayed for the weekend and despite the less than seasonal weather we ventured out and were treated to a Spoonbill fly in to the main creek in the marsh. This brought the reserve 2016 bird list to a credible 110 species.

After a break for food we went back out around 18:00hrs and found little different on the tide, however a large dark Skua species was found mid channel but in the conditions a firm identity was difficult.

Sunday saw better conditions and a visit to Pembrey Old Harbour turned up a couple more Northern Wheatear, and best of all the Spoonbill was seen flying into the pond/marsh of Field 2

Eurasian Spoonbill (this is one of my personal library photos)

Tuesday 16th August

On the beach.....

I had been asked to help with a one off walk with Carmarthenshire Wildlife Walks, who laid on an event for the Llanelli "pups" a summer school organisation, the plan was to take the kids (am I allowed to say kids?) onto the beach for a bit of a strandline safari.

As these thing can turnout there were more adults (11 I think) than kids (5 I think) I wasn't leading so I didn't need to account for them!

The morning was warm bright and a bit breezy with an easterly edge to the wind, luckily the strandline was on the damper part of the beach so not too much flying sand.

Art in sand.... a photo from the Spring

Whilst there was much to entertain everyone I was a little disappointed by the lack of "things" to find, the recent weather has resulted in much of the debris on the beach being covered by sand.

In a little over an hour. everyone's collecting trays ( ex takeaway containers) were overflowing with specimens.

A nice collection (photo Veronica Haines)

Whelks, Netted Dog Whelk, Tellins, Banded Wedge shell, Razor Shell. Necklace Shell, Masked Crab, Spiny Spider Crab, bits of Cuttlefish bone and a few Cat Shark egg cases along with the odd feather and bit of Bladder Wrack made up the bulk of the finds, The Barrell Jellyfish were just too big to go in the tray!!!.

Barrel Jellyfish, (upside down)

For me the important outcome was that everyone learned something, the kids enjoyed themselves and everyone had a bit of exercise.