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

Wednesday is volunteers day as you must all know by now, so accompanied by my stalwart colleagues Brian and Veronica, Dan from Keep Wales Tidy and the boss we tackled finishing off the "new" entrance to the Morfa Berwig reserve, oh hang on I forgot the boss went off for an onsite meeting with Isabel our biodiversity officer and Hillary from Natural Resources Wales (NRW) , I'm sure it was important!, (It was, its what partnership working is all about) Anyway the entrance looks great, and I've come up with a little project, to monitor the colonisation of the bare ground over the coming months and manage the verge sympathetically, again partnership working so we'll wait and see..... just waiting for the LNR sign to be made and installed There's a lot of mud around so we undertook sweeping and shovelling the surfaced path, (tarmac) and improving the vehicle turning area in the centre of the reserve...keep off the mud..... A party of 50

It's all go at two of the LNR's this week, with a replacement fence being installed at Pembrey Burrows LNR, and a second go at creating the right type of entrance at Morfa Berwig LNR. At Pembrey, the post and rail is being constructed from Chestnut, a robust long lasting timber, replacing the rather serviceable but now unsightly, and in need of repair, post and wire fence. The new fence will help showcase this wonderful reserve to the general public. It served a purpose The old post and wire fence The new fence under construction At Morfa Berwig radical changes have been made to the roundabout entrance with a complete re-landscape, necessary to ensure the entrance is as secure, whilst pleasing on the eye, as possible there are approx' 9 tonnes of concrete blocks, and 30-35 tonnes of soil and rubble used in the construction of the entrance!!! out with the old "new" I was in awe of the driver, he is amazingly skilled with the mach

I quite often refer to SSSI's, LNR's etc and a few people have asked what do these mean, so I've collected together the terms most associated with the reserves in Carmarthenshire, especially Pembrey Burrows LNR, which has all of the designations attached to it. A Site of Special Scientific Interest ( SSSI ) in Great Britain is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom . SSSI's are the basic building block of site-based nature conservation legislation and most other legal nature/geological conservation designations in the United Kingdom are based upon them, including national nature reserves , Ramsar sites , Special Protection Areas , and Special Areas of Conservation . The acronym "SSSI" is often pronounced "triple-S I" Local nature reserve ( LNR ) is a designation for nature reserves in Great Britain. The designation has its origin in the recommendations of the Wild Life Conservation Special Committ

With the planned nest box project at Morfa Berwig it would be useful to ring as many of the adults using the reserve before the breeding season, this may help build a picture of pairs and breeding success.  There are a lot of tits visiting the feeders which I have set up in a quiet part of the reserve, ideal for ringing. Here are a few videos of the busy feeders. Willow Tit calling Mixed tits

We are lucky along the Llanelli coast to have a decent amount of wader suitable habitat, the world renowned Burry Inlet, an SPA for a range of water-birds, The Wetland and Wildfowl Trust centre at Penclacwydd, North Dock, and the Lliedi saltmarsh Llanelli Beach, Cefn Padrig, Old Pembrey harbour and of course Cefn Sidan, although the conservation protection designation is Pembrey Coast, undoubtedly many other areas such as Machynys have lost some of their attraction due to development, so much of the area has some form of designation, in fact if you plot all of the Pembrey Burrows & Saltings designations onto an ordnance survey map it's impossible to read the thing, ask if you want to try it! This brings me to the point of the blog, it's noticeable from records of 2017 that numbers of some duck species are down, with Pintail and Wigeon being very noticeable, not only are birders telling me this but I speak to quite a lot of wildfowlers, (no matter your personal view thes

Wednesday = volunteer day,(that's to say I get backup today to do more than one man jobs) and so it was no storm was going to stop us getting stuck in to some fencing repairs, it's a bit like painting the Forth Bridge just when you think you've done its time to start again. It was certainly gusty at times but nothing to really affect us working, however the effect on the dunes is very evident, we have lost a fair bit of dune frontage at the eastern end of the reserve, what is eroding is being blown back over the top and drowning the cattle fence. The blighters could step over this as it is Repairs made (it's not pretty even by our standards) but for how long.... Now try it.. or rather don't ... The cattle, a mixture of heifers and bullocks, mostly Hereford types but some mixed parentage; are looking well and are certainly tough enough for the coastal conditions, they showed great interest in the vehicles as we drove through the field today, somet

Hello 2018, Pembrey LNR was very busy yesterday, certainly for the short time I was there, I couldn't wait to get away, but I'll come back to that. Disappointedly the New Year started with reports of poachers on the reserve, they were duly intercepted and the error of their ways pointed out to them, to be fair they were both very reasonable guys and I had a good chat with them about the reserve the issues we face and the wider countryside in general. All the cattle looked well and were in the right places, but I've spotted a couple of potential problems which will hopefully be resolved tomorrow. After  being growled at by a rather unruly dog and its companions running loose AGAIN! I thought it time to go for lunch, great idea I had not taken into account the total arrogance of a particular visitor who had blocked the barrier (appropriately the owner of said dogs!), with the help of more considerate visitors I managed to weave my way passed, but of course the Toy