Pittswood Birds

Penultimate day in Wales

With only 1 day left of our Wales trip, the target of 100 bird species that we set ourselves has reached the 99 mark, so near, but no cigar just yet!!

Since my last update we have re visited some of the reserves mentioned then, and had a trip to the coast at Aberystwyth, where the list was incremented with GANNET, as well as CHOUGH, with a pair being found, these are what we really came to see though, brilliant little Corvids, with a lovely Jackdaw like call.

On the way home from Aberystwyth we stopped at the newer Kite feeding site, which was an awful place, with families and dog walkers everywhere, plus a cafe that took so long to serve us that we eventually left the queue, despite only 3 people in front of us! Anyway, we did at least find a LITTLE GREBE on the lake there, our 98th species.

Our 99th species had a bit of fortune about it, we had been searching for GREEN WOODPECKERS right from day one without success, but one flew from the roadside as we drove back from an evening take away, however, as is normally the case with these things at least two more were heard at a subsequent visit to Llangorse Lakes.

Yesterday and today, despite not finding that 100th bird species, a couple very pleasant visits, in pleasant weather, were made to Gilfach nature reserve, here we found our first Dark Green Fritillary Butterfly, one of 15 butterfly species found yesterday afternoon, plus we also had good views and photographic opportunities of our first Golden Ringed dragonfly, what an impressive insect! 

WOOD WARBLERS, REDSTARTS, PIED and SPOTTED FLYCATCHERS, DIPPERS, plus endless flyovers from RED KITES made for brilliant bird watching, in fact so much was seen it would take all day to put it in a blog post, how different from the near sterile agricultural fields of the kent countryside!

Ive managed to coax the laptop i'm using into editing a few images taken today  :-)

I spent over an hour listening and watching this Wood Warbler, which eventually came just about near enough for me to get a photo of it, although the lighting was poor. I like the pose though!

Dipper fledglings were seen being fed by their parents, again, I spent hours watching them chasing up and down the river.

We have found at least 3 Dipper families on this trip, and many images have been taken!

The first Golden Ringed Dragonfly of the year  :-)