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.

What a busy few days, we have been joined by Simon Jones a Countryside Management student on a work placement module. With another pair of willing hands quite a few jobs have been tackled, nothing onerous just jobs that needed doing. With the school break in full swing, Monday found me dousing down a fire where guests had been making marshmallow smorfs? luckily the fire didn't spread into nearby Gorse, but the buggers had taken a wooden batten off the shelter, and off a nearby reptile refugia as fuel!!!. Tuesday started with a briefing for Simon then a guided walk with Carmarthenshire Wildlife Walks, a total of twelve adults and two children in perfect weather. The route enabled me to show off some early signs of spring in the shape of Green winged Orchid, Cowslip, Morels ( we found a few more and I continue to find them scattered widely), the beach held its usual array of shells and crab carapaces with examples of Velvet Swimming Crab and of course the curious l

I sometimes get the expected reaction from visitors wrong, (to be fair though not often), so today when I went to speak to a visitor with two dogs, which on a previous occasion had run all over the space I was working in, I didn't expect  a good outcome.. how wrong I was the chap was really engaged with the work we are doing and how our interaction with visitors is having a positive effect. There's a moral there somewhere. Now for those Morels, to be precise one Morel, Morchella esculenta , I hadn't seen a Morel for over 25years so when local fungi legend Dr Philip Jones directed me to a specimen he had located on the reserve I was off to find it. The Morel is actually a "cap" fungi, just like a toadstool however the spores are carried in the brain like structures on the upper surface, as the latin name suggests they can make good eating, if you can get there before the snails and slug and all manner of other invertebrate, plus of course they tend to

What a stunningly beautiful day, the Pembrey reserve looked at it's best for early spring. Of course not every day is straight forward, and today started off with a complaint from a horse rider that a dog had chased her and her daughters ponies down the beach..... Then, although nothing to do with the reserve, the local RNLI Lifeboat was called out to assist a yacht in the estuary, a few hours later and the Coastguard helicopter did a round of the bay, the sunshine brings them out..... Back to the reserve Wildlife was very evident with a pair if Pied Wagtails investigating the information shelter, a wandering Slow Worm, a couple of Field Voles and perhaps best of all a territorial male Lapwing, I wonder what he was up too? Slow Worm ♂ Lapwing A telephone call from local birder Adam informed me that he had found a female BLACK REDSTART,  a first for the site, disappointedly I couldn't relocate it. Bird species 90 of 2017. ♀ Black Redstart