Wildlife Diary

Llyn Bodlyn Skyline

2012-02-10T09:29:00.000-08:00

New run planned: adjacent glacial valley skyline incorporating two highest Rhinog peaks; dawn sky grey and clear as forecast but tops hidden in cloud from melting snow. Park up on the old London coach track: open moorland valley with three lakes and central crag with iron-age fort; 18th century New Inn (Ty Newydd), now just a ruin of waist-high walls and massive fireplace; stone bridge over a torrent demonstrates narrow coach widths; rocky zig-zag track up the mountain-side revealing strength and hardiness of horses and men. Llyn Eirthyn lays cold and grey below; two black Ravens glide out from the mountain side.

Topping the ridge we follow the dry-stone wall rising and falling over hill and crag, delicate Fox & clawed Badger tracks through drifts of snow. Clouds gather close as we climb hard up to Diffwys in biting winds. A stile at the top shows a better way, wall offering shelter as well as a narrow, snow-free channel. Ground drops away to the right, cloud obscuring the bottom of the abyss whilst a hazy sun tries to break through overhead. Down a rocky saddle with deep snow security against ankle-turning terrain before final stile and stiff climb to Y Llethr at 2756 ft.

Turning to descend, another wall takes us 2 miles down a long bare ridge, cloud opening briefly to reveal thin black vertical line bordered white, top lost in mist: eventually recognised as same stone wall climbing Moelfre, the bald mountain ahead.

Lengthening strides over tussocks of grass, rushes and Sphagnum, we drop down the mountainside to the Water Board track with just a half-mile to the car, now stood amongst many trucks and pick-ups: farmers from both sides of the mountain gathered to watch the hounds scour mountain flanks for foxes amongst sheep heavy in lamb.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

4 Winter Raptors.....

2012-02-03T05:09:00.000-08:00

After prolonged November weather, winter is now with us: even sheltered woodland paths like iron, ice cracking and scrunching under foot in the half light. Jogging down the long incline back to our wooded river valley, mountains looming white under a pink and grey dawn, a long tailed raptor passes overhead, alternate flickering and glides on broad, down-held wings.

Estuary lagoon mirror-calm under blue skies, tide quietly inundating creeks and green salting: Teal & Wigeon busy in the margins; Gulls pristine white in the sun and a few dun Curlew all resting up on a diminishing bar of sheep-cropped turf; thin Redshank busy between.

Far across the lagoon, a familiar brown raptor quarters reed-tops, white-banded rump showing on the turns. Suddenly, a dark form passes across the lens, oaring deep and fast on thin, Swift-like, sickle wings and long, thin tail. Leaving distant sand dune horizon and into blue sky, Merlin confirmed, especially with small, heavy-billed wader suggesting Dunlin now visible ahead in a race with death, both birds straining like sprinters at the finish. Pursuing Merlin gains inexorably on the tiny wader, but just as they merge, the Dunlin jinks hard away, larger Merlin overshooting by many yards before swinging back on course.

Tracking the race across the winter landscape, telescope now swivelled more than 90’ from start, a careful step around the tripod is required: instead, stumble on a large log placed by an over-optimistic dog, results unexpected to both parties, both chase and outcome lost.

Checking the filling lagoon for new arrivals, a steady scan up the line of resting birds brings a surprise: just past a clump of stiff rushes, a fierce Peregrine stands on newly killed Wigeon prey on trousered legs, wings half-opened, ripping feathers and down then red meat from the prone form beneath.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

Warm, Wet, Westerlies...

2012-01-26T08:03:00.000-08:00

Descending through woods in half-light, Robin song wells up from the lamp-lit village below, advertising their presence from scattered territories. Song Thrush repeated couplets ring loud whilst Tawny Owls still call from trees and woods. Just one melodious Blackbird warble heard to date; likewise a single Mistle Thrush belting out simple, wild notes from a tree-top across stone walled fields.

First Snowdrops hang in bud atop tight-packed, upright grey stems; summer Campanula still in flower in the wall behind. Metallic pink Ivy seeds scatter the wet ground; birds feeding on bunches of funereal grey capped fruit that cloud the wall top.

This winter has mostly proved warm wet & windy so far, but mountain tops showed white under a dark cloud this morning, stiff westerly and high tide blowing creamy foam up the slipway and white breakers over the breakwater.

On Tuesday, with time to check the bay with binoculars & telescope, a single gull worked methodically over windswept, khaki, silt-laden waves that lifted black Scoter in and out of view. Wide sweeps before the wind interspersed with tight turns and fast swoops down to patter and peck the surface between the waves; lifting off with a distinctive shiver to shed water before rising high on the wind to quarter the bay again; occasional wing-beats causing the body to rise and fall in light, buoyant, Tern-like flight.

No sense of scale in the vastness of the seascape, but seemed medium to small by the flight; head dark shaded & spotted yet wings lacked angular quality and silver and white bi-colour of Black Headed Gull, though trailing edge showed narrow white.

Tracking the bird carefully across the bay, distinctive features gradually became apparent: black bill; dark wing underside; no black tips; only the 4th Little Gull located in 14 years here.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

Evolution of Pursuit

2012-01-16T04:30:00.000-08:00

Only remnant image of many weeks of wind and rain and dark morning starts is of the farm track gleaming grey and wet in the darkness ahead, a white form billowing over; call like squealing brakes as it drifts downhill into blackness.

Moonlit frosts and clear blue skies are welcome; white-bellied Great Crested Grebes and shorter necked Red Throated Divers now visible amongst parties of black Common Scoter scattered across a calm bay; stillness allowing incessant soft mewing of Scoter to drift over dunes to fields and estuary beyond.

Stopped on the causeway looking for Hen Harriers, the road ahead is submerged, waters still creeping inexorably up the tarmac: no brown shape quartering reed-beds; no upright forms atop fence posts or landing lights or on road markers projecting from waters ahead; nevertheless enjoying this twice daily cycle of inundation and draining of a wide, flat, winter landscape.

Peregrines are magnificent in their power and speed directed at killing; Redshanks are common on marsh and estuary, calls ringing across the water, as perfectly adapted for flight as the Peregrine for pursuit. Everything about them is slim, from thin, red-tipped bills through narrow, elegant, silver and white plumage poised delicately on eponymous long lipstick crimson legs. Always active, probing for food in shallow margins; always alert for danger, signalled by long, narrow wings lifted high to expose white undersides; bright white rump and wing panels and loud, ringing calls advertising flight.

Watching them speed away, hurtling wide across the winter landscape, jetting down to skim low and fast over the water on thin, swept back wings to alight in safer shallows enhances admiration for any raptor that can take them in flight as well as a greater understanding that, given fitness and vigilance, these birds are probably safe until these qualities fail.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

Winter Landscape with Raptors

2011-12-30T09:32:00.000-08:00

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

Spring in Winter

2011-12-23T08:44:00.000-08:00

Steady rain all night, bright-beaded on Mistletoe hanging over the porch door, silver thread suspended from one crushed, pallid berry, slimy innards stretched thin by raindrops. Slithering down a rain-sodden slope, rain pattering on hood and leaves, the air is not cold: Great Tit rings first two-note couplet from dripping woods; Song Thrush loud in first full song in the valley below. Each mild spell moves the season along: first bird song; Narcissi points, shiny green through turf; only buff Hazel catkins still tight and hard awaiting Spring.

Out on the causeway looking for Hen Harrier: familiar Buzzard watches from the airfield control tower; Shelduck graze bright white amongst sere sedges; dun Curlew stand tall pointing long bills, but nothing moves over reed-beds or fence line. Then one fence post is topped by a brown and pale shape, telescope confirming female Hen Harrier, just lifting off to hunt down the fence line, swaying and side-slipping low over tall grasses and dark gorse. Suddenly a Gull-like, black-tipped, pale grey form appears, swooping low from above and behind. The larger female flips over, talons stretched upward briefly towards those extended from above before flipping back to hunting flight.

On Tuesday, neither Harrier located, but driving back along the causeway a characteristic dark vertical form stands out on the flat salting: Peregrine, glaring fiercely back over slate-blue cope, black-hooded and white cheeked, yellow cere clearly visible before pushing off in powerful flight, low across the flats.

Thursday, and not a raptor in sight except the control tower Buzzard, but returning home, two, long-winged, long-tailed forms drift lazily over treetops in a cliff-formed up-draught. The Red Kites are joined by four Ravens mobbing a soaring Sparrow-hawk whilst simultaneously engaged in deep croaking aerial chases and flip-flopping display flights, rush of wings audible from below.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

Snow, Storms, Skua & Harrier

2011-12-16T06:33:00.000-08:00

Street lamps gleam orange from puddles and wet road, village black under greying sky. A light coat of icy snow on cars and slate roofs; mountains loom white over dark woods and grey fields. First Buzzard mews overhead; Tawny Owls hoot from woods; Wood Pigeon coos softly; Robins trill and tic and Crows stir from roost.

High tides and storms bring tier upon tier of surf surging up the beach, back-swash rattling grey rocks and pebbles mixed with windblown foam and spindrift. Inland, only gulls make headway in wind slowed by dunes, banks and stone walls. Suddenly, a very dark, sharp-winged gull skims low and up over the Gorse and fence-topped bank. Almost overhead, characteristic tail projections give Arctic Skua, forced inland along with gulls it likes to harass.

In the lagoon, high tides force animals and birds to move as brown, choppy waters creep in, inundating salting, marsh and causeway. Skylarks and Pipits flit up in strong winds; Shelduck and Wigeon ride the chop, feeding intently on seed-loaded flotsam. Redshank hurtle fast and low, thin-winged grey and white over ruffled waters; long-legged dun Curlew stand amongst flooding sedges, lifting off heavily when too deep even for their long bills. Scanning flooding marsh and swaying reed-beds, a characteristic narrow white strip advertised a large brown bird alighting a projecting fence-post, long wings and tail shimmied into shape. By the time the telescope was set up, the post top was vacant. One Buzzard watched from the airfield control tower, another buffeted by strong winds over the runway, yet another sailing on up-draughts among the dunes before a long tailed, angle-winged form lifted into sight behind sere reed-beds, repeated again and again as the female Hen Harrier hunted, hanging and side-slipping low over massed feathery reed tops swaying purple in the wind.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

Kites, Storms & Little Auk

2011-12-02T09:30:00.000-08:00

From a lit kitchen, early mornings look black. Stepping outside, pitted lane, stone walls and sky are shades of grey; only owl haunted woods loom black. Robins signal daybreak with ‘tic, tic’ calls from lane-side shrubs and trees or flit up from the track, scarcely discernible grey flakes from almost underfoot. A single Song Thrush is practising a few bars of its part in the dawn chorus: just a taste of the sweetly rendered couplets ringing throughout the valley by March.

Red Kites are evident this past week: two separate birds flapping raggedly between ridge and woods in cold, descending, early morning air; a pair quartering stone walled improved pasture the windward side of the same ridge; another high over the coast road, utilising up-draughts from onshore breezes.

On the coast, high tides and heavy seas brought waves crashing over the breakwater, spraying white across choppy brown waters of the tidal lagoon. Boulders and pebbles rattle and grind in the surge and back swash of heavy waves.

On a calmer day, a party of black Scoter, totally absorbed in chasing, jousting and jockeying for status and mates, drifted right on shore, an opportunity to watch proceedings at close quarters. A wader flew directly down the beach, just offshore, dark head contrasted with white under-parts suggesting Turnstone, but wing beat suggesting smaller bird. As it approached, lack of characteristic bold flight pattern became apparent along with the realisation that this was not a wader but one of the Auk family comprising Puffins, Guillemots and Razorbills: too small even for Puffin and with tiny bill now clear in profile, this could only be Little Auk. Breeding in the high Arctic, this diminutive seabird is occasionally seen off north-east coasts with occasional ‘wrecks’ after Atlantic storms; a West coast sighting is a privilege.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

Tawny Owls & Goshawk

2011-11-24T09:50:00.000-08:00

Still very warm for late November, winds generally from the south; only one frost to date despite occasional clear nights. Tawny Owls call from woods all around the house after dark, at least four separate long wavering hoots distinguishable in half-light the other morning.

Saturday morning is bright and breezy on the Maes behind the dunes: rabbit-grazed turf; scattered tussocks of Needle-Rush and Gorse clumps still in deep yellow flower. Though not yet requiring glasses, very often nowadays calls of finches do not result in the location of matching dark specks in bouncing flight overhead. Similarly, when gulls rise from mud and salting in a raucous snowy cloud mingled with ringing calls of dun Curlews and white panelled Redshank, the Peregrine is not always spotted.

Scanning wide waters and sands of the estuary lagoon with dunes and airfield beyond, a similar commotion arises from behind, inland: thin-winged Black Headed Gulls rise in a cloud from behind the low mounded drumlin and its grey stone farmhouse, bright white against the dark wooded escarpment, this time joined by black Crows and Rooks rather than estuary waders. Above cawing and croaking and harsh gull cries, an unusual dry bleating brings attention to a raptor working hard to gain height, hard-pressed by a determined, smaller black Crow: broad-winged for Peregrine; grey-brown and longer tailed than chocolate brown Buzzards.

As the female Goshawk sets course toward the northern end of the wooded scarp, more and more birds arise from fields and woods below, including many Wood Pigeons; staple Goshawk food, normally too busy feeding on the acorn crop to waste energy in flight.

No doubt evolved as an immediate visual signal for flight between the flock, the two wing bars, bright white over soft grey, must make a clear target for pursuing Goshawks and Peregrines.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

Golden Plover, Dabs & Hurdles

2011-11-17T07:55:00.000-08:00

Way out on estuary sands, bulky, pied Oystercatchers roost up, red bills tucked under wing, waiting for tide to expose the mussel-beds. Just beyond stand 18 waders only half their size: long-legged, short-billed, warm golden-brown over pale bellies. Thin-winged Black Headed Gull works upwind over the estuary pool, dropping down to patter and peck the surface with red feet and bill, lifted up again on the breeze: bi-coloured silver and white wings bright in the sun, just a black spot behind the eye in winter.

Matt black Cormorant breaks surface, white-bellied flatfish flapping in serrate bayonet bill. To stun then position the wide flat shape for swallowing proves hard work afloat; not much easier standing in shallows. Dead-eyed Herring Gull arrives to await developments: fish too wide and flat to swallow in one, the only way without talons and ripping beak.

Walking across wide, flat estuary sands thirty minutes later, Golden Plovers remain, bills tucked, one beady eye open, allowing close approach before the most nervous stand alert then lift wings, signalling readiness to fly before the flock jets away together, turning wide, then returning for a fly-past with distinctive plaintive calls. Cormorant having long given up or harassed from the spot, a loose group of Herring Gulls and now Crows mark the spot, reluctantly leaving a good sized, fresh caught Dab whole on the beach.

Sunday afternoon cutting Hazel rods from sun-dappled woodland now stacked in the garden. Thickest butts sawn off and hammered in the ground at 9 inch intervals stand as an open palisade awaiting platting of thin and split rods between for a fence. Now learning by trial and error to twist and force the crack in the bark and following split up the centre of each rod to give two split Hazel strips for platting.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

First Frosts of Autumn

2011-11-08T07:09:00.000-08:00

First frost, fields white between toffee-brown oak woods in the valley below. Pale blue sky & sea; improved pasture walled in ash-grey dry-stone stands bright green in a sunlit landscape of rough mountain pasture, russet bracken and buff moorland grass. Out on the coast smoke drifts southward, soon indistinguishable from smooth pale currents on a dark rippled sea.

Green chlorophyll drains from Cherry leaves, discarded yellows, orange and browns hanging from dark shoots, heavy with frost & dew. High-pitched whistle and a tiny form flits from nearby Apples, sticking to the Cherry trunk before working upwards jerking & mouse-like, white belly contrasting with golden brown, spiralling out of sight and back before flitting to berry-laden Holly.

Stillness brings many woodland sounds: Tits working through the canopy also use almost inaudibly high-pitched calls to keep the flock together in dense woodland, Long-tailed Tits, distinguished by interspersed harsh buzzing. Same sibilant calls overhead show tiny Goldcrest flitting warbler-like for insects in the Sycamore above. Soft, plaintive mewing calls, unexpected for a striking, black-capped, pink-breasted devourer of orchard fruit buds: Bullfinches also audible now the wind has dropped. Squirrel leap brings Sycamore leaves down in a clatter.

A few additional memorable moments: tiny, fawn coloured Pygmy Shrew, brought in by the cats; long whiskered and point nosed like all Shrews but body only just over an inch long. Standing clear in rush-spiked meadows next to the estuary dyke, single, late Horse Mushroom, still cupped in button form, big as a soup bowl. Walking up the beach to the boulder shore, Wigeon lift off Bladderwrack, rafting up on the sea. On return, four birds delve in the shallows, scarcely larger than Wigeon but white backsides clear from a distance: four Brent Geese, feeding quietly as if there all day, departed only half hour later.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

Ardudwy Way

2011-10-28T12:31:00.000-07:00

Half-light as we leave silent, empty streets of Barmouth below, past grey stone, sleeping houses, up grassy mine inclines, to close-cropped, stone-based miners tracks weaving past ruined farms and rocky outcrops framing grey sea and lightening horizon westward. The route shifts to inland slopes overlooking the estuary, ridge rising higher to the left. Rain eases, morning brightens: sail wings detach from the hillside, climbing on up-draught over the grassy farm track: Buzzards scanning morning landscape for carrion or worms. Meadow Pipits in a loose flock flit upwards then away, ‘seep, seep’ calls in characteristic halting flight as we splash through boggy hillside flashes.

The next six hours take us through all terrains: from fine, stone-based, sheep-cropped tracks to calf-deep bogs of mud, sedge and moss; dry, scrub-oak woods, green fern bright over drifts of dry leaves to open shoulders of ice-worn, bare rock and rocky crags needing hands for balance.

Fieldfare ‘shuck, shuck’ as they take to the sky, flushed from open pasture and red fruit laden Hawthorn, smaller, thin-whistling Redwing amongst them; high in the rocks, urgent buzzing alarm from Wrens, deep croak or ‘glock, glock’ high overhead from long-winged Ravens passing along ridges or between tops.

Layers of history, from Victorian Barmouth, grassy remains of mining activities and straight dry-stone enclosure walls, to drovers tracks, coach roads and stone bridges of earlier centuries, right back to hilltop fortifications of the iron age and earlier standing stones. Two separate rocky crags stand tall in the landscape, both called Dinas, or fortified place. We encircle one defending a valley mouth, experiencing the strategic quality of the other by scaling its side.

