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

A late evening visit to Pembrey in the hope of ringing some waders , was the plan with a very high tide, perhaps too high for the task and just a lonely Oystercatcher ringed. But apparently it was a "nice walk", there was something surreal about splashing in the sea in the dark! The surprise came as we arrived at the beach where a Grey Seal pup raised its head to check us out.... still in it cloak of white(ish) fur it paid little attention to us until Gwyn had to walk passed it when it did get a bit agitated. I don't do "cute" but there's no denying that the soulful look in those eyes did give me a warm feeling... I was concerned that it may have been too young to be on it's own, the nearest colony is at Worm' Head on the Gower, it sneezed a couple of times and when we returned from our "nice walk" it was soundly asleep. Just a bit of curiosity I returned this morning to see if it was still there but it had moved

Wednesday, as we all know is volunteers day, so it was that I was joined by Brian, the others having other commitments. We completed jobs that have been on the list for a while plus a job forced on us by laziness on the part of a third party!!! No Parking message reinforced at the barrier, and an extra barrier put in place. We also linseed oiled the "snaths" for the scythes which was quite satisfying, another job ticked off. Now to the suspicious activity, a few days ago I found a Wood Mouse corpse in the information shelter, behind a seat, it had been bitten through the head... also a few "splashes" of white on the outside of the building. Then yesterday I found an Owl pellet in the shelter! and more splashes. A carefully positioned trail camera and my suspicious were confirmed, one or more, Barn Owls visiting the shelter at night. Barn Owl Pellet, I will dissect it and see what's been eaten

A drier morning to meet the stalwart MENCAP volunteers for a litter pick along the beach. It was breezier than it felt once we arrived on the open beach, but undeterred we set off collecting another five bags of rubbish, mostly old fishing rope and netting. Some of the things we didn't pick up included the single dead Sheep, the Single juvenile Porpoise and the host of Barrel Jellyfish. Amongst the usual tide line debris were a couple of interesting finds, including a first sighting for me of  a Portuguese Man o'War, Physalia physalis , and several complete By-the-wind Sailor, Velella velella , previously I've only seen the "skeleton". * please do not touch the Portuguese Man o'War, they sting even when dead* Portuguese Man o'War  Porpoise? I suspect the recent run of horrendous weather out in the Atlantic has contributed to the arrival of such a mix of creatures. On the land side of things it may interest followers to look fo

In between the showers there was an obvious passage of Skylarks moving in a NW - SE direction with the birds gaining height as they approached the estuary. A juvenile Moorhen was a new bird record for the reserve, well at least I've never recorded them before, this brings the 2017 list to 124 species. I drove into the old car park to be confronted by the sight of one of the stiles completely trashed and cattle wandering around the dunes!!!!! Closer inspection revealed the stile had been dismantled and the wire pulled open, cattle don't do that! Cattle don't "peel back" fencing This is the second incident of vandalism targeting the cattle in this field to have occurred in the last month. Luckily today the cattle were keen to follow a rattled bin bag, thinking there was food in it, so they were soon back in the field leaving the grazier to secure the fence. putting posts in the easy way !

Morfa Berwig was due a visit this morning, so I trundled along with the weather overcast but dry with some sunny spells. The first thing I noticed as I approached the entrance were two new signs, it looks like the environmental enforcement team are getting as fed up with the fly tipping at the reserve as we are, well done..... We do have some Welsh Government signs to go up to reinforce the penalties of fly tipping. A leisurely walk around the reserve accompanied by the sound of the birds in the trees and ditches, with Moorhen, Water Rail, a tit flock  and a new bird for the site a Green Woodpecker, one or two flowers are still out including Marsh Ragwort; butterflies were represented by Red Admiral and Speckled Wood. There are one or two decent sized Oaks on the reserve and I was drawn to one particular tree which seemed to have more galls than acorns. Oak Marble Galls The galls,in this case Oak marble galls, are caused by a chemically induced distortion of

A completely different day, weather wise, to yesterday with a stiff breeze blowing and an outlook of rain to come. The team took to the beach to collect up bags of litter already collected on previous litter picking days, someone had got there before us for one lot, but at the western end of Cefn Sidan the bags still waited to be collected. Then a spot of lunch in the van whilst sat watching the seascape and putting the world to rights.... There were some decent numbers of birds on the beach with a nice range of species including, Oystercatchers, Dunlin, Sanderling, three Bar-tailed Godwits, c6 Sandwich Terns and a single Ruff,  as well as the usual array of gulls Sandwich Tern Back into Pembrey Country Park where we collected Willow and Birch branches for the local primary schools' "forest school". A couple of Spindle shrubs were really showy with their fuchsia pink and deep orange seed heads, really brightening up the forest track. Spind

Ouch, I recently had an argument with a piece of wood, the wood won! Four broken ribs later and I can laugh about it just!!! This morning looked like the last settled morning for a while so despite the ribs I set up for Skylarks on the reserve. This mornings ringing site An overcast almost windless morning, with just 140ft of net set it was great to find three Skylarks in the net in the first round, on wing length a male and two females, both adult and juvenile Skylarks undergo a complete moult in the summer so at this time of year its considered difficult to age them so they are lumped as BTO code 2. Skylark Diagnostic hind claw The rest of the morning was fairly slow with good numbers of Goldfinch and Linnet flying around as well as at least two Sparrowhawks and a Merlin. Only a few birds were caught until I played the Meadow pipit call on the tape and the birds just flooded in to the area with 10 caught. A Sparrowhawk got caught in the net but by