Mid-winter with dark mornings and gloomy days of wind, rain, drizzle and mist, but summer Roses still bloom next to first spring Camellia blossom. Windfall apples gathered only a week ago remain sound for a final cider pressing and last clean taste of fresh-pressed apple. Checking ham and bacon in the cold smoker, smouldering oak lends the very best fragrance to the late autumnal conditions.
Driving across the flat coastal plain towards the tidal lagoon, we stop at every new vista across airfield and fields, checking fence-posts and projecting hangar beams for raptors. In still, moisture-laden air, a heavy, dark brown form winging its way low over the ground, too broad-winged for Harrier, proves Common Buzzard when perched, short tailed, in scrub oak. Airfield buildings frame a dark, vertical fence-post extension, telescope revealing pale-breasted, blue-backed Peregrine, glaring back; black-hooded executioner, master of the wide landscape.
Yellow silted water gurgles through piped drains under the causeway, filling creeks with reflected winter sky, salt-flat landscape fast diminishing between. Grey-backed Wigeon creep down the bank, leaving a larger, dark shape grazing salt-washed turf above: lone Brent Goose, scarcely larger than Mallard.
Scanning the wide salt-marsh whilst awaiting Harriers over the reed-bed, a small, upright, fawn-grey form rests on a wide cushion of grey Sea Purslane, telescope revealing diminutive Merlin surveying the landscape for unwary Meadow Pipits.
Sudden clamour behind as Greenshank zooms white and silver across a winter sky, skimming low and fast across a filling creek to alight in shallows. Panning back for the source of alarm, a familiar brown, long-winged, long-tailed form quarters low over reed-tops, hovering, swooping, side-slipping and swivelling, wings uplifted, narrow rump stripe flared white as it swoops low then up to sit tall and narrow on a fence-post, lifting a talon to clean or eat small prey.
Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk
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