Bryn Cader Faner is a remote and impressive Bronze Age coronet stone circle marking the high point of the Ardudwy Way, beyond which all is downhill - we thought…

Wildlife Wales Activities: http://www.wildlife-wales.co.uk/

Blustery October

2011-10-21T09:09:00.000-07:00

Blustery October weather brings memorable moments: woodland path at dark dawn, air sweet with leaves and mould; thin whistles high above the canopy; first Redwings since April departure.

Scanning inland for raptors soaring above the wooded slope of an older coastline, parties of Redwings move steadily southward along the ridge: distinctive ‘flick, flick, flick…’ flight carrying them great distances.

Bagging an abundance of acorns for the pigs, distinctive ‘shuk, shuk, shuk’ calls from high overhead herald first Fieldfares, also oaring their way southward in high formation, steady and unstoppable, like WWII bombers. Thrushes from the far north, both species descend in flocks from the skies, raiding berries and fruit from winter hedgerows, or scatter over grassland in upright stance, moving ‘hop, hop, stab’ at worms & insects, taking flight to treetops and skies, rather than deep cover.

As winter visitors arrive, sleek peach and grey Wheatears still leave, a pair flirting white tails on dry-stone mountain walls, another on the close cropped salting, silhouette against bright waters. A late Arctic Tern also moves south in buoyant, bouncing flight just beyond the breakers, sudden jink and swooping dive, aborted to a sweeping resumption of original flight. Boulders bronzed with Bladder-wrack at low tide: lone Golden Plover stands perfectly camouflaged before lighting out low over the waves with plaintive calls last heard in mid-winter as a flock of 50 wheeled about in dense cloud high on the top of Moelfre.

Running in the mountains: ‘snaagh, snaagh’ calls from a black bird high over the crag in wide winged, buoyant flight, the Chough folding, dropping, then sweeping back up on the up-draught. On the descent, startled whirr from wetland at our feet, close enough to see gold edged, dark green stripes down a sedge-brown back as Snipe zig-zags fast to the craggy horizon.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

Blustery Winds and the Struggle for Life.....

2011-10-07T08:22:00.000-07:00

Autumn back on track: upper crown of the Great Ash blown clean of leaves; woodlands sweet with mould and rot; bees and flies swarming over musky yellow-green Ivy florets in the lane.

Birds stay low in blustery winds, hard to hear calls over rushing of air. Just a few Pied Wagtails and small party of Linnets, but liquid calls down the wind showed Curlew moving seaward low and fast from the estuary, two thin Godwits in the vanguard. A flurry of white Black Headed Gulls lifted from the upper estuary, moving out into farmland, bright against dark wooded hillside behind.

Scanning the flat estuary salting later, a curious black-and-white ball occasionally lifted and turned amongst rusty sedge: Peregrine over recent kill, standing in a low creek, only fierce black-hooded, white collared head showing above the salting.

Later, sheltering hard against the yacht club doors from the wind, a dark, long-winged, gangling bird appeared in the estuary mouth, rising, gliding and slipping into wind, gradually pushed back over lagoon and wide estuary sands, eventually dropping out of sight into fields behind the rocky dyke wall. Immediately, Crows moved in, sensing vulnerability. The young Gannet rose into sight once more, struggling briefly against the wind, before dropping back into shelter.

Driving later to the spot, the field was clear of Crows, only a heavy dark grey form low against the sheltering bank. On approach, the head was invisible, laid along the back, entirely covered with dark wings. Trying to feed it fish, it became clear why the Crows had departed: long dark wings half spread over the ground braced the bird for lightning fast, stabbing lunges aimed at the eyes; even when held behind the grey head, the hooked tip of a seven-inch bill proved dagger-sharp, drawing blood from hands and wrists.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

Last of Summer with First of Winter...

2011-09-30T09:15:00.000-07:00

Sudden change from blustery, showers and sun to a mistral-like hot wind: big swell from the Atlantic kicking up sand at every wave break. At one of the lowest tides of the year, a wide sandbank is exposed running parallel with the boulder shore, waves peeling cleanly over and crashing down on the seaward side to sweep across the sandbar into the relatively calm outflow channel behind; possible to walk nearly a mile along the coast, calf deep in foam-strewn cross-flow. Initially, only the odd small fish turning in shallow water in the channel and a couple of tail swirls in the surf, but as the tide turns to cover exposed sections of sand bar, large fish caught between waves streak back to the sea in only inches of water, water coned over head and back, powerful tails jetting spray into the air.

Inland, Swallows flit southward jinking for insects along the way, several spotted low over waves in the bay. First Wigeon of winter hurtles, sharp winged and needle-tailed, up the estuary, white panelled wings and pale belly highlighted against dark cloud. Likewise, first tiny warm grey Teal, fine drake with green highwayman mask and buff triangle under the tail, swim together, low in shallow water between stilted dun Curlew probing the mud with long, down-curved bills.

Except black and brown Cormorants resting up on the sand banks and thin Grey Herons in the shallows, most estuary birds stand or rest parallel to the ground. At the sandy lower end of the estuary, a dark shape stands distinct from a strand of blackened Bladderwrack, upright but strangely wide at base. Binoculars reveal black hooded Peregrine, slate wings half open, ‘mantling’ to protect prey gripped in yellow talons, yellow based, sharp hooked beak pointed back at us between ripping tugs.

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River in Flood.....

2011-09-23T09:56:00.000-07:00

Weather remains unsettled and blustery. River rose briefly after heavy morning rain, high tide listed for late afternoon, so wet the fly in the flood before carefully stepping up to a narrow mossy concrete shelf running 100 yards under the retaining wall between road and river. Wading carefully now in only a few inches of water, stooping low to stay below fishes refracted horizon, it is possible to back-cast upstream under overhanging trees, and roll the line almost across to the far bank. A flick mends the line over the fastest water so the deep red bodied, brown ‘winged’ Mallard & Claret swings evenly across the flood.

Slate-backed, lemon-yellow, Grey Wagtail sweeps upstream in high bouncing flight, up over the weir lip to alight on a narrow beach opposite, tail flicking, wind and water too loud to hear its distinctive strident call.

Sudden bang on the line and a small fish splashes in the flood: fine, red spotted Brown Trout, high dorsal and pillar-box red adipose fin, hook held tight under water to allow quick twist and gone.

Later, wading waist deep, casting carefully into the tidal weir pool marking the bottom of the run, a splash and croak as agitated, thin-necked, ginger-headed Merganser takes flight under the far bank, passing close, water dripping from long saw bill.

Working down the pool, absorbed with the physical challenge of casting close under bramble-tangled far bank, the fly drops in slack water just downstream of an overhanging strand and locks solid on the mend. The fish moves deep across, then up the pool, one vertical leap, pink-sheened silver, just under the rod tip, before coming easy to the net; only about a pound and a half, but fresh run, still with khaki sea lice; first and only sea trout of the year.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

Wind, Rain & Sun

2011-09-16T08:30:00.000-07:00

Another couple of weeks of wind and rain: river up, so worth casting a fly to swing under the bridge when passing, or working the river down to the tidal pool to meet the high tide. Only small Brown Trout or Parr to show, along with memorable moments: russet brown Wren buzzing across the pool in the rain, knocking raindrops off a briar spray; burst of loud song, bill wide, tail cocked, before disappearing deep in bramble. Sudden splash and flap as dull black Cormorant emerges very close from the flood before ungainly flight upriver.

Every morning, black darts swing, flit and waver over lane and meadow in the stiff sou’westers: Swallows hawking for flies blown from Limes. Just where the escarpment opens up to views of the bay, agitated croaking brought attention to a long aerial contest in the up-draught: comparatively light Sparrow Hawk using speed and agility to harass a Crow into desperate yawing dives, bleating in distress, only to remount the up-draught to mob the Hawk again. At one point joined by five fellows, nevertheless, the Crow was evicted; smaller, outnumbered Hawk emerging king of the hill.

Short passage of high pressure brought fleeting settled weather and sunshine, too brief to bring Bass inshore, but a quick check at high tide found a strange small Gull working the narrowed beach & boulders for insects: juvenile with mouse-grey scaled mantle, black bill and dark pink-grey legs, passing within 25 yards before displaying bright white Redshank-like wing and tail panels in brief flight. Breeding in the high Arctic and overwintering in seas off Peru and Africa, about 20 Sabines Gulls are found each year over the British Isles. Recent hurricanes have brought a ‘wreck’ of this pelagic species, over 200 counted passing land off Bridges of Ross, County Clare.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

Mullet & Peregrine

2011-09-03T04:13:00.000-07:00

A few days of sun, blue skies, flat calm sea & clear waters, so wading sandbars far out in the shallow bay, casting into a setting sun, but only Mullet mark the water as they cruise and surge. Waters rush into the estuary on the early morning rising tide, with only the sounds of waders and seabirds, but again, no bass. The pole channel mark set in a Mussel bed at low tide is now focus for a dense shoal of a thousand or so Mullet swimming hard into current, sharp grey dorsal fins surging, silver flashes below the surface as they twist and turn in the flow, occasional heavy fish launching skyward and splash-landing.

Standing on a spit of salt-washed turf amidst rising waters of the estuary lagoon, Gulls and Curlews rest up on the rocky dyke top opposite, usual roosting creeks and salting submerged. A family of ginger-crested Mergansers fish busily, silhouette in bright, still waters between dives, now at the coast from river bank nest holes.

Soft, plaintive whistles behind as white and sand coloured Ringed Plover sweep down the shoreline and low across salt-washed turf before us, alighting at the water’s edge, only to sweep off again, twisting low and fast over the still lagoon. A greater swish of air and urgent calls cause us to turn again as a powerful, brown, point-winged shape wings its way purposefully up the estuary, impervious to surrounding chaos of panicked Curlew and Gulls.

Later, we watch Ringed Plover with scaly-backed Dunlin, almost invisible amongst boulders behind the breakwater. Scanning the bay for seabirds, the same rush of wings and panicked wader calls prompts a quick turn just as the same powerful form abandons a fast whiffling dive, too large and powerful to hit fast, agile small waders over water.

Wildlife Wales Activities: http://www.wildlife-wales.co.uk/

Autumn in Woods, Garden & Shore

2011-08-29T02:53:00.000-07:00

Long spell of unsettled weather brought no memorable moments over past week or so but yesterday proved fruitful: passing by the now lively river, orange peel Chanterelles were spotted in green moss and wood sedge on the far bank. We later filled 2 bags with fluted orange trumpets along with a few Hedgehog Mushrooms, paler capped with pores rather than gills beneath. One patch of road spattered with black and green over past weeks brought a half bag of Damsons as bonus on the way home. Satisfying breakfast of which only bread not grown or gathered: Chanterelles rough chopped and fried with home, dry-cured bacon along with our own eggs and tomatoes and fresh apple juice from the cider press.

Robins just starting to sing again, sweet to human ears but a challenge to neighbours & intruders, and strident ‘hooet, hooet, hooet’ of Nuthatch from oak canopy now feature in the aural landscape along with plaintive two-note mewling of young Buzzards noted earlier. Occasional short phrases from both Chiffchaff and Willow Warbler are interesting, perhaps migrants en route south with an instinct to sing on arrival. Swallows are beginning to gather on telephone wires.

On shore, numbers of Ringed Plover and Dunlin are building, along with Turnstones and Oystercatchers, Curlew flock mainly up the estuary. A mixed party of Turnstones, Ringed Plover and Dunlin moved before us as we walked along the strand, one particular binocular view holding just one each of these species, plus a tiny white Sanderling and larger, short billed Grey Plover.

The bay remains largely empty, Gannets & Shearwaters passing occasionally, Terns not much in evidence in unsettled conditions. Scattered black duck way out are only visible rising on the wave tops but should be first Scoter returning to the shallow, sandy bay for winter feeding.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-08-18T09:47:00.000-07:00

Each activity brings its own unique perspective on the same landscape. A family interested in the ‘Beach Supper’ wait at the beach car park at 6:00 PM on a recent, rarely fine evening. Having introduced ourselves and the planned evening, we set off up the beach towards the estuary, breakwater and descending sun.

Low tide, and at the estuary mouth, below the barnacled boulder shore lay two great banks of Mussels and gravel, one marked by a red-topped estuary marker stanchion. Despite our concentration selecting best Mussels amongst thousands, Oystercatchers make themselves heard, fussing along the shore, awaiting our departure. Diminutive peeping calls reveal first one then eight mottled Turnstones only yards away at the stanchion base, two in striking, white, paint-spattered breeding plumage, all moving quietly and reluctantly between boulders on short orange legs. Amongst them, a tiny, white, blacked-legged wader, half their size, taking every opportunity to roost, black bill tucked under wing. No binoculars required: all either tired from migration or unfamiliar with man.

As we gather then clean mussels, further calls and movements become apparent: two Curlew move between bronze kelp covered boulders, another prospecting the estuary shore in low, heavy flight. Urgent ‘pee, pee, pee, pee’ high over the estuary mouth: familiar long-billed Curlew silhouette, call and lighter build denoting another Whimbrel moving south. Sandwich Terns bleat drily, passing between estuary and bay; soft ‘tu-leep’ notes and buzzing calls drift along the shore from Ringed Plover and Dunlin respectively as a small mixed flock hurtles along the shore or sweeps low and fast out to sea.

As supper is made and enjoyed, seasoned with wood smoke, the sun burns an orange path across the bay before extinguished behind the low silhouette of the Lleyn Peninsula dying light leaving only liquid, wild calls along the shore.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-08-12T10:40:00.000-07:00

Everything quiet with nestlings fledged: time to renew plumage and feed up for winter. Robins resume agitated ‘tic..tic’ territorial calls, woods silent without bird song. Family parties of various species work through trees and scrub, early fledged Stonechats and Wheatears in juvenile plumage already independent. Linnets, Goldfinches and Meadow Pipits are establishing winter flocks, the former on seeding thistles on mountain slopes. Hawking Swallows cut the breeze in agile, lilting flight; parent and young swoop vertically to meet bill to bill, passing insects at the stall. Peregrines return to estuary and coast; everywhere, young Buzzards are heard, calling pathetically for food. Sparrow-hawks spiral in thermals, soar ridge waves, or speed low over walls and scrub; one passing low over the beach car park, small rodent gripped in talons.

Occasional Whimbrel feed on boulder shore or roost with Curlew on the salting en-route south. Steady passage of Common Sandpipers moving down from mountain tarn nest sites, arcing out low over lagoon or sea with characteristic ‘pee, pee, pee’ piping, alternating beats and glides on down-slung wings before alighting to feed again on bronze Bladderwrack; soft brown upper-parts and breast over pale under-parts; bobbing and rocking on short legs between urgent forays with thin probing bill.

Sandwich Terns rest in parties on estuary sand or boulder shore: large terns with black bills and legs; adults with shaggy black cap and yellow bill tip, bleating as they move out to sea to hawk for Sand-eels; juveniles with pale pates still squeaking to be fed. A smaller, lighter, thin-winged tern, fork-tailed white with sleek black cap and crimson bill, repeatedly beats up the estuary in light, buoyant flight against a stiff southerly breeze, dropping with light splash for surface food rather than full jetting dive for fish: lone Arctic Tern, unusual for this location.

Wildlife Wales Activities: http://www.wildlife-wales.co.uk/

2011-08-03T06:59:00.000-07:00

Invited to the next hamlet for supper, bat detector is pocketed for homeward walk: a still, grey dusk after hot dry day. The detector is directed at possible bat locations, side dial turned up and back through the wavebands as for radio station selection on a small transistor radio. In the stony lane between house, walled garden and outbuildings, under Oak canopy, sudden bleeping about 106 kHz prompts a stop and systematic search. Further loud but fleeting bursts and still no sighting until faint, fast movement close by brings attention to scarcely distinguishable, tiny grey form flitting along the wall, diving down fast over the lane at knee height, lightning turn at the outbuilding wall, repeated dive behind and back over the wall, all within arm’s length. Optimal reading settling down at 108 kHz, the Lesser Horseshoe Bat had been too grey to spot and too close & fast to track.

Now back to high pressure systems, sea often flat calm and crystal clear, shoals of fry, Sand Smelt and Sand Eels come close to shore, each recognisable by dark traced surface movements: fry sprinkle the water like a handful of sand or water droplets; Sand Eels jet away from the very edge of the encroaching tide; Smelt rise like trout and take a small fly cast at expanding rings. A little further out, sudden dark lines scar the water, occasional thin, silver lighting streak as eel-like, Swordfish-beaked Garfish flicker after sand eels. Mullet cruise in groups surging for microscopic food, dorsal often showing above water; strong, heavy fish often unaccountably leaping clear of the water. A raiding party of Bass herding and slicing through Sand Eels boils the water dark with white splashes, lures pulled through chased and taken aggressively in the feeding frenzy.

Between whiles, all is peaceful: Bottle-Nosed Dolphin tracking offshore, dark body and fin wheeling over steadily at intervals to blow and breath, or turning in one spot, crescent tail lifted clear for vertical dive. Early in the morning, the shore is so quiet that millions of Sand Fleas hiss at the strand line. Waders call in the grey dawn: liquid Curlew; insistent Whimbrel; plaintive Ringed Plover with young amongst the boulders. Urgent piping along the shore from Common Sandpiper moving south; loud Redshank, ‘sentinel of the marsh’; and fussing Oystercatchers play their part as first Sandwich Terns bleat overhead, heading out from the estuary in thin-winged, buoyant flight to hunt for Sand Eels in the bay.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-07-15T04:42:00.000-07:00

Seasonal tide gathers momentum, recent supper featuring Chanterelles & Bilberries as well as fresh-gathered Mussels & Samphire.

By the tidal lagoon on a hot morning, liquid Curlew calls bubble from a squadron of 50 birds winging high overhead, pale under azure sky. Tracking them inland, up the estuary, individual birds suddenly roll and drop out of the sky in loose, flip-flopping dive to join 30 brown Curlew already roosting & preening on salting and creeks, newly returned from inland mountain nesting.

A dozen Redshank stand in estuary shallows, slim and alert on thin red legs. Just two calls and the dog sprints away to swim the estuary followed by familiar flight upstream accompanied by sloppy sprint of paws on mud.

A later sudden rush of wings precedes splashes as Redshank hit deep water, the remaining flock hurtling seaward in twisting flight, tracked just as a powerful shape breaks away. Failing to kill, the Peregrine mounts the sky in stiff, sharp-winged beats, scanning the estuary for a new target as it climbs

Wings now set forward, tail spread, the Peregrine planes in tight circles and figures-of-eight to ride a column of rising air from hot estuary sands, twisting up and up, until half-obscured in grey cloud base before breaking away in direct line toward the rocky shore. Level flight shifts to fast, shallow, bent bow dive, then compact arrowhead plummeting earthward in almost vertical, accelerating trajectory, sheer speed and power of which converts to screaming, skyward, rollercoaster ascent almost to original altitude when stoop is aborted.

