Yellow Browed Warbler! - 21/10/2016 Bute Park

Found my first proper rarity today, the day we got the keys for our new house!! A superb double memory for the day!!

I had walked over Bute Park everyday this week in the slim hopes of finding a YBW in there with there being quite a few around the country. And lo and behold! There was a calling YBW in the canopy of trees above the path between the two cafe's (the one between the bridge and education centre). I managed to get some footage of it calling, and glimpsed it between the branches very briefly.

Superb!!

Billy and Squacco - 30/05/2016

Last weekends Sun holiday trip took us up the Llyn Peninsular for a few days. On the way up we went to Carngaffallt which was bumping with summer migrants, and saw the female osprey on eggs at Llyn Clywedog. From the Hafan Y Mor where we were staying, we shared the beach with sanderling and ringed plover, and also some common seals.

At Aberdaron, we found Billy the resident heron who lives on the Spa (kept tame by steady provisions), and he posed well for photos. Over fish and chips at the cafe on the bridge, I also took photos of the resident pied wags, robins and sparrows.

Bank holiday weekend saw a Squacco Heron turn up at Ogmore, only the 3rd in Glamorgan since 1953 apparently. After a bump en route, we were soon pulling up on the road near the Watermill pub to scan the waterlogged field. He was almost immediately obvious, and I raced to pull out my scope for better views. However, I'd been daft enough not to pack the eye piece. Luckily another birder let us take a quick squiz and I took a quick snap with my phone down the lens, which served as a record shot.

Terror from the skies - 10/04/2016

Another trip to see the Gwent glossy this weekend resulted in a new lifer! I power walked down to the screen where it had been seen only a couple of hours earlier, to find a chap from Whitchurch there waiting for it too. We spotted some gadwall out on the lagoons, and there were also quite a lot of other sp. present, including wigeon, godwits, redshank, and shovelers. There were lots of avocet and lapwing.  After nearly dipping again, a gentleman in the 2nd hide pointed it out, just as it came out of a reen! After wandering a round a little bit, it took off, battling the high wind to land in the farmers fields behind the lagoons. After a short time it came back out so another power walk back down to the original screen to see it also payed off with good views of a male marsh harrier out over the
lagoons.

Whiteford Point - Expect the unexpected - 16/01/2016

A hardcore 12 of us made it to the day of the trip, but after a nice early start from Coryton Asda,disaster nearly de-railed the staff trip to Whiteford this morning, when Ai-lin's Berlingo unfortunately met with an untimely breakdown problem just before Pencoed. A quick hour wait in the frost while the AA turned up meant that the car had to be taken to the dealership, which meant that Ai-lin had to tap out, but the rest of us re-jigged the car arrangements and the trip was back on. 

A big flock of lapwing and golden plover in the fields near to Whiteford was the first spectacle. After arriving it was soon obvious that it was a great location, with conifer plantation, saltmarsh, coastline, and dune systems and we were soon racking them up. 

En route we flushed a few jack snipe, my first lifer of the day, along with lots of common snipe. There were also lots of brent, eider, teal, redshank, to name but a few.  

Jack snipe - honest! 

We met up with the early arriver's out at the point, and I was shocked just how much there was to see, not just in the sense of species variety, but also in the sense of sheer numbers. There were several great northern divers,  and a distant Slav grebe finally came down the channel giving some decent views. 

Along the shore towards the lighthouse we stopped again to watch the divers, one catching a crab, and more flocks of eiders, the males throwing back their heads in display. 

Next target was snow buntings! And we were off en route to where they were seen last. A quick flurry of movement out of the corner of my eye, and they were unmistakable. A male and a female scrambling through the high tide debris.

After Whiteford we went to Llanrhidian where Dan had us straight on to ring tailed hen harriers, followed by Geth's Great white egrets and a Merlin! and then swiftly on to shorties. The quartering shorties and hen harriers even clashed on a couple of occasions. With the barn owl a no-show we called it a day, and went to the Greyhound pub for a few beers and a some good pub grub.

Top day.