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

So the clocks have gone forward, and the weather is more like a winters day, cold dry and clear with a biting wind. Nonetheless if you are able to take some exercise, in line with the guidance and instructions we are living to, even just in the garden,then the chances are you will bump into nature. I appreciate many of you are unable to get out and take some exercise, but living about 300m from Sandy Water Park gives me an opportunity to walk around the lake, on alternate days, which is about 1 mile, a slight detour gives me views out over the Burry inlet and Carmarthen Bay. Yesterday it was on my walk, with only a handful of others around, I stopped to check the sea for anything of interest, a dark blob just offshore turned into a dark coloured duck, looking a little chunky then it dived, when it surfaced it took flight and the dark blob showed a lot of white in the "secondaries" of its wing feathers, it took a few seconds to eliminate what it wasn't, and come to the

The rangers and I had planned several night-time nature walks in the country parks this coming season, obviously due to the current situation all events are off until we return to normality. One event was going to be a look at moths in Pembrey Country Park using a light trap set out overnight. Fortunately before we made the difficult decision to close our Country Parks, I had left a moth trap working overnight and caught a few moths as luck would have it one of the moths turned out to be particularly uncommon on the coast of Carmarthenshire, the Northern Drab moth is well named as it’s not very colourful, a first record for the Country Park and local experts were very interested in this find. Northern drab Why not look for moths in your garden, already the spectacular Hummingbird Hawk Moth, a daytime flying moth which migrates from warmer climes was seen in a Burry Port garden feeding on Primroses. I suspect the moth was helped along by the flow of south easterly winds

I risked putting a moth trap out last night, in the hope of capturing my first moths of the year. I set the trap on the edge of the woodland and caught six moths, more than I expected given how cold it was last night.  Oak Beauty, "A" Drab, Hebrew Character and Chestnut made up the catch. Oak Beauty "A" Drab to be identified A stunning day followed, attracting many visitors to the Country Park despite all the sensible advice from the Government and the scientists. In a responsible move to help limit the impact of Covid-19 all of Carmarthenshire County Council managed parks and green spaces will be closed to the public until further notice. Difficult times so keep safe.

I've been working from home for a few days and have managed to get out and about in Sandy Water Park. Very few waterfowl about with only five Mute Swans this morning, a few Gadwall and Mallard. Pochard are down to a single male.  Two Cormorants were on the "island" both just getting into breeding plumage, note the white neck and thigh patches. Yesterday a distant flock of eight Sand Martins, my first summer migrant, this morning well over 50 were feeding low over the lake despite the chilly breeze, a single Chiffchaff was calling from the woods. Sand Martins are colonial hole nesters and have nested in the pulverised ash cliffs around Burry Port for many years, a good place to see them, if you find thye are nesting then let me know Gulls were present with c100 Black-headed, a pair of Lesser black backed and around 10 Herring Gulls, a confiding Grey Heron near the pub and a Little Grebe. Please note, during this time of uncertainty, wh

Despite the still very changeable weather butterflies are already making an appearance, a little bit of warmth in the sunny spells is encouraging them to emerge either from hibernation as in the case of Small Tortoiseshell and Brimstone while others will have overwintered as pupae either on the ground or attached to plants tucked away from the prying eyes of hungry birds and rodents. Small Tortoiseshell Brimstone On Friday whilst working with a group of volunteers at the entrance to Pembrey Country Park I happened to glance down and saw the unmistakable outline of a "blue" butterfly. closer examination revealed that it was a freshly emerged Holly Blue. At the time I just took a photo and warned everyone to watch out for the butterfly, which once shown where it was sitting everyone did. Freshly emerged female Holly Blue Thinking it may be too early for the Holly Blue to put in an appearance I did some checking, the records show that it usually emerges in the f

This blog continues explaining who and what the County Councils Outdoor Recreation Service is The Millennium Coastal Park, (MCP) stretches from the county boundary near Lougher Bridge along the coastal strip down to the eastern edge of the Burry Port Harbour area, a distance of around 14km. The main attractions along this stretch of coast are the Wildfowl & Wetlands LLanelli Centre, WWT Llanelli (WWT image ) North Dock Dunes and beach and Sandy Water Park. However if you visited this area in the 1970's you would seen a mostly heavily industrialised area, nothing like the green oasis that we find today. Early Industry Llanelli and the surrounding area grew up and became a place of extreme wealth from the heavy industry and mining over a 200 year period and whilst this brought undeniable benefits to the area, as heavy industry declined it did leave massive scars and industrial dereliction, as has been mentioned elsewhere, the decline was and still is, controve

Volunteers from a Llanelli based group The work creating a couple of landscaped areas, for pollinator plants, has been progressing nicely thanks to VIP ( volunteer in parks ) Paul, and a group of volunteers from the Llanelli area, not forgetting some skilful tractor driving by ranger Emyr D, to coax the three boulders into place. Paul checking my work ! There is still work to be done, but I plan to have all the hard landscaping finished before Easter. We have been utilizing the tools funded by a Welsh Government grant through the Carmarthenshire Local Nature Partnership. I chose the tools against a few criteria not least being would the tools be suitable to be used by everyone, this involved me actually getting to grips with each of the tools myself, durable but not heavy, assorted sizes of spades, and forks, rakes for different jobs general purpose and specialist saws, you get the idea. We have created, a raised area on the left hand side of the entrance which will