Whimbrel resting from southward migration on the rocky shore, are spared aerial attack, as are Ringed Plover, one pair diligently guarding a silver-grey, beady-eyed youngster amongst boulders, another with three eggs in a sandy scrape only 4 paces from the breakwater where tourists walk daily.

Wildlife Wales Activities: http://www.wildlife-wales.co.uk/

2011-07-08T08:55:00.000-07:00

Late afternoon low tide, hot, with air moving from a milky sea: scattered Herring Gulls float in the bay, occasionally lifting to drop where bait fish surface.

Small waves break cleanly over a submerged sand bar parallel with the rocky shore, channel of calm between. Two white & silver Herring Gulls suddenly call, lifting and dropping into spent surf spreading into the channel and dark ripple of moving fish.

Wading the line of breaking waves marking the sand bar enables casting shoreward, breeze behind, surface lure spurting over dark kelp and boulders. Trying for one fish per guest for supper leaves scarcely time to return home, and clean the catch.

Next day, same weather and state of tide, only bigger swell, waves wetting the chest. Mullet cruise in the channel: occasional surges or flash of white belly and silver sides, but no patches of dark boiling water, sudden cuts, slices, and dark streaks marking chasing Bass, the bay empty of Herring Gulls.

Again the following day: no gull or Bass activity, but a line of bulky, dark shapes float silhouette off-shore, eight, heavy-billed brown female Eider and one adult drake, black banded white with peppermint-cream facial stripe. A small, dumpy black silhouette, narrow bill and upstanding tail gives Black Guillemot, white roundels evident through binoculars, both species more characteristic of the Western Isles than Tremadog Bay.

Next day brings stiff south-west winds and choppy seas, chaotic storm waves breaking in tiers replacing smooth swell and clean breaking surf. Thin black lines cut low over dark waves and swing up into wind, pale bellies flared at the sun: Manx Shearwaters quartering the bay for scraps. Over a horizon boiling with kicking waves, dazzling white, stiff-winged Gannets hunt high and a great flock of early returning black drake Scoter swarms like bees.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-07-03T05:59:00.000-07:00

Taking a group along the shore of the tidal lagoon, yet another huge gelatinous dome lay on the stony strand line, pink-tinged tentacles trailing. Looking down at the translucent jelly, someone noticed definite pulsing where the folded edge of the blue stained umbrella fringe lay on the stones. Carefully avoiding the tentacles, the Common or Moon Jelly was re-floated in the estuary lagoon, though with little hope of long-term survival. Later, a burning sensation on the side of the face demonstrated that not only the tentacles carry venom.

One evening, a clear strip of what looked like thousands of saucer sized warts or lenses formed a dense strand line on the beach, water’s edge thick with Jellies, like wading into frogspawn. Later again, fishing in the estuary mouth, the apparent occasional slow heave of Mullet breaking the surface turned out to be more massive Moon Jellies sucked into the estuary by inflowing tide, diaphanous pinkish clouds pulsing underwater as they floated past.

Taking a diversion past a Sand Martin colony en-route to Samphire beds, several flat, shining, dinner plate-sized lenses lay on wet estuary sand, characteristic brown radial dial marking revealing well named Compass Jellies only recently colonising British waters. Whilst carefully re-floating one still pulsing upside-down in a flooded mud pool high on the salting, a circular mark nearby on the short sea-washed turf demonstrated how little of substance remains after evaporation in hot sun: just a thin translucent brownish crust, like the edge of a well fried egg.

It seems that it is not known what causes these ‘blooms’, population explosion and mass stranding, or if a regular or recent phenomenon. Population explosions of other organisms are often created by habitat disruption with some thought that these simple organisms may be exploiting an ecological imbalance created by over-fishing.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-06-25T04:23:00.000-07:00

The longest day marks high tide of the seasonal cycle: Mountain Ash berries are reddening in the bunch; apples likewise, both still small and hard. Autumnal ‘tic….tic’ of Robins has just begun. First Field Mushrooms of the year tasted good in an omelette with our own eggs & bacon.

Memorable ‘4x4 Safari’: in a landscape of rocks surrounded by a sea of colonising bracken, scrub and young Oak woodland, a sheer rock cliff is topped with a group of ash-grey shapes: about a dozen Wild Goats, from clean half-grown kids to big shaggy males with heavy heads of horn, thought to have been introduced by Neolithic man after the last Ice Age.

Descending into the river valley, at the woodland edge, a small bird flits across the tiny lane ahead to disappear into thin air. Further movement between trees is hard to identify until a new fledged Pied Flycatcher rests briefly in view, grey with insignificant white flight pattern. Several further families are located before a striking black and white male flips briefly onto a fence top then up into cover.

In the dunes, dry grass is scattered with wild flowers: yellow Trefoils, Hawksbeard, Cat’s Ears, Hay Rattle & Heartsease; tiny white Fairy Flax and Eyebright and mauve Thyme; powder-blue Sheep’s Bit. Marsh Orchids spent: stems of faded, dried pink. Delicate conical heads of pink to cerise Pyramidal Orchids stand amongst dry grasses. Difficult not to tread on lush, pale green leaves of Marsh Helleborine, now topped with spires of fragile looking exotic confections of cream and maroon.

Several years ago, just one pink-winged, bulbous brown Bee Orchid stood in the fork between two paths at the base of a dune. This year, another single spire stands at the base of the same dune, but in a different path fork.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-06-17T09:43:00.000-07:00

Woods and hedges full of squeaking newly fledged Blue, Great and Coal Tits: family parties of Long-Tailed Tits dive across clearings, tiny round balls with impossibly long tails. Driving home, two patches of russet red bounce down the lane ahead, glancing up right into sapling Ash. Drawing up adjacent, it takes a while to find expected handsome, russet-breasted, slate-backed Redstart, beady black eye set in black and white mask; striking though seldom seen.

Tuesday evening was not ideal for Bass fishing: onshore breeze and choppy seas; breaking waves from a steady swell clouding water close to shore. Mullet often congregate at the head of the bay, feeding on weed and particles wafted to the beach by tide, wind and wave. Shimmering ripples and occasional surging finned backs breaking the surface showed this evening was no exception. Bass often accompany Mullet and lures were soon chased in and snatched by two small ‘School Bass’. Towards sunset, breeze dropped, sea flattened, then suddenly alive with fish and birds: Mullet rocketed out of the water like Exocet missiles or cruised and surged just below the surface after tiny crustaceans; Bass chased & chopped past after bait fish; Gulls dropped down to feed on scraps. Seven foot, stiff-wing spanned Gannets quartered high above the bay: jinked, wavered then flipped over, jetting into the sea with efficient splash, shoulders seeming to dislocate on impact, swing-winged bomber into torpedo. Momentum spent, they bobbed up, floating buoyantly on the sea like white and buff turkeys, shaking water from upraised wings and ruffled feathers. Thin-winged black Shearwaters skimmed past, silhouette against evening skies.

Exciting to cast into slack water between clean waves, causing swirls from surprised Mullet; surface lure spurting at each pull, chased and harried almost to the rod tip or snatched from below by marauding Bass.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-06-12T07:11:00.000-07:00

First rock-pooling session resulted in a tank full of specimens dominated by a great Shore Crab: mottled greens and browns, striking red elbow joints on buckled legs; hardly room for smaller, dull pink, rectilinear pie-crust Edible Crab. Dark, frog-eyed Blennies mouthed with rubbery lips, large enough to splash and rock the tank; sand coloured Gobies & Prawns darting about clear water. Two Butterfish, toffee-coloured with gold-rimmed black eye markings down the back: Eel-like on capture but the real thing insinuates amongst other specimens, only narrow head and pouting mouth visible. Two new creatures: tiny black fish, difficult to identify, but down-hinged lower jaw and preferred shelter under rocks suggest young Bearded Rockling. Two pebble-like lumps of hard jelly Sea Squirts are patterned with distinctive, green-gold, double-hatching in elongated star arrangements: probably a colony of Star Ascidian sea squirts established on the jelly surface of another species: Ascidiella aspersa. The shore was littered with Starfish of all sizes, Herring Gulls hawking and dropping as many were swept over the sand bar.

No takers for the Saturday Wildlife Walk but in scanning the bay a silver torpedo traced a dark mark in blue sea just landward of a raft of brown weed, too fast for Mullet. Soon back on the beach, waders & jacket donned, rod in hand, breaking waves marked a sandbar along which to wade within range. First Bass of the year came to the net in short order before the school moved on. By now way out on the seaward side of the boulder reef, so cast across into water dark with boulders and weed, retrieving the lures across the reef margin for patrolling Bass. Two further rod-bending smash and grab raids from these fast moving predators before incoming tide concerns for retracing a sandbar lifeline brought reluctant close.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-06-04T11:03:00.000-07:00

After weeks of showers, cloud, and stiff south-westerly’s, high pressure summer weather is welcome: everything growing, flowering, feeding & breeding. Skylarks and Meadow Pipits tower high over nest sites; single white, black and chestnut Shelduck feed quietly on shining mud or sleep on Thrift pink salting, partners in dark nest burrows. Mute Swans change shifts on their great Rush nest. Sand Martins swoop up and out of new sand cliff tunnels set under a grass root fringe.

In short, rabbit-grazed turf, bronze-winged, green-headed Coch-y-Bonddu beetles clamber over stems or lift off in heavy, buzzing flight: Jackdaws stride, hop and peck busily over the Maes for them and Gulls thermal high over mountains and scatter white over mountain-sides. Many are wind-blown onto clear mountain lakes, wafted through ripple, legs kicking before snapped with a splash by Brown Trout.

In the dune slacks, hard not to step on prolific lush leaves and nodding buds of Marsh Helleborine; early Orchids spire amongst dry grasses, vivid colour, confectionary texture & form exotic as any close up.

Late evening on a derelict road amongst colonising Birch, Broom and Gorse: passing time watching a thin Heron stalking sandy estuary shallows below; Common Sandpiper ‘peeping’ as it flits low over mirror-calm water on down-slung wings; Merganser carrying three young in her back. Garden Warbler sings sweetly, invisible in Birch sapling; two Redpolls bounce across the sky overhead in dry, wheezing song flight. Almost dark before rich soft churring is just audible, right on the edge of sound, wafted by favourable breezes. Darker still, breeze drops, churring much closer: interspersed ‘quik….quik’ calls, soft claps overhead. The sharp-eyed trace thin white wing marks and erratic silhouette up to the rock cliff top where a distinctive slim shape sits horizontal atop a single tall thin stem against a night sky.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-05-29T06:47:00.000-07:00

First ‘4x4 Safari’ of the year following drovers’ roads out of this rich coastal strip, over the grey Rhinog Mountains to markets at Trawsfynnedd and Dolgellau. Except where interrupted by uninhabitable mountains, towns in Wales are spaced at regular 12 mile intervals determined by a day’s droving cattle and sheep to market. The first is prehistoric in origin, marked by standing stones, passing through heaped remains of a Bronze Age settlement and a stone hut circle on the northern flanks of the Rhinogs. High above the sandy Dwrydd estuary, the horizon is bound by the entire Snowdon mountain range; above are two Bronze Age settlements: Moel Goedog, ‘Hill of the Cattle’ and Moel Gerddi ‘Hill of the Gardens’.

Black-masked Wheatears flirt squared white rumps from dry-stone walls, slate grey with peach-stained breasts; streaked Meadow Pipits parachute out of wide skies, calling faster and faster on the final swoop to ground.

Moving over to the next valley, we pass from clean, boulder-clay grazing to harder country; rocky outcrops and rushy hollows, stone walls of flat, slate bedrock. Bracken, once kept down by scythes, soon returns where machine mowing is uneconomic, quickly followed by Gorse and Thorn that protect colonising Birch and Sallow from grazing. Within one human life span, clean grazing returns to a wooded landscape familiar to Bronze-Age occupants of the hill-top settlements above. Also here since Neolithic times, a Wild Goat moves back into trees: angular, ash-grey with shaggy, dark fore-quarters and great head of horn; cock Yellowhammer, bright as a canary, over Bracken on the sharp stone wall close by. The Artro rushes under a primitive stone arch, too loud to hear sibilant descending trills of Wood Warbler from the canopy and normally distinct hesitant calls of Pied Flycatcher, both of which species still thrive in these woods.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-05-21T09:10:00.000-07:00

First rain is absorbed entirely by dry earth, river scarcely rising to normal levels. Later rain brings a brief small spate, dropping before the first opportunity to fish for sea trout. A small window of five minutes casting across to swing the fly under the new bridge brings a sudden tug and commotion and a fat little brown trout for release in quiet shallows. A later opportunity to fish down into the tidal weir pool only yields one small trout. Driving back, steering wheel is smeared with thin black tar with fish scales and distinct pungent smell of Otter spraint from a rock used to steady against the flood. Next day, walking the now exposed rocky river margin, only the one old, dried out spraint is found characteristically on the top of a prominent rock as the Dipper buzzes upstream to fuss and dip on a mossy rock. Wind too strong to fish the sea or exposed mountain lakes, we drive to a sheltered lake set in a boulder clay hollow, rich in vegetation and insect life. Lily pads float beyond a fine Mares-Tail fringe; exquisite pale lilac Bog Bean flower spikes set above tripartite bold leaves emerging from shallows. Whilst watching the lake, a dark shape lifts head and shoulders out of the water, dropping back amongst lily pads. Having walked around the lake we stand again to look for rising trout. Just off a headland, another movement brings binoculars up just as a huge Carp rises out of the water, appearing to stand on its tail before falling back like a log, waters closing over, radiating a circle of waves into the lake. A second time it lifts up, magnificent pink-bronze pale belly, with large scales and distinctive rounded pelvic fins before again pole-axing back into the lake.

Tench

By C.F.Tunnicliffe

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-05-12T08:44:00.000-07:00

Through the woods, a cascade of descending sibilant notes falls from a sparse canopy of emerging Beech leaves, first Wood Warbler of the year. Later, sat reading in the armchair, strident call from just outside the window: striking Pied Flycatcher perched on the blue iron pergola, cleanly divided along a streamlined fuselage between jet black upper-parts contrasted with white under-parts and wing patches.

On the village outskirts, a party of four, thin-winged, black sickles repeatedly screams low, chasing through the passage between two houses and out over fields; first Swifts, very late this year.

Apart from isolated pairs of white and black ‘Bergansers’, estuary sand, mudflats, and salting are almost empty, latter just turning pink, carpeted with papery Thrift flowers. One remaining scaly, coffee-coloured Curlew looks bulky and heavy next to an apparently much smaller roosting Whimbrel, when the bill tucked under the latter’s wing is revealed straight or even a little upturned with reddish base: Bar-Tailed Godwit en route north.

A sandy bay of the estuary is invaded from the air by a squadron of apparently lightly built Curlews whiffling down ahead of the rising tide to work busily over soft sand on spidery legs and long, thin, down-curved bills: 19 Whimbrel, also moving northward.

Despite churned up, coffee-coloured sea, just ahead of a party of Common or Arctic Terns working up the coast in thin-winged, buoyant flight, a bird half the size bounces over the sea on fine-drawn white wings and streamer tail; Little Tern, scarcely larger than Swallow.

Apart from a couple of clean white Gannets jetting into the sea, the bay is clear of interest, except, just on leaving, a black form visible between waves: too thin-necked and dumpy for Scoter; dark colouring and slightly crested profile giving a fine Black Necked Grebe in summer plumage.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-05-06T08:13:00.000-07:00

New leaves remain glossy but river is at rocky bottom and lawn stopped growing so steadily streaming rain this morning is welcome. Despite last drops in a blustery south wind, Bluebell fragrance drifts across the lane on the morning run, dawn chorus stronger than ever.

Only time to check the bay briefly: up to 20 Eider still floating and diving about half-mile offshore; three grey and white, thin necked Divers in flight towards the Irish Sea joined suddenly and briefly by a cloud of black Scoter, thick as bees across the horizon, surely last sightings of overwintering birds departing to northern breeding grounds.

A white sea-fishing charter boat wallows way out, 6 rods ‘jigging’ from the stern, occasional silver flicker of Mackerel lifted into the air. Bright white, long winged, Gannets hawk 50 feet above, turning to jet vertically downward, penetrating the sea in plume of white.

Bass are in, darkening the sea and chopping through the surface as they chase bait fish past the harbour mouth. Only one has chased the fly shoreward thus far, snatching the tail with a heart-stopping thump.

Walking up the hard sand beach with an eye on the ripple, a thin, anchor silhouette skims along the evening dune tops and jinks out of sight; unusual to find Merlin here outside winter.

A good sized fish launches vertically from rippled water close to shore. Small variations in ripple pattern betray strong tails beneath; a dozen deep swirls confirming fish under the line as it rolls out. Mullet do not usually take lures, but casting around for attendant Bass the line tautens with a heavy load. Soon apparent ‘foul-hooked’ Mullet, technically not sporting to kill, but perfect for lunch next day, rubbed with oil and salt, stuffed with fresh Fennel and baked in a foil parcel.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-04-30T08:23:00.000-07:00

With most trees in glossy new leaf and fragrance of Bluebells, Azalea and Wisteria on the air, already attacks begin: one of only two new oak seedling leaves powdered white with mildew; Hawthorn shoots through white stocking caterpillar webbing.

Though end of June marks the seasonal high tide mark, foundations for autumn are in hand: waxen female Holly flowers hold tiny glossy green globes in their centres. Bushy fruiting Ivy shakes with Blackbirds, Thrushes, and Woodpigeons feeding on funereal black berry bunches; metallic pink seeds litter paths and lanes. Smoke-grey Blackcaps, though insectivorous warblers, also seem to find the fruit attractive between singing hard in the woods, or settling disputes with harsh ‘chack, chack’ calls. Still no Swift sighting, though Whitethroats rattle from Gorse & Thorn and a mechanical dry buzzing from winter dried wetland grasses denotes first Grasshopper Warbler.

