Wednesday 16th August 2017

A morning session at the Morfa Berwig LNR, with fencing in and fencing out, gate posts out, moved  and in and just in,  a joy to drive right up to the work sites rather than having to carry all the tools and materials more than 50m, not being lazy just time and effort conscious.

Veronica hard at work again, we actually do share the work I dug the hole Veronica filled it in!!

Then it was off to Pembrey Burrows LNR to assist with the making of a well being video highlighting the health benefits of visiting the county Local Nature Reserves and natural spaces.

Big skies, miles of deserted beach, the sound of larks and the breeze in your hair all good for your health and wellbeing, and for a change, free....

Competition time Friday 11th August 2017

I keep finding deceased creatures, so today a little test of you knowledge, no prize though just the satisfaction of taking part, use the comment section at the end to submit your answer.

What am I

who does this belong to

After washing my hands (I think I did anyway), I stopped at the new café off factory road Daisies Little Café, WOW a great little place, it was very busy and I had a bit of a wait but it was worth it, locally sourced ingredients made for a lovely medium sized breakfast, plus the young man, Geriant, who was running the show today knows how to look after customers...worth a visit.

Wednesday 9th August 2017

Wednesday means only one thing, volunteer day...

Today Veronica and Brian joined me at Pembrey Burrows for a morning of tasks and then a butterfly survey.

The first job was to deal with an apparent escape plot by the cattle in F2 with the ring leader watching the gap in the fence, we soon had the upper hand, with a few staples and a piece of wire the gap was sealed for now!!!

"... so that's how they fix it, I'll tell the others!"

Brian joined us at 10am and we set off to create a refuge for the wintering Snipe should they be disturbed from their usual daytime roosts. Having been involved in some wader scrape management with the North Wilts Ringing Group I had a good idea of what I wanted to achieve, an open area of low vegetation in a secluded part of the reed bed, so it was with an area identified that we set Veronica loose with her scythe, and pretty impressive it was too, Brian and I could only look on in amazement at the way she swung the scythe listening to the satisfying swish of blade against vegetation, plus of course the scythe is a personal tool and set up just for the user.

We piled the cuttings into either habitat piles or a long windrow, Snipe like to sit along windrows to roost. The initial work is pretty impressive I want to return in a few weeks to create some "scallops" in the reed and rush edges and clear some of the ground vegetation to create muddy areas.

                                       

Work in progress

With the days work on the Snipe project done, Veronica and I went off to do the August butterfly survey, a transect of just about one mile through the reserve, we had 106 sightings of around 11 species (I've forgotten the detail Veronica was doing the recording)

                                                

Butterfly surveying,

(it may look like Veronica does all the work, well she did most of it today!)

Tuesday 8th August 2017

After a few odd jobs to do this morning it was off to lead a "beach hunt" event organised by Wales Wildlife Watch Llanelli.

In good weather conditions a crowd of 21 children and nine adults, including the organisers, wandered on to Cefn Sidan to explore the beach after the mornings high tide.

The first and striking creatures we saw were probably 100's of Barrel Jellyfish washed up on the strandline, not unusual for this stretch of coast.

The kids, (not sure if that's pc these days but eh oh), were soon collecting shells, seaweed, feathers and other items to be identified, we were using old "takeaway" containers these are ideal for the kids to carry their finds.

I was so pleased to find that some of the older kids were keen to learn and really quite knowledgeable about the items they were finding and were not at all phased by the dead Manx Shearwater one of them found, even when I pulled the head off to keep the skull.

Breeding on the offshore islands on the West and North coasts of the UK, these masters of the air spend their winters off the coast of South America

Story telling the life of the Manx Shearwater,

(I wish the photographer would tell me before taking a photo so that I can breath in and put my cap on properly LOL)

The good weather soon looked like it was going to turn very wet so we headed back to the cars earlier than planned which was just as well because no sooner had we made it back than it started to pour down.

Beach cleansing Friday 4th August 2017

After the strong WSW winds and the accompanying rain the Cefn Sidan beach looks remarkably clean with little exposed rubbish.

Not sure where the Strandline Beetles are at the moment as "refuges" on the beach are very few and far between.

A clean  Cefn Sidan

I found another dead Gannet plus quite a few Barrel Jellyfish, I'm often asked "what happens to them?" well from what I saw today a lot of them provide a huge meal for the various invertebrates on the beach such as sandhoppers, there were thousands of sandhoppers on the open beach this morning many of them apparently feeding on the jellyfish

The dune flora is, now, perhaps past its best although there are some interesting plants to be found including this thistle, which even when fresh looks dead, its the Carline Thistle.

Carline Thistle

In the brief morning sunshine I did see a Painted Lady butterfly, hopefully a spell of settled weather will arrive soon, then it will be a great time to be out on the reserve looking for late summer/autumn wildlife get out there and enjoy, we have an event on 26th August - Salt marsh flowers at 10am come along and bring a friend!!!

Wader migration Wednesday 2nd August 2017

The weather is stuck in a bit of a rut with a run of low pressures rolling in off the Atlantic, bringing wind and rain, this autumnal feeling weather fitted well with the obvious movement of waders on Cefn Sidan today.

Several species of waders, with c300 Sanderling, 100+ Dunlin, good numbers of Ringed Plover and two Turnstone were present with the Sanderling and Dunlin in a mix of summer and autumn/winter plumages while the Turnstone were looking bright in their colourful tones.

Turnstone, turning seaweed!

We drove most of the beach looking for reported bird corpses, as it was we only found two Gannet, one Great Black-backed Gull and an unidentified gull corpses, we checked for rings but none were found.

Gannet

A new sign at the entrance of the Pembrey reserve should make for easier reading.... and we also looked at the nest boxes for Morfa Berwig reserve so that they are fit for purpose.

Life and death Saturday 29th July 2017

An early morning phone call from a visitor reporting something not right in one of the grazing fields.

When I arrived I was told my another visitor of a dead Grey Seal on the beach, I put that one on hold, it was dead and not going anywhere - hold that thought.

Arriving at Field 1 I could see 14 cattle should be 16, at the same time the 15 cattle in Field 2 were being a bit boisterous and bellowing....

I climbed the gate (at the hinge end) to count the herd in F1 properly 16 plus a new born calf!!!! that shouldn't have happened, but yes there he was, a lovely Welsh Black calf, suckling from his mum.

After informing the grazier who was totally shocked I went off to investigate the dead seal, arriving on the beach at CE53 to see one of the park rangers trundling down the beach in a tractor  with the seal in the front loader to be buried out of sight, so I didn't get to see, measure or photograph it.