Tuesday is a rare, cold, overcast, blustery day with no-one for the Wildlife Walk. Taking five minutes to check the bay with telescope and binoculars, dry buzzing Sand Martins zoom, jet, and swoop low for sand flies over the upper beach at the slipway beach entry. Down on the rocks, characteristic ‘pee, pee, pee’ of Whimbrels, one stood proud on a rock, a lightweight Curlew with dark crown parting. Just offshore, in dark, wind-chopped sea, a thin, bright white neck stands tall, topped with flared chestnut crest and sharp bill; one of several great Crested Grebes in summer plumage still not breeding on inland lakes. Far out in the dark, flat sea, a line of white shapes remain amongst sea-horses flaring briefly white. Telescope reveals Herring Gulls with heavy-billed forms interspersed: two bright white with black strip; two duck-brown; one intermediate immature male Eider, all busy diving, resting, or rising in wing-flapping exercise, careful inspection revealing the drakes’ peppermint-cream streak.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-04-23T11:23:00.000-07:00

Returning after just a week away, the river is once again at rocky bottom, fields and woods diffuse with pale green and grey of breaking buds and glossy young foliage. Apples and cherries scatter blossom like confetti in the orchard; Blackcap cascade of liquid notes heard all day from garden and office. Gold, red and black striking as a Goldfinch twitters up into heavy white Cherry blossom. Hesitant, buzzing, ‘zip, zip, zippee, zip, zip’ of Redstarts drift from at least five locations on the early morning run; handsome red, black and white masked males hard to spot even before oak leaves emerge.

First day back on the beach: soft haze obliterates the horizon merging tranquil grey sea with blue washed skies. Far out where a light breeze ruffles the sea dark, thin black forms skim the water: intermittent stiff wing beats with short glides. Several alight on the sea, bellies and throats showing pale; Manx Shearwaters are seen occasionally all summer, but in most numbers on this side of the bay when they first arrive.

Arrived at the beach 3 hours before high tide this morning to meet reported first Bass at the estuary mouth. Viscid grey sea merged with morning haze; wavelets sighing on the beach; white sand and gravel, boulders and bronze kelp swaying in pellucid waters: perfect conditions. First Common Sandpiper of the year peeped in the background; distinctive wild and plaintive ‘pee, pee, pee’ of first Whimbrel moving northward.

Casting and watching: no responding tug on the line, but a dark patch with splashing indicates first Bass passing by the estuary mouth. Beyond, a grey-brown form rolls once, low in the sea, then again, shadowing the shoal up from the warm south.

Telescope later confirms at least three Common Dolphins quietly quartering the milk calm sea.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-04-07T09:36:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning is warm with sunshine and light south-west air movement but dramatic skies: bright white Cumulus cauliflowers streaming in over the sea turning to heavy grey Stratus obscuring inland mountains; blue skies stretched across with a high layer of fine spun white Altostratus.

Stopping at the farm gate to scan the village, farmland, and wooded escarpment beyond, a record 29 species are counted before moving on, including several fine black darts flitting high under lowering grey cloud: first Swallows of the year.

Sand Martins usually arrive before Swallows, so for the past few weeks the telescope has been trained across the estuary lagoon onto the sand cliff behind the harbour wall. Until today, though black holes can be seen under the buff Marram grass fringe of the sand cliff, only Skylarks have been located, flitting and chasing over the low Marram-topped sand island. Today, the expected compact, dark forms jet past the tunnels and circle wide across the lagoon and creeks.

Scanning from the breakwater, two thin-winged forms work their way northward high over the horizon across the bay; sudden jink and swoop eventually confirm first Terns of the year rather than Black-Headed Gulls, so probably Sandwich Terns, common in this area. Later, two even finer white thin-winged Terns work across southward before jetting into the chop, smaller with lighter flight thus probably Common or Artic Terns. Likewise far out, a large stiff-winged form rises from waves - lit bright white against the lowering Llyn Peninsula - to wing its way high above the sea before swooping then jetting with a plume of white into the sea; first Gannet of the year.

The walk ends with 49 species noted; not an end in itself but a spur to stay alert to movement in a busy and fast-changing spring landscape.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-04-01T06:55:00.000-07:00

Robins trill sweetly in morning darkness but as soon as light plays on closed eyelids, Chiffchaff calls now drift up from pollen yellow Sallows. This Saturday morning, Chiffchaff simple two-note refrain was accompanied by a liquid cascade, first Blackcap of the year, now singing the day long in woods around the house, one smoke-grey, soot-capped male working through funereal black ivy berries just yesterday.

Whilst breaking up pig panned earth to take turnip seed early Tuesday morning, a lighter, sweeter, descending cascade of higher notes came from high in the canopy of surrounding trees; first Willow Warbler of the year, physically almost identical to Chiffchaff, only differing in song and slight, though overlapping, habitat preference.

Tuesday morning was misty, the sun a pale red disc emerging from dark mountains, the bay tranquil, horizon and Llyn Peninsula lost in milky haze. Spring wader passage not yet under way, thus far only the Godwit mentioned last week and grey and white spangled Grey Plover hunched on the boulder shore, though winter Turnstones have departed north.

On a mirror-calm harbour pool a blush white drake Goosander paddled on scarlet webs, dark, bottle-green head and red saw bill outstretched, snorkelling in shallows for Sand Gobies and fry. Several more Goosander worked the low surf band just offshore outside the estuary, but the first bird, by now in the harbour pool, kicked up a fine old commotion, rushing back and forth flapping and chasing fry where salt marsh waters drain into the harbour, stopping only briefly to swallow a writhing sliver of silver.
In the afternoon, a single Red Kite drifting lazily over the trees was joined by another circling raptor that broke into a long dive overhead, scimitar wings and short tail giving Peregrine Falcon, later soaring above the cliff with two circling Kites.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-03-24T07:19:00.000-07:00

High pressure brings blue skies and sea mists; closest moon for 20 years filling the estuary lagoon to the brim. Teal and Curlew numbers further diminish as they depart for breeding grounds. Intermediate between busy Redshanks running and stabbing silver mud and large brown Curlew sleeping out the tide on sea-washed turf, a long-legged wader paces and probes elegantly with long, straight bill; first Bar-tailed Godwit moving northward.

Scanning the sea, locating Scoter, Divers and Grebes in the dark chop, a dive is glimpsed in passing. Marked the spot between near rocky shore and distant Llyn Peninsula, and awaited re-emergence of a small Grebe, pale throat and neck lacking white-cheeked, black-capped contrasts of Slavonian Grebe, a further 30 minutes to confirm characteristic high crown of Black-Necked Grebe, first noted since moving here.

Returning home, turning off the engine and stepping out of the car, distinctive first Chiffchaff song drifts up from a stand of pollen yellow Sallow: first returning migrant whose simple two- note refrain remains with us all summer.

Two days later, sibilant whistles emerge from dense sea mist shrouding early morning lanes and fields: winter Redwings forced down from nocturnal northward migration by poor visibility.

Despite warm sunshine and blue skies, a skein of cold mist drifts across the hillside later in the day, obscuring sea views with an instant chill. Scanning a rushy meadow bathed in hazy sunshine, a single small dark silhouette alternates between ground feeding and rush-top perch, several longer, upright grey forms between rush clumps. View with sun behind confirms immature Stonechat and first three sleek, grey & peach, black eye-streaked Wheatears.

Returning down the lane, the sunny bank under the old Oak is lit with glossy Celandines, soft yellow Primrose, grey-blue Periwinkle, inconspicuous white Barren Strawberry and first blue Violet of the year.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-03-18T08:56:00.000-07:00

Waist deep in a clear mountain lake, floating imitation flies to surface feeding trout, all action is focussed on the water skin. Ripples refract and distort the image of the fly, aiding deception; breeze from behind eases the cast; side wind drifts a fly naturally with ripples that still play on closed eyelids before sleep.

Fly-fishing on sea is similarly dependent on wind and wave but on a larger scale, tides an added factor. Light breeze off land aids casting and flattens the sea, little or no wave gives clear water for lure visibility, rising tide brings fish to newly submerged shore. Tide tables and tidal clocks plot a lunar cycle ill-fitted to routines set by spinning earth. Finding windows between these two cycles and favourable sea conditions demands forecasts, clocks, and charts. Wading into clear cold sea with a light breeze behind is a privilege, only adding to anticipation of sudden tug and explosion of excitement tempered by fear of losing sea-hardened Bass.

Here on the coast, progress and variety of clouds approaching over sea, forming over mountains, and playing light and shade over hills is ever-changing and various, often dramatic and impressive. Named cloud categories each have clearly defined characteristics but are only points on a continuum with all intermediate stages between. Barometers and Meteorological Office synoptic weather charts help work out why each cloud of vapour condenses or freezes at a particular altitude or coalesce and darken to produce falling rain or ice.

Just now, looking at charts of swirling air masses, it will be interesting to see which pattern brings first migrant birds to these parts. Southerly wind with clear skies under moonlight should help Wheatears to follow the coastline northward: looking forward to their sleek, upright forms once again on rabbit-cropped turf behind the dunes.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-03-10T10:08:00.000-08:00

Keen to start fishing early on the sea, last week was spent in hope that silt would settle out to give clear water on shore before the return of turbulent low pressure systems. Tuesday morning was forecast the end of settled, high pressure, but early morning remained fine, so skipped breakfast for the beach to fish up to 10:00 AM high tide: very satisfying to rig up the rod for the first time since November, despite low chance of catching so early.

Emerging onto the beach, sea conditions were ideal: almost imperceptible swell sighing onto wet sand; just a light surface ripple. Wading waist deep, casting over rocks and kelp for Pollack, water still slightly milky, but clear enough to locate dark patches of kelp beneath the surface. From mist covered mountains across the bay, a window flared bright, catching the rising sun. Working systematically along the beach, glancing ahead toward the rocky shore, two duck foraged between dark emergent rocks, one dark headed and canvas backed, the other just dark. Despite large numbers of Wigeon and Teal, not one Mallard over-wintered on the estuary, yet what looked like a pair in unlikely habitat was confirmed when they sped close past, drake’s bottle-green head iridescent in morning sun. Soon after, a steady whistling beat marked approaching Mute Swans, a pair passing close overhead, following the shore-line between estuaries.

Tide almost full, south-west horizon dark with cloud and breeze darkening the water, when two large grey birds with pale under-parts beat ponderously, unusually low over the waves; pair of Herons way out to sea.

Reluctantly reeling in, hooking up and returning to the car, a skeletal spray of Elm suckers at the car park entrance held up dark clusters silhouette against the sky, proving tiny toffee and pink star-bursts close up.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-03-03T09:57:00.000-08:00

First high pressure system for many weeks brings sunshine, clear blue skies, and frost; glasshouses vented for the first time this year to prevent winter salad leaves bolting. Spring gathers momentum, overwintering Wigeon now departed the estuary. Last weekend, the flock floated tight line astern about half-mile offshore, distinct from usual black Scoter scattered across the bay. Later, the entire flock flew low over a choppy sea, parallel with the beach, passing the estuary entrance, headed for open sea. A Peregrine flickered out of sight behind the headland; possibly the cause of Wigeon flight; certainly the seasonal departure of a significant winter Peregrine food source.

Sunday run brought two Red Kites floating over a boulder-clay ridge, last Redwings exploding from a stunted Hawthorn, and first silvered spray of Sallow catkins suspended over the river from a crack in the stone bridge. Up the lane, first Primrose opened on a sunny bank, pale yellow star amongst scattered, gold-spoked Celandines; smooth green Wild Garlic spathes emerge below the wall.

Best sight was at the meeting point of sandy estuary, salting with sedges and creeks, and flat farm grazing. Having found an elegant, silver and white Greenshank amongst smaller, noisy Redshank in a sandy creek, now returning toward the point described, a thin sliver of black skimmed low and fast over sheep-grazed pasture, swooping smartly upward to alight on an earth heap. Optical gear showed upper parts of a neat female Merlin: alert, penetrating eyes; plumage mottled grey. Packing the telescope, having watched our fill, the Merlin sped towards us to perch again, roadside fence post gripped with egg-yolk yellow talons. As not alarmed by a passing car, we drove slowly closer, within 10 yards before she flipped off the post, flickering low and fast across the road and out over the salting.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-02-25T09:14:00.000-08:00

Warm southerly winds brought a succession of fronts across the coast over past weeks: bright spells with patches of blue showing through; occasional dripping sea mists; mostly a low ceiling of stratus streaming in from the sea, darkening over the Rhinogs.

Walking towards the rocky shore for first rock-pooling of the year, light shingle is combed back down the beach into parallel waved streaks by strong surf and ebbing high tides. February rock-pooling brings fewer specimens than in summer nevertheless everyone pleased with their collections: yellow helmet Flat Periwinkle creeping over brown Bladderwrack; striped turban Purple Topshells; clusters of black Periwinkles. Worked hard for a few tiny, dark red Shore Crabs and kicking grey Shrimps under rocks; pleased to catch two frog-eyed, rubber-lipped Blennies. No translucent filmy-brown Prawns or darting Sand Gobies invariably found over sand in summer. Species numbers boosted by coolie-hat Limpets and blue-black Mussels with a couple of tiny Starfish and jelly-red Anemones stuck to the underside of boulders. Heavy surf exposed a record-sized Cockle and a Starfish size of a child’s hand stretched along a boulder base, trying to shelter underneath.

Current range of bird species on estuary, shore and sea is limited. However, a recent trip incorporated a local site of apparent interesting raptor sightings. Parking up in woods off the main road, we walked back down into the open with clear views over estuary, fields and mixed woodlands, reported location of soaring hawks. Heavy weather not conducive to soaring, we were about to return to the vehicle when a bird was spotted circling behind a stand of oak towards the estuary. Binoculars showed a large, broad-winged silhouette with long, wide-spread tail circling flatly under grey skies, Sparrowhawk-shaped but ponderous as a Buzzard: female Goshawk, ‘full-skirted and wide sleeved’, with distinctive nick under the wing.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-02-18T02:37:00.000-08:00

Further to last week’s notes, spring is gathering momentum. On the homeward leg of a cold, wet, cloudy mountain run, the bright surface of no more than a water-filled trackside rut bulged with characteristic jelly mass: first frogspawn of the year. Passing down through woodland toward the village, a Blackbird gave just one mellow warbled phrase of rich song. A Crow burdened with nest material flapped doggedly over ponies in the field below to disappear into a Cedar crown. Lane-side Celandines in glossy leaf under a warm, south-facing stone wall produced a first yellow-spoked flower this morning. First acid-green Golden Saxifrage froths where water gathers under a dripping rock spring in the woods.

The range of species found on the regular wildlife walks of estuary and shore has decreased since weather warmed, winter numbers of 40-50 species dropping to 30-40. Now looking forward to the start of the spring migration and arrival of Wheatears on rabbit grazed links and new waders resting on estuary and shore en route northward.

Numbers of species bears only some relation to memorable moments: black hooded Peregrine sat on the salting, watching flocks of Wigeon, Teal and Curlew with a proprietary air. A thin sliver of black in a long, long descending glide from the inland escarpment directly at the binoculars; slightly undulate profile between raised wing tips and occasional lazy wing-beat. Watching the glide to make the distinction between probable Crow or Rook, the bird suddenly lifted in a short, steep climb, stalled, then spun on its tail two complete revolutions as it dropped vertically, a twisting, black rag in the sky then transformed into a fast, vertical dive out of sight. Attractive carrion spotted below? Display to admiring mate? Desperate evasion of unseen Peregrine? Certainly another memorable moment and yet another unanswered question…

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-02-10T09:24:00.000-08:00

Hazel catkins lengthen to yellow lambs tails; tiny red velvet snake tongue stigmata protrude from green fruit buds to catch the pollen. At the base of the stone wall in the lane, shiny new, green-lobed Celandine leaves show with silvered, sometimes maroon splashed centre; Pilewort the name from the days of sympathetic herbalist medicine. Robins are joined by others in the morning chorus: Mistle Thrush simple, wild, loud refrain; Song Thrush song sweeter with repeated couplets. Last week, passing the river in the village, urgent, buzzing trills penetrated the sound of rushing water: Dippers singing and chasing near the new bridge. First hammerdrill bursts of Great Spotted Woodpecker heard from the garden last week. Snowdrops are out in carpets on the grass verge and adjacent woodlands of Criccieth road; Narcissus shooting strongly outside the garden gate. The outdoor thermometer only dips just below freezing on clear nights that bring cheering sunshine during the day. Fragrance of Eleagnus, Viburnum and shrubby Honeysuckle flows into the lane on cold mornings and insignificant white and purple starbursts of winter Heliotrope, though close to the ground and invasive, bring a scent of spring. Of recent interest is the great variety of clouds as they move in from the sea and over the mountains behind, especially with the current fast-changing progression of weather patterns. Tracking weather systems and resultant cloud patterns gives a whole new dimension to understanding the dynamic processes that influence our world. Interesting also to read the diary of John Evelyn who, over a lifetime of nearly 90 years, describes extremes of weather that threatened life and society of the time: devastating storms and hurricanes; streets and alleys of traders and entertainments on the frozen Thames; long droughts and harvest failures and springs so cold, leaves and fruit were stripped from trees.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-02-04T11:03:00.001-08:00

An autumnal grey dawn looks set for the day: trees faded silhouettes in heavy mist; blackened leaves trod underfoot in mud; only the twigs hung with bright water drops.

However, a little later, though still held in thick mist, the beach car park is brighter, light beginning to penetrate from above. Bird calls sound close in water-laden air: loud piping of Oystercatchers from the beach; bubbling curlew calls from the estuary.

A flat swell crashes lazily onto the beach, cream breakers just visible in the sea mist.

The beach seems ethereal and strange, especially as light increases from above: slender bill, thin wings and tail, and sleek body of a Redshank appears especially designed for speed as it rockets away, piping loud in alarm from the boulder shore, white wing and tail panels less striking than usual. Diminutive Ringed Plover calls and soft buzzing of Dunlin ahead suggest the dog chasing a wader flock up and down the shore; enthusiastic, hopeful and deluded as ever.

Rounding the breakwater is a revelation, sun penetrating the mist from the south: the estuary flows smooth molten gold between sand bars fading into golden haze, sky above now pale blue. Faded orange-grey silhouettes of Wigeon move from the near shore and stand alert on the sand bar; amongst familiar whistling calls and soft growls, a quiet wheezing call, never before heard. Long, low, crested Mergansers move silent in mist: one drake suddenly contorting into a stiff, angled pose to display a fine quiff, black and white wings lifted to best advantage, females seeming unimpressed.

Even the dog appears special, a dark silhouette breasting a smooth, golden flow to retrieve a black stick, ripples spreading behind.

Returning home, the entire coastal strip lays in hazy sunshine; an unexpectedly beautiful outcome from a damp, grey start.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-01-27T08:44:00.001-08:00

Putting out the flag brings a taste of the morning to come: biting north wind and tumultuous skies; serried grey Stratocumulus torn apart in great chasms revealing blue skies and towering white Cumulus. Bars of sunlight radiate down onto a grey winter landscape, illuminating bright green fields and rippled turquoise sea.

Coat buttoned high, cap down low, brows and cheeks are seared, fingers hard bitten on optical gear. Walking along the drainage dyke, winter-bleached, rabbit-grazed turf is flattened by excavator tracks. The deep ditch has been bucket-dredged, reeds neatly dumped along the far bank. A tiny brown bird buzzes out of the heap and across the track; a Wren finding insects in mud and debris.

Down the ditch line, beyond the estuary, a black speck circles tight in a patch of sunlight: Red Kite, wings and tail flared wide for support.

In a stone-walled field on a low, sheltered, southern slope, crested Lapwing stand with three Thrush species together: pale, coarse-speckled Mistle Thrush largest; then soft, fawn-brown Song Thrush; darker-backed, eye-striped Redwing noticeably smallest.

Teal mew soft warning as we approach the estuary, Teal and larger Wigeon silhouette in bright water, tight against shining mud flats before both spring, initial whistle of wings drowned by wild whistling calls.

Rounding the bend, about thirty white & black Shelduck string out at the waterline; two dark, small-headed forms are lately resident Brent Geese.

Approaching the breakwater boundary between estuary and sea, small parties of Wigeon and Teal fly overhead from shore to estuary mud-flats, wings and tail sharp against the sky. The Brents pass over low, skidding down into a flat sea where wavelets swish gently on shore.

After scanning bay and shore, it takes several more minutes to relocate the Brents only 80 yards distant, superbly camouflaged among shining wet boulders.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-01-20T07:34:00.000-08:00

Leaving the house every morning at the same time gives a picture of daybreak in all its stages as days lengthen. Just now, all looks black through the window of a warm, lit kitchen, but once outside sky is obviously greying, potholes in the lane just visible. Some mornings the Tawny Owl is still about, hoarse, quavering calls from nearby woodland, occasionally peering down from the telegraph pole, but every morning at this time the air is filled with trills and ‘tic..tic’ calls of Robins keen to advertise their presence and to defend hard-won territory at the earliest opportunity. From almost underfoot, flakes of the track seem dimly to flit ahead then up into cover as Robins recognise danger late in half-light.

Emerging onto a hillside white with frost, the horizon opens wide under a dark blue sky, yellow waxing moon hanging low behind a solitary black Thorn. The morning star is still bright over the sea, eastern horizon paling duck-egg blue stained peach behind the dark bulk of the Rhinogs.

Yesterday, passing beneath overhanging Ash, swishing wing-beats and a deep ‘Glock…Glock’ overhead brought attention to a long winged Raven calling to its mate as they passed low over treetops. This morning, a deep croak marks the same birds on the same route over the trees; a little earlier according to my GMT routine but the same time by the Raven’s cycle of sun and season.

From the hilltop, the yellow moon hanging over the Llyn Peninsula lights a bright, wide path across the pale grey-blue stillness of Tremadog Bay and flooding estuary lagoon, a scattered band of orange streetlights marking Llandanwg and land between.

Descending through woods to the village, air is filled once again with Robin song, density of territories suggesting a richer living than rough farmland above.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-01-13T07:51:00.000-08:00

Blanket of fog and fine mist over the beach car park, wildlife walk once again jeopardy. A quick check of the beach from the slipway is enough to be drawn in to a rich natural world. Despite still conditions, slow rhythm of breaking waves is loud in fog, surf at low tide only dimly visible breaking onto dark emergent boulders. A segment of the strand line is busy with Herring Gulls and a couple of Crows, all grey in mist. Walking down to check the attraction, the noisy flock lifts and settles amongst lower boulders to await resumption of feeding. As expected, sandy lumps of hard jelly Sea Squirts prove the attraction, but several unfamiliar jellyfish lay in the same strand belt: translucent umbrella above a tower of jelly, terminating in a bunch of tentacles; intermediate section giving a definite vertical axis to the whole organism. Probably Rhizostoma pulmo, an apparently edible species fished commercially in some parts of the world. As last week, several dark coated, chalky-lined Cyprina clams lay about on the sand, each fine ridge denoting one year of life of the longest lived, non-colonial animal known to science. Two white banded, dark shapes lift in the mist ahead, then resettle, only to be moved on again: Brent Geese still finding a living on the boulder shore. Rounding the breakwater, a frond of metallic pink seaweed lay on gravel, almost too bright to be natural: identity unclear; impact memorable. Walking back up the estuary, sandy bay created by a bend in the tidal river, a patch of white feathers lays dry between tide marks. Close examination shows fine marked, shot silver flank feathers of drake Wigeon with a scatter of burnt orange head feathers; Peregrine kill sometime after daybreak, carried off to a safer spot for consumption.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2011-01-06T09:05:00.001-08:00

New Year’s Day and, despite decent forecast, fine drizzle set in as two keen families arrived for the Wildlife Walk. Checked what was happening on the beach whilst hoping for improvement, but even difficult to see the thousands of black Scoter on the bay through rain smeared lenses. However, the sea was calm enough to hear them mewing and a patch of light sky approached from the south, so we walked down the beach toward the breakwater, reversing the usual circuit.

Soon, young eyes were finding items of interest on the strand line: hard, dark ‘Mermaids Purse’ Skate egg-cases; tiny Starfish; more Sea Squirts. A large dark, horseshoe-shaped shell with white inner surface was not Horse Mussel as thought, but Arctica islandica, an Icelandic Cyprina or Ocean Quahog, oldest non-colonial animal known to science, living up to 400 years according to the number of ‘annual rings’ comprising its shell. A long, smooth, pale-streaked Mermaid’s Purse was found occupied: slit with a knife, first a white baby Shark head emerged, snout and cheeks unaccountably tinged red, entire animal slipping out onto the sand, about 225mm long attached to a white foetal sac.

One family had already mentioned geese on the beach and first spotted them amongst boulders. No larger than a nearby Herring Gull, three diminutive, dark-necked, pale-flanked Brent Geese foraged amongst boulders before moving out onto a sand bank behind. As we watched, a single, very fast duck flew high over the breakwater from the sea, a slim, needle-tailed silhouette: first Pintail found on this estuary that soon returned to give good views on the bay. Sky now cleared, we found all the usual winter suspects, including Grey Plover amongst boulders, plus first ever Coot found on our little estuary; a solid start to the year with rich memorable moments.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-12-19T09:58:00.001-08:00

Below snowy mountains the coastal plain is spread white, stone walls and fine-drawn trees picked out black. Across a leaden bay, heavy, dark cloud and curtain of falling snow sweep the Llyn Peninsula. Crunching across new snow to the farm gate, bird movements are few, only occasional calls breaking the silence: faint mews from Scoter in the bay; thin, dry bleet of Lapwing on the estuary; short churring burst from agitated Wren in the ditch; single ‘peep’ from Dunnock low in the hedge.

Moving off toward the estuary, rabbits chase through briars and marram of the dunes; occasional black Crows move in a white landscape where the estuary winds dark below the high water mark: flat, grey waters, grey mud, dirty sand and salting.

Heavy cloud moves in from the sea, snow falling thick: sun, a sickly yellow smudge.

Optical gear now useless, sound predominates: yelps, whistles and churring growls as sharp-winged Wigeon speed through falling snow; deeper growls of Shelduck taking low flight, white and black over dull mud; thin whistles of Teal before they spring upward to fly fast and low up the estuary to their fellows roosted grey-bellied on a low mud bank, today joined by many Lapwing, bold black & white muted through falling snow, heads hunched low, only cavalier crests standing proud.

Turning toward the sea, telescope on shoulder, a strange change in the atmosphere and faint, resonant thrum brings attention upward where, beyond falling snowflakes, the sky is roofed with hundreds of Lapwing, taken flight unnoticed, now in a state of indecision overhead. Instead of oaring steadily through sky on wide-ended paddles of wings, the flock is marking time, primary flight feathers wide open, vibrating as they comb the air for support, several birds dropping out of the flock to turn whence they came.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-12-09T08:36:00.000-08:00

The barometer needle has moved up, wind shifted to the south, snow and ice melting after the two week freeze. Driving through open fields of the coastal plain to look for reported Hen Harrier, flat estuary sands suddenly open up before us, masts clustered around the stone quay in the distance, glimpse of open sea beyond. The road bends west, low causeway across creeks and salting; flat, sere landscape of bleached grasses, sedges and reeds, contained by distant dunes under wide open skies. Occasional grey-backed, white-bellied Redshank run and wade in shallow sandy pools on thin, lipstick crimson legs, stabbing for food with slender, red-based bills. A small movement in sparse bleached grass brings first one, then several, then many scattered buff-streaked, creeping Skylarks gleaning seeds amongst light debris left by the falling tide, occasionally flitting forward up to wind on wide wings with liquid ‘chirrups’. Grey-bellied Teal sleep on wide sandy creeks draining the marsh, heads tucked behind. An elegant white and silver Greenshank lifts from a sand bank and sweeps downstream on pointed wings, thin grey legs projecting behind. A buoyant white Egret lifts and floats over sere grasses before vanishing into another creek. Turning to put the sun behind us, thorough scan of marsh, sky and distant fence posts yields no Harrier. Whilst slowly returning across the causeway, a particle of brown detaches from the landscape, moving fast ahead. Binoculars show a thin-winged, lightly speckled, brown scimitar skimming down the road before us with occasional lift and jink. Alighting on a road sign ahead, turning its head back to stare,
the Merlin proved as slim as its steel tube perch. As it swept off ahead, a spark of electric blue buzzed low over the salting, turning burnt orange as it banked to disappear along a narrow creek.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-12-03T08:33:00.000-08:00

Winter has bitten early, a dusting of snow preserved through blue skies and sunshine by a searing north-east breeze.

At the weekend, peering watery-eyed into biting breeze brought little return, other than sharp-winged silhouettes of Wigeon against white mountains and dark cloud; yelps and whistles like stones skimmed across icy lakes. On the shore, a little sunshine lit white bellies of Sanderling roosting amongst boulders plus two more Grey Plover described last week. Highlight of the day was a couple of Sanderling separated from the main flock skimming low over the waves to alight within feet: no need for binoculars to appreciate these tiny, bead-eyed, white bundles of life chasing the ebb and flow of each broken wave up and down the beach on black legs, black bills pecking morsels from the foam.

Thursday morning was bright, and a scan of the bay brought the usual black Scoter, snake-necked Great Crest Grebes and long, white and silver Red Throated Divers with upraised bills. Today, as well as two more tiny, white breasted, black-capped Slavonian Grebes, a flash of white in the wave brought a heavy, bold marked, white and black adult male Eider to view, as well as a heavy-billed brown female and white splashed male in eclipse plumage. Closer to shore, what looked like a brown female Mallard with finer neck and lacking the heavy Eider bill suddenly flipped forward and dived, wings opening as it disappeared in the waves: definitely not a Mallard, and with Eider dive.

Calling by this morning, having checked the literature, only a female and eclipse male Eider could be found, though another flash of white just beyond a pack of black and brown Scoter turned out to be another drake Scaup; like the black Scoter but sporting bright white flanks and silver saddle.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-11-25T08:26:00.001-08:00

Driving to the beach at daybreak through a light dusting of snow, the sea lay duck-egg blue and gunmetal under greying skies, dark clouds lit pink in the dawn.

A great curtain of snow swept across the Llyn Peninsula.

Five waders lit out from the strand-line low over the sea: two boldly patterned Turnstones; two smaller Dunlin, white rumps bisected black; and a larger grey wader, white rumped with thin white wing bar, distinctive bold black blotch in the wing-pit confirming second Grey Plover of autumn.

Working through thousands of black Scoter, numbers of snake-necked Great Crested Grebes are increasing, with a scattering of long, low, silver & white Red Throated Divers. A tiny, compact Grebe, black flat cap contrasted boldly with snow-white front, fished hard in the middle distance, repeated dives bringing it close enough to see a baleful, ringed red button of an eye.

Amidst a pack of black Scoter floated a large, heavy billed duck, dark with whitening back; drake Eider, not yet full white and black.

Great haystacks of red-brown weed pushed up by last week’s storms stand on the beach awaiting dispersal by next high tides. Along the strand-line lay thousands of soft but resilient translucent jelly lozenges c. 25mm long, bringing enquiries from locals, as well as the photograph below. Field guide checks settled around the Sea Squirt pages, but it took a regular recipient of this diary to provide the definitive identification as:

‘Ascidians, probably Ascidiella aspersa, that grow on weed and small cobbles and have been washed up by first winter storms. These Urochordates (sea squirts, tunicates) are related to fish and their tadpole larva probably was the neotonous root of the vertebrates’.

Seeming inanimate lumps of jelly have a tadpole larval stage from which fish and all other vertebrates may originate.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-11-18T09:37:00.000-08:00

Rain spatters car windows over squeaking wipers and heater full on as we draw down to the water’s edge of the sandy, wide open estuary. Everything keeps down low in a stiff south-easterly.

Out on the salting two pure white Little Egrets lift briefly before dropping down again into rushes; another stabs sand at the water’s edge, runs forward, stabs again, then beats low across the channel. Small groups of Wigeon graze in the lea of salting banks; more move off unhurriedly from rough grass, slip into the windswept channel, breasting waves to a low sandbank. Two long, low forms pop up one by one just opposite, one crested bottle-green, the other ginger, both with thin red bills. Both then snorkel in the shallow margin, necks outstretched. A heavy dun Curlew stands dejected in the lea of the earth bank; a couple of Redshank bob and run busily on thin red legs at the water’s edge, probing sand and shallows with thin red bills, hurtling off with loud cries, bright white rump and wing panels lighting up a dull day.

Way down the wide open sand flats, a thin horizon of cream boiling surf kicks and rears under heavy skies. A line of Mallard string out across a shallow pool, drakes in striking breeding plumage. Behind, on a low sandbank, a tight packed line of snowy breasts present to wind, heads tucked behind under darker wings. Disembarking for the telescope, cap spins off in the wind. Difficult to keep the telescope still, but just possible to confirm Pintail sleeping out the storm, though elegant swan necks and eponymous needle tails not visible.

Across the estuary, hundreds of tiny waders stream out low, white bellies lit up in unison as Dunlin turn as one before the dark woods of Port Meirion.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-11-12T03:27:00.000-08:00

Seasons on this western seaboard tend to merge imperceptibly: first signs of spring in January; Field Mushrooms appearing in July. However, this week we have clearly switched to winter in the space of a day or two: from watching woods on the valley side alter daily from greens, through yellows and browns, to smoke-grey clouds of fine twigs and branches, just an early morning bite to the air, northerly winds followed by sou’wester gales have brought out winter coats redundant since March.

Always easier track the arrival of migrating birds, but we must now have seen the last of the Swallows, Warblers, and Wheatears until spring, though over-wintering Blackcaps and Chiffchaffs are increasingly common. The passage of wading birds is probably not yet over and local movements of resident species will continue throughout winter according to weather and food sources.

Early one morning, low light from rising sun lit pale breasts of hundreds of birds passing high overhead under a blue sky. Though not in geometric formation, this was a tight flock in steady flight on a single plane with serious, long distance intent, each bird in its place at standard two span spacing. With no binoculars to hand, definitive identification was not possible, but wing-beats were steady, lacking the ‘flick, flick, rest’ pattern of Fieldfares and Redwings most commonly moving at this time.

Best guess of Woodpigeons moving south is given greater strength by accounts of vast movements observed over southern England: 161,257 Woodpigeons counted in 4 hours passing over Constitution Hill, Dorset.

Otherwise, wildfowl and waders on estuary, shore and bay are building to winter numbers. Very happy to hear yelps and whistles of Wigeon once again, and the sound of wings through cold air as fast, sharp-winged silhouettes pass over the dunes against a paling winter sun.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-11-04T10:46:00.000-07:00

From ditch and bank beginning on soft cliffs of chocolate-brown Severn, suspension bridge looming, to the murky Irish Sea, grey horizon punctuated by white wind turbines, Offa’s Dyke twists through 177 miles of forest, rolling farmland, moorland and mountain.

The Dyke initially enters the Forest of Dean following the rim of the Wye Valley, winding river glimpsed silver below, raddled with Badger setts, occasional sibilant whistles and harsh buzzing of Long Tailed Tits; loud ‘whooet, whooet’ of Nuthatch, sudden ‘chack’ calls of Great Spotted Woodpecker overhead. Only the thinnest of squeaks from tiny Goldcrests penetrate the sough of wind above the dark, fragrant conifer depths of Glidir Forest.

From the start, coloured leaves and bright berries scatter the green grass and poached mud of ditch and bank accompanied by sweet fragrance of mould, crushed leaves and fallen fruit: toffee-brown Oak; rich yellow Beech; red Cherry, clear yellow Field Maple; bright red Holly berry, deep red Hawthorn; and pale green or yellow flushed pink Crabs.

Over tree-lined lengths of rolling farmland, soft ‘peep’ of Bullfinches is most frequent, though seldom seen, whilst berry-laden trees attract marauding flocks of Scandinavian thrushes from the skies: thin Redwing whistles and harsh ‘chack, chack, chack’ of larger Fieldfare.

The high, barren ridges of Black Mountains, Hergest and Clwydian Hills grow only heather and bracken, supporting only a few sheep and Grouse where cut in strips: Meadow Pipits rise in halting flight against stiff winds with characteristic ‘seep, seep’ calls, occasional liquid ‘chirrup’ from Skylarks overhead.

The black Raven patrols the entire length of the Dyke: beating off Peregrine over Chepstow; hanging in the up-draught over high ridges or flip-flopping in display with deep ‘glock, glock’ calls; alighting in mountain heather; characteristic, guttural croak high overhead in blue skies over woods, forests and green rolling hills.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-10-21T09:41:00.000-07:00

Standing waist deep in the current at the estuary mouth, casting and retrieving for Bass, one is alive to any signs of activity. Bass, Mullet, Salmon & Sea Trout will leap, gleaming silver in the sun, often very large and high enough to clear the horizon. Less obvious and often accompanied by gull activity, the sea may be splashed, cut and sliced by Bass chasing bait fish to the surface. Force generated by strong swimming disturbs regular ripple patterns on the surface, a cast in their path often resulting in a solid take and ensuing test of line, knots, hooks and patience. On several occasions, a thin silver fish has snaked fast across the surface: sword-beaked Garfish will take a surface lure and are good to eat, despite bones of startling jade green

Scanning a choppy sea also demands concentration and patience; seabirds are only visible for a second or so between waves and most dive to fish, so may be missed despite several passes of the telescope. Such concentration brings unexpected rewards as last week when another thin-winged, brown bird was spotted far out above the sea. Sudden turns, swoops, and dives suggested a chase, but the quarry was not visible against green and russet of distant mountains across the bay. Through the telescope, a small bird occasionally became apparent, white under-parts lit by autumn sun as it threw itself desperately about the sky, tracked by a relentless Merlin until both were lost to sight.

Distinctive thin whistles of first Redwing were heard from treetops at the mountain base early one Sunday morning two weeks ago; windblown parties breasted the hills in characteristic, ‘flick, flick, flick,.….glide’ flight; autumn now here and winter not far behind. On still winter nights, Redwing thin whistles are heard as the flocks pass overhead.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-10-14T10:55:00.000-07:00

Walking the beach at dawn, beach, sea and distant mountains are suffused with grey and peach. Chased by the dog, parties of fast, thin-winged Ringed Plover, Turnstones and Dunlin sweep up and down the strand, larger Oystercatchers fret away with piping calls and a Curlew lifts heavily into the air away from the commotion.

A single, thin-winged, white wader speeds directly out to sea then jinks hard and high. Following its unaccountably erratic flight as it swings in a wide arc back to shore, a thin sliver of black cuts down vertically from the sky as the desperately jinking quarry passes over the strand, misses on the dive; swoops immediately upward and misses a snatch on the powered climb.

The ensuing chase follows a repeated pattern: Sanderling speeding high and wide, climbing in direct flight; Merlin content to keep the quarry in view whilst gaining height with flickering wing-beats. Repeatedly until they pass out of sight, the Merlin gains the upper hand and accelerates in a powered dive at the desperate Sanderling that jinks at the last moment, cheating sharp talons.

Evening finds a small group in darkening, rocky oak woods, gathered around a hard, blue-white light shining on a white sheet. Though quiet on the woodland floor, east winds rock the treetops and black crows hawk and caw overhead under darkening skies, seeming interested in strange lights below. Quiet chat is interrupted as dark forms whirr across the light and settle on the sheet or on the woodland floor, quickly trapped into specimen pots for examination, discussion and identification. Returning in the morning to check the light traps, we find a great variation of colour and form with evocative names ‘Pink Barred Straw’, ‘Brick’; Merveille du Jour’, the latter a delta of mottled jade, perfectly camouflaged on grey-green lichen.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-10-07T08:34:00.000-07:00

Easterly winds forecast, with hopes for good bass fishing, but this morning the banner bows and flutters in southerly winds blowing up the sunlit coast. A choppy, jade green sea is stained with wave-kicked sand and low, white combers rake the Point.

Scanning the bay, black Scoter rise briefly, then fall from sight in green waves, water beyond the sheltering point even harder to search. Lit by autumn sun, a long, low, grey form, pale flanks and breast, smooth, grey, tubular neck and thin, upraised bill rolls in the chop: early Red Throated Diver, eponymous rusty neck patch retained from summer

Common Scoter are so familiar here in winter, that anything entirely black or dark brown is quickly passed by in scanning the bay. They scatter in small parties all across a bay protected as a major over-wintering site; always very active, with lines of black ducks flying low over the water or individuals flying between flocks, a commotion as they splash down, gate-crashing the new party. On still winter days, a faint mewing drifts over the dunes from the bay and drake Scoter kick up white spray with webs & wings as they jostle and joust for mates.

Today, for the first time it was noted that one party of about seven Scoter included only one brown female, the focus for the group of toffee-billed, black drakes. Checking other scattered parties, it became clear that not only were all the groups of more or less the same number, but that each of them included only one female.

The literature describes the courtship rituals and display and notes the sexual imbalance, but suggests that males predominate towards the north of their range, females to the south. It would be interesting to know how selection of mates differs between these populations.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-09-30T06:15:00.000-07:00

After early morning rain, skies are clear over the beach. Far across the choppy green bay, clouds of bright white Gannets, gulls and Kittiwakes circle, sweep and hawk over Mackerel shoals, sunlit against a dark cloud bank obscuring the Llyn Peninsula.

On Monday, a near flat calm brought sea bass within fly casting range close in past the point just before high tide. A blue sand eel imitation retrieved fast close to the surface brought exciting pursuits ending with a bang as the fish hit, followed by anxious minutes, rod butt braced tight to the chest against the pull, before five good fish were safely netted. Bass are armed with sharp spined fins and gill covers and armour-plated with hard silver scales. Pale grey with white bellies as they fight in clear water, they emerge white and silver with delicate brassy sheen, eyes of brass and inky pupil.

Other memorable moments are a wide streak of white feathers, like a burst pillow, in the middle of a new-sown field of emerging turnips; a slate-backed bird, white breast streaked black, gripping a prostrate Black-Headed Gull in trousered talons. A black-hooded, white cheeked head tears at fresh meat, glares fiercely at the car, then flies off heavily, gull hanging limp behind.

Up in mountains, immersed in damp cloud, two, wide-winged, misty silhouettes hang low over grey walls, distinctive long tails twisting to maintain position at near stalling speed, before drifting along the ridge to fade out of sight.

Later, just over a rise, a mountain loomed in the cloud, flat waters of a glacial lake emerging below. Looking down over rocky cliffs onto still, dark waters, pale, weed covered rocks visible beneath; a long, narrow form propelled itself away from the bank below, pale backed with tan head and back-projecting feathered crest.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-09-23T08:06:00.000-07:00

Much rain has brought the river twice to spate, a strand-line of debris marking overnight flooding of the lane. Wet has brought a late September flush of orange-peel Chanterelles nestled in thick green moss amongst scattered Autumn leaves. The tide of birds continues southward with occasional Chiffchaff couplets from yellow-tinged woods. A soft brown bird with rufous cap crouched on the kitchen tiles, discarded by a cat, now paralysed with fear, beady black eyes still bright; light, warm thrum of life through dense feathers: female Blackcap, eventually recovered sufficiently to flit into dense ivy cover down the lane.

Strong onshore winds washed up a Grey Seal to the beach, blood-stained sand from nose and mouth suggesting recent death. Amongst brown Bladder-wrack of the strand-line lay black and white husks of juvenile Guillemot and Razorbill and the wreck of a young Kittiwake, white with distinctive dark ‘W’ across wings; a damaged, spent shuttlecock in the sand. Way over on the sea-washed, green salting, an adult white Gannet lay undamaged, washed up by past high tides: 6-foot long, black-tipped, rear-set wings leaving narrow breast, long neck and duck-egg blue wedge of a bill projecting forward.

Scanning the bay from the beach, a Grey Seal fishes with Sandwich Terns close in the margins of floating Bladder-wrack before working right along the shore, dunce’s cap snout lifted clear of the water on emergence.

Black dorsal arcs over in silhouette as a Dolphin works left in steel-grey seas.

Parties of black Scoter scatter across the bay as winter approaches. One black drake flies high over the waves, direct at shore, accompanied by another black duck with silver wings, bright white belly and wing bar, sunlit as they turn for a perfect flypast parallel to shore: pristine drake Scaup, seen several times since despite frequent flight.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-09-16T08:49:00.000-07:00

Scanning the farm landscape on a blustery day, a thin-winged, brown bird flickered into view just above the horizon, passed overhead, silhouette against the sky, light flight suggesting first Merlin of winter. Tracked high over the estuary, flickering flight altered to a steep dive behind the coastal dunes, presumably for small waders on the beach. Following expected speed and trajectory south along the dunes and over the harbour, sure enough the same black thin-winged form flickered up into wind before beating low and fast over the flooded estuary to where rising waters shift Meadow Pipits, Skylarks and Redshank from rough saltings.

Still blustery but with sun and dark cloud, the estuary end of Harlech beach is as wild and remote as any mountain top; golden sands rippled by waves; tier upon tier of low white breakers, Marram-topped dunes before an amphitheatre of dark mountains. Way over to seaward, frantic piping of waders penetrates the wind rush as a dense flock streams low over breakers: raptor presence suspected, nonetheless gratifying to see two familiar thin-winged birds speeding low over the beach. As they disappear over dunes, one lifts against the sky and dives at the foremost calling urgently in rage or play.

Following the strand line on the return, back to wind, wet sand glistens in the sun; sheen of water reflecting blue sky, white clouds and sun underfoot; splashing ankle-deep as a line of foam sweeps left up the beach followed by a fish-scale pattern of ripples over the restored sky-scape; slows, then right back to the sea: totally mesmerizing.

Suddenly, a long, thin, gull-like shriek snaps consciousness to the overhead trajectory of a thin, black silhouette under blue skies, terminated by a harsh chatter as a 45’ dive flattens to a lightning skim over the golden beach.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-09-10T08:45:00.000-07:00

After a week of offshore breezes, we are back to cool westerlies: white cumulus and blue skies with banks of dark grey rain bearing cloud over sea and mountains. As the sea continues to warm, fish activity increases: white & silver Herring Gulls plunge down to squabble for bait fish forced to surface by Bass & Mackerel, joined by slate-grey Great Black-Backed Gulls; slim Black-Headed Gulls, wings white-edged; black ‘W’ marked immature Kittiwakes. Terns hawk in buoyant flight; occasional stiff-winged Fulmar gliding in. Long, low, black-over-white Razorbills lift in and out of sight; thin, black Shearwaters skim fast over waves or flash pale bellies on the turn; brilliant white Gannets cruise, stiff-winged overhead.

Though dark cloud and bright sunshine lit a dramatic landscape, the wildlife walk lacked memorable moments until the breakwater overlooking a grey boulder shore bronzed with Bladderwrack bordering a blue-grey, choppy sea. Slim, white, Sandwich Terns rested at the water’s edge; short black legs and heavy dark bills; shaggy black spring crests thinned to black streaks and pale pates. First winter Shag stood high on the stanchion top, glossy black-green with yolk-yellow bill, wings half-raised into breeze like a gatepost Griffin.

Having distinguished delicate Whimbrel from heavier Curlew amongst the Bladderwrack, we started the beach return. Ringed Plover and Dunlin skimmed between a drift of boulders and dark, dry weed of the strand-line. A similar sized bird ran with snow-white belly, black legs and bill; first Sanderling of winter, back still scaly from summer. Then an even smaller, Dunlin-like bird, brown scale pattern forming two slight dark lines down the back; Little Stint, not much larger than nearby Pied Wagtails. A ‘Dunlin’ pricked the sand with an unusually long bill and when flushed, a clear white rump confirmed Curlew Sandpiper; two new sightings for the Wildlife Walks.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-09-01T10:41:00.000-07:00

The afternoon of last week’s Peregrine observation was hot on the beach with just one keen young rock-pooler. The usual stretch of sand and large rocks exposed by ebbing tide was busy, so we decided to work through the boulder shore for a change.

Though fewer boulders with likely spaces beneath for creatures to await the return of the tide, many of those lifted hold good numbers: slippery, frog-mouthed Blennies that can squiggle overland; great concentrations of Shore Crabs clicking hard shelled legs; handfuls of dark Winkles and off-white Whelks as well as striped Grey & Purple Top Shells and masses of seed Mussels. Coral Starfish of all sizes also stick to the underside of boulders with jelly Beadlet Anenomes hanging in a range of colours, from sea green to dark red, the strawberry form red spotted green with blue fringed base. Already colourful collections are swelled by sand coloured Gobies and deep yellow Flat Periwinkles caught in open pools along with occasional silver Bass fry and translucent brown Prawns. This time, we find three green-brown Eels under boulders; thin, slimy and hard to catch as they slither out of water to avoid capture. Though three times as long, one winds smoothly about the tank with narrow, pouting mouth.

As we work along the boulder shore, half-dozen Turnstones move quietly only five paces before us, almost perfectly camouflaged in the Bladderwrack.

All at once, Sandwich Tern bleating and piping Oystercatchers made us look up to find Turnstones hurtling directly at, between and past us at head height, a powerful, brown form skimming low over boulders, close behind, only to bank hard left on our emergence, brown head and faint beginnings of black moustachial stripes and white cheeks confirming immature Peregrine of the morning, assassin in training, departing over the dunes.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-08-27T10:25:00.000-07:00

Wildlife guiding brings occasions when nothing of interest is found and the tension rises as credibility plummets. Seven adults and two children were very patient as we managed only fleeting glimpses of common species at a farm gateway that once produced 27 species in 15 minutes, very few audible bird calls on an overcast morning with a breeze off the land. Even a Whitethroat moving south skulked deep in bramble before flitting past in halting flight, silhouette against a bright sky, only to dive deep into a second bramble patch. To the group, it could have been a House Sparrow.

A second scan of farmland and ridge produced no memorable sightings, so we set out over the salting toward the estuary. Discussing if or how small Gobies found jetting about in the shallow, tide-filled puddle in the turf survived when it dried out to cracked mud, a sudden, urgent piping made us look up just in time to see a powerful, brown scimitar swoop up before us in a vertical climb in pursuit of a thin, grey, arrow form, both climbing fast into sun-broken, dark skies. Binoculars showed characteristic white wing panels, tail and rump of a Redshank, now too desperate to call as it strained upward towards the cloud.

Though steadily climbing, the Peregrine seemed unconcerned with pursuit, the two birds often too wide spaced to see at once, but as we traced the Redshank towering ever higher, it became clear that the Peregrine was concentrating on gaining height rather than tight pursuit, as suddenly the Redshank turned down into a long, long, desperate, almost vertical flying dive at the boulder shore below, pursued by a much larger avian projectile.

The outcome is unknown as both birds held a seemingly suicidal trajectory out of sight behind a low breakwater.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-08-19T09:59:00.001-07:00

Inspired by International Bat night, the latest acquisition is a bat detector, a small, hand-held unit with which to search the wavebands for the ultra-sonic calls emitted by bats for echolocation and communication. Most species of bat as well as some insects use a specific waveband; so turning the wheel on the side of the set is very similar to searching for radio channels on the old transistor radios. To identify a Soprano Pipistrelle Bat and to hear its calls as it flutters, flits and dives overhead along the darkening woodland edge or around the newly lit street lamp adds a whole new dimension to the evening routine of shutting up the hen house for the night.

The ebb of the seasons, observed since the longest day and traced by migrating birds, second broods and the appearance of Field and Chanterelle mushrooms, continues with heavy morning dew & mist, reddening Crab Apples and first heavy sprays of plump Blackberries. Apples in the orchard will soon be ready for the cider press.

Another wildlife puzzle this week as a Kestrel, not so common in this area, was seen on a mountain lane making repeated sorties down into the end of a Blackthorn hedge where several Magpies were also flitting. After a second or two, one or other Magpie would chase the more agile Kestrel off and around the sky before giving up and returning to its fellows, allowing the Kestrel to sweep down again, flutter over the hedge end and dry stone wall until one or other Magpies again lost patience.

Despite driving slowly past the scene, we never did discover the object of mutual interest, Magpies chattering off down the lane and the Kestrel sweeping away to hover characteristically over the green hillside, harassed by Meadow Pipits and passing Swallows.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-08-12T08:02:00.000-07:00

A diary entry of several years ago described two families standing in drizzle waiting for the afternoon rock-pooling session, adults noticeably less keen than kids. One family visits the area several times a year, always keen to try new activities, rock-pooling remaining favourite. Jake, the keenest, has just been picked to attend a Gifted and Talented Nature Summer School run by The Natural History Museum. This week, very low tides brought several new finds under rocks not normally exposed. We have much work to identify new crustaceans, several translucent swimming species similar to Prawns, a few grey species that squiggle about in the mud under rocks, as well as intermediate, dark one with cream stripe.

Best find was ostensibly a strand of brown Boot-lace Seaweed were it not for independent sinuous movement in the clear water. Close examination in the aquarium revealed two tiny bead eyes set back from a long snout, like snapped end of Boot-lace Weed but similar to Seahorse & Pipefish heads. Eventually, we found a tiny, completely translucent dorsal fin to confirm Worm Pipefish, example of most perfect camouflage.

Since Mid-July, overnight rain has brought fresh flushes of creamy white Field and Horse Mushrooms with orange peel Chanterelles in green mossy woods. Recently fledged second broods of Blue Tits & Great Tits blundering and buzz about in inept flight; very vulnerable at this stage, hence large clutches of eggs laid to compensate for losses.

Highlight of the week has to be a Stoat emerging periodically from a dry-stone wall to scamper and writhe frantically along a sunny bank, long, white belly contrasting with tan coat as it twisted in green grass. For a video of this well documented but not clearly understood ‘dance’, Google ‘crazy stoat’ and select either the BBC or ‘Wild About Britain’ links.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-07-30T01:32:00.000-07:00

School holidays are here again with rock-pooling back on the agenda. The secret is to look for rocks to turn over: whether in pools or just covered in bronze Bladderwrack, many creatures shelter in the moist, dark space beneath to await return of the tide. Shore crabs scuttle away frantically, a great range of colours and sizes, some soft ‘peelers’ just shed shells, occasional pairs clasped in crabby embrace, the largest liable to give a strong pinch from hard plier claws. Edible Crabs tend to bury their purple-pink, piecrust shells as quickly as possible in the sand, and hang tenaciously onto nets, tank lids and fingers. Tiny Pea Crabs we often find in Mussels but also live under rocks, pale triangular central mark distinctive. Occasionally, a piece of the sandy rock surface moves, an articulated arrangement of sandy, flat plates resolves itself into a Porcelain Crab, like a science fiction creation.

Pale coral Starfish stuck on the underside of rocks feel like neither plant nor animal. When stuck to hands or tank sides, hundreds of tiny suckers are seen connected to the underside of the starfish ‘arms’ by the thinnest of threads. The threads shorten to pull the animal towards the suckers, thereby moving across the surface. Food is ingested into the upper centre of the star and excreted from the reverse; seawater and hydraulics perform the functions of blood and muscle.

Equally strange but most beautiful must be the strawberry form of Beadlet Anemone stuck to rocks with narrow, blue fringed base: gelatinous, deep red, densely marked with tiny green circles. They are also effective predators: once left alone, the emerging mass of poison-tipped tentacles will kill unwary small fish. Aptly named Snakelock Anemone doesn’t bother to hide pale jade tentacles like Gorgon’s hair waving gently in clear pools.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-07-23T08:37:00.000-07:00

Though mainly concentrating on the next cast, standing waist deep at the estuary mouth gives a particular perspective on the season. Last evening, slightly bat-like birds skimmed and fluttered upwind over the calm surface of the slacks, flitted up in sudden climbs, zoomed back downwind into tight banking turns to resume surface feeding, sandy backs and pale bellies surprisingly difficult to track.

Last year, the Sand Martin colony set in a sand cliff behind the marina was reduced to very few pairs, giving concern for their future. This year, forty or fifty birds have been busy since spring, having successfully crossed the expanding Sahara twice since last autumn.

Calls and activities of Herring Gulls are worth note, the first to find feeding Bass when seething shoals of baitfish are forced to the surface to darken the sea.

Dry bleating overhead brings to view an elegant, thin-winged bird in lilting flight; one of the party of newly arrived Sandwich Terns, just beginning to move south from probable Anglesey nesting colonies. A plaintive whistle is a dark marked juvenile, following and badgering a parent for food. They are expert at finding Sand Eels and other small fish. Watching them hawk high over the sea, turn and jet into the water with a white splash is exhilarating; such a lightly built bird needs speed to penetrate the water.

Bright white Gannets with black wing tips spanning seven feet are much larger, but hawk and jet into the sea in a similar manner, greater weight forcing a plume of white from the sea. Gannets in particular change form a split-second before hitting the water: narrow wings angled tight back in the dive seem to dislocate at the shoulder as they shift back even further to become fins to steer a submarine projectile after fish.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-07-16T01:15:00.000-07:00

Learning to find and catch brown trout, sea trout and bass, wind, weather and tides become increasingly important. Off-shore winds flatten the sea off the beach, water clear with no waves to kick up sand and silt, bass move in close with the rising tide for soft shelled ‘peeler’ crabs, shrimps and small fish. Casting back to wind is ideal, explosive tug of bass hitting the lure irresistible.

If conditions are not easy on shore, from about three hours before low tide sun warmed water draining from estuary sand into the harbour pool seethes with shoal bass and mullet splashing or flashing silver in shallows over rippled sand.

On sunny days with sea breezes forming white cumulus clouds over mountains, aquatic insect larvae rise to the surface of mountain lakes to hatch, wings drying quickly before spotted by underwater predators. Other insects are blown across mountain slopes to sail across the glittering lake surface, legs kicking, until engulfed by splash or quiet sip of a mountain brown trout.

Lakes and rivers are back to normal levels, sound of water from our little river once again a background to our days and nights. A downpour soon turns the sparkling river to coffee coloured torrent attracting sea trout up from the bay. Wading downriver to meet high tide at the weir pool at nightfall or casting across the pool beneath the bridge an hour after high tide is likely bring a sudden thump on the line.

Early this morning, a small sea trout snatched the lure and rocketed vertically from the water, almost hitting the new bridge overhead, shaking off the hook in its flight, free to continue to its fight upstream. Learning to find and catch wild fish, complexities of weather and tidal rhythms are a welcome impingement on daily routine.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-07-09T07:11:00.001-07:00

The longest day must signify high tide of the seasons; small but clear signs mark the ebb to autumn. A single Wheatear on rabbit-grazed turf behind the dunes is the first of many to leave rocky mountain walls for the coast before following the coastline south. Likewise, two white-bellied, sandy-backed Common Sandpipers, ‘peeping’ and bobbing on bladder-wracked boulders will have left mountain tarn-side nest sites early; early young or failed breeders. Dun Curlew also are returning to the estuary from northern moorlands, feeding on shining mud or on the boulder shore, or stood roosting or preening on the salting or down in muddy creeks with just heads and heavy bills above salt washed turf. Yesterday, a small, fast wader skimmed inconspicuously over boulders and sand; peppered, scaly back over pale belly; faint wing and tail marking; a juvenile Dunlin, though bill and legs not yet properly black. Just before leaving the beach, a party of familiar black and dark brown duck lifted up to view on choppy waves far out to sea; first party of Scoter to arrive in the bay for winter, another moorland breeding species.

The third Moth Night proved a great success: by the end of the evening, 27 species of moth were identified as they fluttered across the bright lit sheet; by morning another 50 species were identified and freed from the light trap, including many heavy, pink shaded green ‘Elephant Hawk Moths’; white and black-patched ‘Garden Tiger’, delta wings concealing scarlet tail and under-wing; large, delicate, palest emerald white ‘Large Emerald; ‘Buff Tip’ imitating stubs of oak twig to perfection. The English names bestowed on these fluttering scraps of life by the Victorian parsons who first described them are wonderfully poetic and evocative: ‘Small Seraphim’, ‘Heart & Dart’, ‘Small Fan-footed Wave’ are just a few.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-07-01T08:21:00.001-07:00

17mm (0.7”) of rain fell over Monday: 8 gallons per square yard falling across the mountains bringing the river up to just normal level, though cloudy with silt picked up from the dry bed. A relief to hear the rush of water through the village once again and interesting to see how fast newly broadcast mixed fodder crop germinates in the paddock, though much pasture is still parched and brown. Farmers have appreciated the dry June, making hay instead of silage for a change.

Most wildlife seems busy raising young just now, though isolated birds are still singing loud and hard, perhaps having lost their original partner. A Song Thrush belted out repeated couplets from a telegraph pole at the start of the wildlife walk last Saturday, still audible from the estuary almost an hour later, drowned only by sound of waves on shore. Similarly, a Whitethroat has moved into new territory on the morning run route, harsh, desultory rattle given from gorse tops or in halting song-flight overhead.

Running the woodland path yesterday, a plaintive buzzing whistle, similar to roding Woodcock at dusk, came from the wooded slope towards the old sea cliff. Approaching the spot, stepping gingerly over brambles, all went quiet and a large dark form moved off silently between oak trunks. Dense brambles forced a detour and having reached the spot the original sound now came from three separate locations and another large bird laboured heavily across a sunny glade. Returning to the path, unable to make further progress, the call now come from more or less overhead. Eventually, an adult-sized, still downy young Tawny Owl was found high up in the oak canopy, bemused by a tiny mobbing warbler. Hearing movement below, two dark eyes peered down, the gaze at once familiar and blankly alien.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-06-25T02:29:00.000-07:00

Though later than last year - May orchids by at least 3 weeks - this has been the third consecutive very dry spring. The river is down to a tiny stream trickling from pool to pool through a bed of dry boulders. Sea Trout are seen in the pools but vulnerable to poaching when thus held up.

Hot weather with offshore winds has favoured sea fishing: tides creep inexorably up the beach, water flooding between boulders and into rock pools, raising an underwater forest of brown kelp into which Mullet forage steadily for microscopic food and parties of feisty Bass charge about in clear waters for shrimps, crabs and small fish. Waters above glitter under a hot sun, turquoise over sand, dark over the boulder reef. Wading carefully up the beach, wavelet patterns are watched for change and disturbance by swimming fish. Occasionally, splashes and flashes of silver show, often in very shallow water close to shore, or silver flanks glint in deeper water as fish twist in flight or pursuit.

We have found that a team of three flies – white floating, followed by white and brown lures – cast out and ripped back fast over fish, often attracts them to the spurting surface lure to take one or other fly with a bang followed by a short but exciting battle, occasionally two fish on the same cast. No record sizes to date, but all worth taking: of fourteen fish taken in two days, we gave away 4 and fed 10.

Almost whatever the species, fish eaten fresh is the best. Bass rubbed with salted olive oil, stuffed with bunches of fresh cut fennel, wrapped tight in foil in a hot oven is good: succulent white flesh eaten with bread, salad and white wine will mark this season in our memories.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-06-18T07:14:00.001-07:00

The new wildlife walk reconnoitred last week proved a great success. Parties were split into five, each group given material & equipment to identify particular elements of the walk – animals, birds, bugs & plants – the last group recording data and taking digital photographs. Neither too serious nor scientific, the aim to open eyes and minds to the richness of the countryside experienced by naming and therefore properly seeing the natural world. 370 digital images take while to sort through but convey a kids’ view of the experience as well as providing some material that, with a little editing, gives good quality images. Of the whole group of over 40 ten year olds, no special attention was required to maintain interest, though there were some tears when someone was stung reaching deep into a burrow to estimate its length. The Brown Hare previously described repeated its performance each morning, sitting tight in a rush clump, allowing approach to within a few paces before loping off, stopping at the bank top to gather itself before moving away and gathering speed, long ears high above the rushes.

On the sea, fishing improves as water warms and fish follow the rising tide inundating boulders and rock-pools and all the life they contain. Parties of Bass chase fry along the surface or disturb the regular wavelet pattern by their swimming, more often first felt as a thump followed by forceful tugging before drawn to net, pale belly twisting under grey-bronze back beneath the waves. Yesterday, wading waist deep at the estuary mouth, a long silver rocket shot vertically from the sea, way beyond casting distance yet still above mast height of yachts in the bay; sea trout or salmon patrolling the shore awaiting the taste of river spate to fight its way up to spawn.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-06-11T02:46:00.000-07:00

Reconnoitring a wildlife walk from the shores of Llyn Tegid at Bala, the warden is keen on mammals, so we spend most of a warm, wet, misty morning crawling in woods and fields looking for tracks, prints, scents, burrows, feeding sites, latrines and territorial marks. Tracks cross the woodland path, feeding scrapes grubbed amongst spent bluebell and woodrush, fallen branches worn clean by claws, large scrapes with soft, black excrement, then huge excavations of fresh soil mark extensive Badger setts in the wooded slope above the path.

Out in the fields, large rush clumps are examined for stems bitten off clean near the ground by sharp Field Vole teeth, and for tunnels and latrines in the dry grassy base.

Whilst approaching a likely clump on a steep bank, a great Brown Hare lopes heavily out of the rushes, only to sit to groom just ten paces away, close enough for a large mustard-yellow eye to burn a lasting image. Slow hand to pocket, remove cap, unwrap camera, remove from case, locate power button, lift to aim - and the Hare lopes off, heavy and lazy, gathering pace before disappearing against the skyline. In the rush clump base, an elongated patch of flattened clean clay marks the still warm form.

After more animal detective work in fields and hedges, we return to the lakeshore. We check all likely rocks and grassy promontories along the waterline, especially bare, worn patches in moss and lichens. After a long while, what looked like a patch of grey lichen contained fragments of bone and scale; old spraint, scent lost even when wetted. Eventually, approaching the busiest point of the lake, a tarry, dark deposit on a mossy rock is fresh enough to hold the distinctive rich mix of fox, tar and fish of territorial Otter.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-06-03T07:34:00.000-07:00

Superb weather and very busy season: coracle building, International Moth & Bat night, first Swifts & Nightjars; Puffins & Black Guillemot on the Llyn Heritage boat trip. Thousands of nesting Guillemots clinging in rows to near invisible ledges on shear sides of South Stack, cliff tops carpeted with pink Thrift, yellow Vetch and purple heather with powder blue Spring Squill and Sheeps-bit. Razorbills, Kittiwakes and Fulmars add to the cacophony, with attendant Peregrine and Ravens gliding below and black Choughs delving in grazing land above with red sealing wax bills. Hundreds of black-capped, Sandwich Terns nesting on low, grassy islands in the tidal lagoon of Cemlyn Bay, bleating as they hover over nest sites or thin white wing their way over the pebble bar to blue bay Sand-eel feeding. A Little Owl floating over the bonnet to crash down into the hedge top, missing its intended prey; yellow eyes glaring angrily about under black frowning eyebrow marks. First signs of Bass & Mullet; catching the first of the season in the harbour, ripping the fly lures fast through clear rippled, clear over clean sands.

On this fine, dewy morning, in just twenty minutes, apart from resident mellow Blackbirds & exuberant Thrushes, Blackcaps sang loud every 100 yards of woods and gardens; Redstarts rattled at woodland edges. Magpies, Jays, Tits and Mistle Thrushes kicked up a great fuss in Oak woods; a Tawny Owl caught out in daylight. Whilst watching a tiny Redpoll in wheezing song flight high over Gorse and Oak, a dark Peregrine silhouette sharp-winged its way in direct flight across the sky above. Thin, black Swallows swooped around stables or creaked and twittered on overhead wires. Woods are now dark under a dense canopy; Bluebells and Stitchwort now fading beneath, though new leaves are still glossy from Spring

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-05-13T11:00:00.000-07:00

Despite fine conditions, no takers for the wildlife walk so checked the bay from the beach slipway before returning to the office. Scanned the entire blue sea horizon left to right; almost completing a return scan when a black arc and white splash broke the dark chop at the trailing edge of vision. Using binoculars for wider view, several black backs and dorsal fins worked right to left: difficult to distinguish Dolphin or Porpoise.

Whilst tracking the pod right, one individual broke from the group, shiny grey back and dorsal fin slicing the water directly towards the beach. Several visitors gathered, so between setting the telescope and directing observers, despite the animal making leisurely progress just 30 yards offshore, it was difficult to concentrate on emerging head to check beak length: Porpoise, called ‘sea pig’ in Welsh, have blunt heads with short beak; Common Dolphin profiles are well known.

Making space to track course and speed, it became clear that the animal was short beaked, seeming at first to hold a fish. Tracking further, it became evident: too long for Porpoise; the ‘fish’ a pale pointed snout. The animal maintained course just offshore and out of sight, giving time to check the field guide: White-Beaked Dolphin the obvious conclusion.

Several other people arrived on the beach, alerted to news of Dolphins, so we moved forward to follow last seen trajectory. Finding the animal now sweeping wide into the bay, it was exciting to find it heading back at the beach, with a repeat performance just off the beach in the opposite direction before working its way out of sight beyond the point.

Checking later, White-Beaked Dolphin range does not include the Irish Sea and Bottle-Nosed Dolphins often show a pale lower jaw, so more likely to have been the latter species.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-05-06T09:42:00.000-07:00

At low tide, water drains off the sandy estuary and saltings into a small pool set below the exposed stone harbour bulk before joining the River Artro to exit a narrow channel into the bay.

By summer there are Sand Eels seething in the shallows, powerful bow waves of Grey Mullet sieving for microscopic food just beneath the surface; occasional splash of a leaping Sea Trout, Salmon, Bass or Mullet. Last year,learned to deceive Bass as they herd Sand Eels into the shallows, water dark with ripple and splash, or as they search the sandy turmoil below the creek mouth for shrimp.

Started early this year to learn when the fish start to move in. In the absence of any signs, tied on a ubiquitous brown lure to match well-camouflaged Sand Gobies. A ‘plop’ behind showed small silver fish leaping at the neck of the exit channel. Ripping a small white floating lure across the surface brought a small Sea Trout to hand; gold, brown and red markings already faded and silvered by salt.

Next day, fished ebbing tide over sand flats, using weighted shrimps in small jerks to imitate the real thing, when the line took on weight. Hand-lining to remove suspected weed, a sandy-backed, white-bellied fish twisted under the surface: wide, frog mouth; ‘star-gazy’ eyes; green flecked band at the tail base and small brown dorsal fin showing thin needle spines when erect; unhooked with great care to avoid venomous spines. Lost count of Weaver Fish brought to hand over the next hour, one small fish hard to disengage without proximity to spines. A very minor scratch was sucked hard; nonetheless, having seen the slowly progressive effects on others, the pain almost reached the level to get home quick to denature venom in the hottest possible water.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-04-29T09:58:00.001-07:00

Luckily for current bridge reconstruction, the river is at rocky bottom; once again a dry spring with no rain for many weeks. Blue Llyn Bodlyn lies 50ft deep under a dark 500 foot cliff, low water leaving a narrow gravel margin along which a sandy coloured bird flitted on down-slung, faintly barred wings; first Common Sandpiper of the year.

Three beautifully marked mountain trout taken; two too small to keep; largest, sufficient to feed two, deceived by a tiny Black Gnat, hook the size of this letter ‘j’.

Dry rattle of first Whitethroat scratched from gorse a field away whilst erecting the Wildlife Wales banner on the roadside. A party of six Whimbrel rested up on the boulder shore with many black-bellied, black-legged Dunlin chasing after sand fleas on the beach, all en-route to northern breeding grounds.

Aim in the afternoon to find as many new migrant arrivals as possible, good to locate and spot Blackcap and Garden Warblers in close proximity and compare very similar liquid songs: sooty male Blackcap silhouette amongst breaking leaves of Sallow; olive-green Garden Warbler flitting between rich yellow bottle-brush gorse.

Stopping to listen for mechanical whirr of Grasshopper Warblers, a grey-blue, hawk-like Cuckoo flitted low over buff sedges with down-arced wings and long tail, chased into budding Sallow by a tiny Meadow Pipit.

Just inside the woodland gate, fat yellow Kingcups lay in dappled sunlight over rich black mud of a spring fed bog. Passing out of the wood, strident whistles followed by a sibilant cascade of notes added Wood Warbler to our list, almost impossible to locate high in the oak canopy, even before bud-burst. Similarly, despite distinctive song and bold black and white design, male Pied Flycatchers are not easy to find amongst oak branches and twigs even before the leaves emerge.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-04-22T09:20:00.000-07:00

Still a nip in the morning air, the bay stood mirror-calm under blue sky; grey bulk of the Llyn headland looking close; a far concentration of Scoter, afloat or chasing low over the water like black midges, only indication of a horizon as milky seas merge with distant white haze. A long, low form, diving and surfacing just off shore: Red Throated Diver in breeding plumage; group of 12 in the far distance, some still in white & silver winter garb; all gathering, soon to leave for northern breeding grounds. A group of 6 were diving busily, water boiling dark about them, either from panicked baitfish or birds themselves paddling hard just below the surface.

Earlier in the week, long, straight, thin black wings skimmed low over darker seas, swung up above the waves, then down again, pale bellies lit on the turn: first Manx Shearwaters of summer. A thin, white dart high over the sea in lilting flight, stylish black cap and bill turning: first Sandwich Tern scanning for fish below. Back and white Razorbills have bobbed and dived in the bay for a week or two; 50 feet above the waves, peachy white, long winged, long bodied Gannets oared their way high over the sea on black pointed wings.

Early Monday morning as every year, first halting ‘zippy, zippy, zippy…zip..zip..zip’ of Pied Flycatcher is heard from Deodar Cedar avenue up the lane, easier heard than seen. Likewise, desultory Redstart rattle is heard every morning for 10 days, but only today saw a flirt of robin-red tail over the lane and hint of white eye flash as a red-tailed, blue-backed male flitted to an Oak twig, resplendent with white-streaked, black mask, strong colour contrasts not easy to see in a light woodland setting, perfect fusion of display and camouflage.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-04-14T11:18:00.000-07:00

Already broad daylight at official sunrise, a Siskin wheezed overhead in tail-spread, gliding song flight as cars drew up quietly, discharging bleary-eyed kids for the annual dawn chorus walk. A Swallow twittered and swooped over a misty meadow as we set off, initially along the village edge: Greenfinch wheezing in an Ash top; Song Thrush belting out couplets from another; Woodpigeon soft cooing from a gable end.

Approaching the wooded escarpment, Chiffchaff two-note refrain and Willow Warbler descending trill could be heard; melodious Blackcap song intermittent along the woodland path.

Breaking out onto the sunlit lane, a smoke-grey, black-capped male moved through an ash sapling, fragments of liquid song interspersed with harsh ‘chacking’ calls. By the top of the lane, at least five normally reticent male Blackcaps chased each other through garden shrubs and conifers in noisy altercation.

Checking the rust roofed barn above the woods, no white presence on the rafter but several pellets below were pocketed for later examination and parents’ delight.

Crossing open, boggy pasture above the woods, Willow Warblers, also competing for territory, moved from Birch to Sallow, singing hard even on the wing. Behind all the calls and song, an intermittent rattle from a wooded rocky knoll signified first Redstart of the year, heard but not seen.

Later, on the coast, first speedboats of the year cleared last wintering wildfowl from a flat bay ruffled dark blue by a northerly breeze: thin-necked, long-winged, grey and white divers hurtled low over the horizon; small parties of black Scoter sped around the bay, splashing down amongst others in quieter spots. After many years of sea watching, first two, then three, then a line of nine black duck with clear white wing panels sped low and fast over the sea: Velvet Scoter with all black cousins for comparison.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-04-08T09:04:00.000-07:00

Early Easter Sunday morning: snowdrifts and biting arctic wind at the clouded top of Y Llethr, highest of the Rhinogs; moorland grass and sedges give out colour under grey mist, from buff to red copper over vivid green moss. As we descend, frogspawn jelly is spilt over puddled Sphagnum bog; short Wood Sedge stands blue as Grape Hyacinth, dark, feathery inflorescence bloomed silver with mist caught moisture.

Emerging from under the cloud ceiling, we break into spring: Skylark singing high overhead; bay blue in sunlight; cloud shadows moving over the patchwork landscape below.

Working in the garden on Good Friday, a familiar liquid cascade of notes from surrounding woods brought the first Blackcap of Spring, now joined by many others singing with Chiffchaffs all about the house, audible even whilst writing.

Though first Swallows were seen a week ago, whilst taking plaster casts of bird and animal prints on the estuary on a morning of sun and blue sky, a pair of younger eyes than mine spotted thin-winged, streamer-tailed Swallows: slivers of pale bellied black, flitting and side-slipping into wind over the estuary lagoon, later swooping and diving for insects behind the dunes, joined by smaller, compact, brown & buff first Sand Martins of Spring zooming about in more direct flight.

Easter Sunday afternoon, we walked back from the beach collecting many new young leaves for wild salad: nutty Lamb’s Lettuce and succulent Winter Purslane from dunes; Watercress from a spring, still with frogspawn; Ivy-leaved Toadflax & Pennywort from dry-stone walls; Dandelions & Wild Garlic from verges. Nettles & Watercress made soups bursting with flavour and chlorophyll; quiche of astringent Sorrel with lemon bite; sweet, hot smoked Mussels from the beach, all accompanied by a wild leaf salad topped with Violet, Primrose and Dandelion petals: Easter in a salad bowl.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-04-01T05:42:00.000-07:00

The seasons have slipped back a notch or two with snow again on the mountains, though sunshine, showers and sleet are probably typical of March. The trout season began last Saturday but despite good past season opening days the mountain lakes have proved barren to date, waters probably still too cold after a hard winter for either cold blooded trout or their insect food.

Casting into a sheltered bay, insistent ‘bleeps’ came from several points on the steep mountainside behind. A pale line appeared drawn on still waters along the shore, too hesitant for trout, formed not by fins but amphibian eyes cutting the surface. Fishing systematically along the shore, first one, then dozens, then many hundreds of toads were spotted in shallow bays: all shades, from almost black, through browns and rust to black-blotched, chalky pale fawn. Most sat on the lake floor in characteristic, arm bent pose; a few crawled slowly over the gravel bottom or breast-stroked carefully down from the surface; one mass of toads clawed determinedly over each other in a cold clammy ball. The only spawn found was not delicate, jelly strings of black dots hung by toads but a single gelatinous clump in shallow water laid by frogs.

As we packed to leave, a dark scimitar silhouette detached from the rocky crag overhead, moving under pale skies on wings stiff with power; Peregrine prospecting an old nest site.

Saturday saw a sleek, masked bird flitting from sheep grazed pasture to dry stone wall and back; first Wheatear of the year, just a week after the first Chiffchaff.

Yesterday evening, several thin slivers of black skimmed & flickered back and forth, low over a tidal pool as we drove by, occasional flash of white undersides suggesting first Swallows rather than brown and buff Sand Martins.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-03-25T07:39:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning, before dawn, first heavy downpour for months thrummed on the roof: over an inch of rain measured by mid-morning, 15 gallons per square yard quickly turning the rocky-bottomed river into a coffee-coloured torrent, pouring under bridges and down through the village.

The morning walk was cancelled, but rain eased to give sunshine by early afternoon. Planned bow-and-arrow making attracted good numbers for the afternoon session, one nine-year old for the expressed purpose of shooting her big brother.

Hazel is easy to identify just now: male catkins yellowing up with pollen; tiny velvet-red female stigma protruding, lizard-tongued, from terminal buds; straight rods from the base ideal for arrows. For the bow, the stump of a felled Ash grew thick with silver-grey shoots tipped by brown-black, felted, bishops mitre buds.

Selecting straight lengths for seven bows in wet woods lit by warm spring sunshine, just two notes penetrated the sounds of the saw and chatter. We stopped and listened: sure enough, the first Chiffchaff song of the year; since joined by many others singing their simple two-note refrain throughout the woods, surprisingly difficult to spot, even with leaves not yet on the trees.

Apart from recognition of two native trees and the satisfaction of finding our first summer migrant of the year, not much more was learned about wildlife that afternoon, though much fun was had. Working under the Great Ash to turn out seven bows with arrows demanded full concentration, the occasional glance behind prompted by particularly loud shouts or laughter. By the time the last set was made and tested, we had a small war between two base camps. The sight of the youngest chasing across the field, bow drawn, arrow pointed very accurately at the fleeing eldest is a sight none of us will recall without laughter.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-03-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

A warm morning and spot of rain may signal the end of this late spell of high pressure. Just walked up the lane to see if first Violets have opened amongst Celandines on the sunny bank. Only tiny Barren Strawberry creeping between the Oak roots. In the mornings, the mellow warbling song of Blackbirds has joined the chorus; a Mistle Thrush is belting out its wild song from treetops in the valley below.

Last week saw the annual frogspawn collecting expedition to Cwm Nantcol, where the clear river meanders across the flat, boggy valley bottom, buff with winter-bleached grasses. On the way in, a great rock, big as a car, stands on a high point; left by the last receding glacier, now split cleanly down the middle by ice. In the pale, flat landscape, ash-grey hindquarters show a distant party of bi-coloured wild goats, great heads of horn over dark forequarters.

Frogs avoid narrow drainage ditches, even those clogged with weed; spawn, as always, laid in a muddy puddle, the sides of which quake with our weight. Dark from a distance, many surface cells are frosted dead white, hard to separate out a small amount from the great mass of black spotted, cold, slippery jelly.

Leaving the tank on a style, we walked up the meandering river, looking down through deep, glassy waters on bright green streaming weeds and occasional black minnows over yellow gravel and jagged, rusty bedrock. A few small up-winged flies lifted from yellow bank sedges and drifted up over the river, silver-winged grey in hazy sun, but no signs of trout feeding.

An explosion from underfoot and a ruddy brown bird sped, broad winged, up-river between bank-side Sallow: close enough to see distinctive Woodcock crown stripes, a warm cocoon left under a pale yellow sedge tussock.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2010-03-11T09:27:00.000-08:00

Morning started 2 AM with dog whines and strangled yelps and a hurried trip downstairs to let him into the night, followed by sounds of leaping a gate, barging open another and hurtling, barking, into the orchard.

After a good wait, the porch door was left open for access to the kennel on his return.

Sleep was hard to regain, but soon lost with sounds of thumping and fears for a newly painted door, but no dog was waiting outside, sounds instead from the garden.

Checking the hen house, the torch showed no dog, but immediately inside the sliding hatch door a hen lay prostrate, claws in air; shining eyes, striped head and litter of feathered wings and claws illuminated in the dark beyond.

The morning proved still and hazy, warm sunshine tempered with a slight bite to the air, landscape bleached from winter snow and frost. Streaks of white on the mountains pierced the haze and pall of white smoke from gorse burning on the hill.

One young lamb lay under a sun warmed, dry-stone wall, ewe close by. Another even younger, ears drooped, still dark with amniotic fluid, licked clean by its ewe, a white sibling older by minutes already standing, pushing for the teat. The birth of a third lamb began, ewe torn between caring for the living yet needing space for the next.

Later, bold white & black Oystercatchers, warm grey & silver Knot, and small white Sanderling peel off the boulder shore, bright in sun as they wing their way low over the water, alighting just off shore, wings raised, amongst wavelets breaking on an emerging sandbar.

A long, white flushed pink drake Goosander drifts on the dark rippled bay, dozing in the sun, bottle-green head turned back, red saw bill tucked under one wing.

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2010-03-04T09:17:00.000-08:00

For the first time this year, sunshine and blue skies are not accompanied by hard frosts and the glasshouse needs ventilating to prevent winter salads from bolting. First Chiffchaffs are due in a couple of weeks, Swallows only days after. If spring were not already with us, perhaps one Swallow would make it.

Certainly, spring tides are here, sand bars and banks generally clear of high tides now covered by mirror flat waters of the tidal lagoon. At tide turn, water splashes and gurgles in the creeks as it pours off the salting to the drains. Teal sieve the flashes for tiny molluscs, drakes masked green, distinctive white line cutting through fine-silvered flanks to buff triangle under the tail. Grey and silver Redshank run through shallow margins on long translucent crimson legs, pricking the salting with long bills.

Only one brief Skylark song heard faint on the breeze from the other side of the estuary, though many liquid ‘chirrups’ high overhead denote birds passing over through the morning. Three long duck stand preening at the margin, feathers scattered on the salting, then waddle ungainly to the lagoon. Feathered crests of bottle green, long red saw bills, and black streaked white wings denote two drake Merganser with ginger crested duck.

By the time we reach the breakwater and the boulder shore, the tide has receded and Oystercatchers returned. The gravel patch on which they nest every year remains above even this high tide as marked by buff dry sedge stems and twigs. Scanning carefully the shining boulders and bronze bladder-wrack for Turnstones, a pair of tiny white waders stand proud on a boulder on black legs, too bold and exposed to register at first: a pair of Sanderling, black bills tucked back under wings, one black bead eye alert for danger.

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2010-02-25T07:33:00.000-08:00

A stiff, cold breeze blew from snow-covered mountains this morning as the Wildlife Wales sign was straightened following Wednesday’s strong winds. First Skylark song of the year cascaded down from sun & cloud above, loud enough to penetrate the rush of wind. They have been around The Maes and low-lying farmland for a week or two, evident by their short, liquid, ‘chirrup’ and undulating flight on broad-based, triangular wings.

No takers for this morning’s walk, so telescope & binoculars were carried to the beach slipway to check for seabirds. Scoter littered the bay, as ever; black drakes with tan bills bright in the sun, ducks now very light brown with pale cheeks, but no telltale splashes of white denoting rare Surf or Velvet Scoter. Scanning the bay systematically for white turned up a couple of long, low, white-bellied, silver-backed Red Throated Divers as they rose to view on wave tops, bills slightly uplifted, and a tight pack of buff-crowned Wigeon rafted up just off shore, but nothing else of interest.

Tuesday morning, on a calm sea, along with scattered parties of Scoter unusually close to the beach, more than a dozen white-fronted, snake-necked Great Crested Grebes fished or preened, including an unusually large group of six and another pair sizing up for their ‘snake dance’ pair bonding display. Directly out from the slipway, beyond its larger relatives, a pocket-sized version swam in a patch of dark ripple, bright white breast and neck contrasted strongly with a black, peaked cap; Slavonian Grebe in winter plumage, not much larger than Dabchick.

Passing over the rickety toll bridge the other day, a party of four, light brown, Little Grebe swam below in the incoming estuary tide, rear-sited legs and lobed toes splayed behind as they dived and surfaced in the swirling, sand-clouded flood.

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2010-02-18T09:17:00.000-08:00

Walking over short-cropped turf behind the dunes, we stopped to watch a sooty breasted Dunnock, streaked warm brown, singing its wistful refrain from a gorse top close by, pink legs almost translucent in morning light. Normally, they stay low, slipping unobtrusively between cover, their call a desultory piping; just now there may be five or six within earshot, all singing from fence posts or topmost sprays of Gorse or Bramble. An unassuming character makes an apparently polygamous or promiscuous life-style all the more surprising.

Too close for the telescope, the bird filled even binocular views, but as we focussed down, behind the Dunnock, way up in the sky over the bay, a sharp silhouette approached the land, high and fast with shallow, stiff wing beats. Quickly twirling focus screws back out, the black hood and white cheeks of a Peregrine came clear as it passed high overhead towards farmland beyond. As we watched, wing beats stopped and the bird began a shallow dive, sharp tail and wing tips forming a three-pronged fork behind. Wings flickering again in level flight, the bird slowed and was about to pass over the farm below, when the shallow dive was resumed, then became decisive as, wings set tight to the body, the angle of attack steepened and the bird accelerated to become a projectile, fast as an arrow at its selected target.

Once again, we were denied sight of the conclusion of the stoop as the Peregrine passed behind the shallow hill and farm. One day we will be lucky enough to see a kill; meanwhile, obscured conclusions, near misses, and sight of a triumphant, black-hooded victor will have to do, talons gripped on prostrate prey, hooked bill ripping at red breast meat, white down streaked across the turf and still floating in air….

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2010-02-11T09:40:00.000-08:00

Another spot of February high pressure: hoar frost white as snow at grey first light; each Rhinog mountain with just a peaked cap of white cloud streaming out under a clear, grey-pink dawn. On the long ridge between two valleys, the air warmed as we climbed; only fields in the valley bottom below frosted white; creamy sheep huddled below drystone walls, sheltered from downward flowing cold air.

Approaching a stone barn, a party of shaggy, bi-coloured Wild Goats moved through rocks and low scrub away from the dog, then plaintive bleating from a rocky hollow farm lane ahead: a Wild Goat stood tall on a rock, short horned against the sky, silver-grey kid trying frantically to scale the steep bank below. Calling a reluctant dog to heel, the kid was scooped up from the bank, still bleating, little heart pounding in the palm. The dam moved a safe distance but stopped to watch as the kid was placed, gangly legs spread, on rough pasture above, too young, tired or frightened to stand.

On return, both goat and kid were gone, but loud bleating up the valley suggested further dramatic events in the first dangerous days of life.

Loud Song Thrush notes ringing out over the valley below have really moved Spring along: previously tight, waxen, Hazel catkins suddenly hanging loose in sheltered spots, yellow with pollen to scatter on the next breeze; first two Celandines on a warm, south facing lane bank under an old Oak, just opening golden yellow in this morning’s sunshine, underside of petals deep maroon.

Glossy, white-veined Arum leaves stand tall in winter bleached grass, scattered drifts of Snowdrops in lawns & verges, and first long, swelling buds of Narcissus are all close enough to wild origins to contribute to the natural cycle of the seasons.

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2010-02-04T09:56:00.001-08:00

Scanning the grey bay, snow-white breasts and snake necks of a dozen Great Crested Grebe, now sporting eponymous burnt orange crests, stand out from scattered parties of black Scoter. Sexes are identical in breeding plumage, a balance reflected in their well-known display: facing pairs pointing bills left and right before rising breast to breast from the water; crests and plumage also used for aggression, stretching necks along the water towards adversaries, crests and wings fanned erect.

Ostentatious plumage and display is required in some species for selection of fit mates as well as stimulating mating and maintaining pair bonds. However, there is a great range of strategy found just in local species. Drake Scoter are black, selection of mates depending more on successful jousting and fighting than conspicuous plumage.

Surface feeding ducks share a different strategy: drake Wigeon, Teal & Mallard, superbly patterned to human eyes, strike a balance between showiness and survival; ground nesting females invariably drab brown for camouflage, species distinguished only by iridescent, coloured speculum.

Selection by females seems a strong determining factor in the evolution of such beautiful designs, flamboyance only limited by the need to survive. Lack of predators in New Guinea has removed this limit, hence the extraordinary Bowerbird plumage and display. Interesting, therefore, to contemplate the role of beauty in evolution as determined and selected by females. Perhaps there is a male imperative to demonstrate fitness by showing off to the limits of requirements for survival: Stags risking injury & death by fighting, drake Pintail risking predation with exotic colouring and unnecessarily long thin tails.

To complicate matters, neither large, striking, white & black drake nor duck Shelducks seem concerned about camouflage or plumage for display, only the red bill knob distinguishing the drake; perhaps they are too large or bad-tasting for predation.

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2010-01-28T09:46:00.001-08:00

For several years it has been intended to drive inland up the Mawddach river to locate a couple of species known to frequent patches of mixed woodland and forestry on the valley sides. John Hicks, local moth expert and all round naturalist, works with his wife Anna thinning woodlands on the south side of the estuary, and has mentioned Nightjars in summer as well as Goshawks and Crossbills in winter.

Not having seen Crossbills for over 30 years, planning a trip for the group entailed some research, the http://www.xeno-canto.org/ web site proving an invaluable source of bird recordings by species. With likely sites marked on the map and group expectations set to ‘realistic’, we set off, making a list of species seen en route to pass the time. A tiny road marked on the map looped up from the sandy estuary, along a tributary valley, between tiny stone walled pasture, past mixed woodland, forestry and isolated cottages, crossing streams and through stock gates, until we found our spot.
Parking up on a grassy start to a woodland path, a bird feeder hanging from an adjacent cottage proved a source of new species for the list as we alighted, but the aim of the trip was soon lost in chat and banter of the moment. Moving away from the group to listen for calls from surrounding woods and clearings, almost immediately, an insistent ‘jee…jee...jit’ call brought attention to an upright form just alighted on a spruce leader opposite; large billed and short tailed in silhouette. Never mind bird calls, the lads were still too absorbed in their affairs even to hear someone alerting them to bird calls, but soon set to once word had penetrated, pleased to have noted the heavy bill and distinctive calls for themselves before the Crossbill left.
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2010-01-21T07:44:00.000-08:00

Every child can describe the characteristics of each season in this country, but in fact each holds elements of its partners. Snow in June is a memorable and therefore rare event, but Hazel catkins have been hanging, tight-packed and glossy, since before leaf fall. Ducks have been in breeding plumage all winter: bold, white and dark striped drake Mergansers posing with bottle-green crests and red saw-bills to ginger-crested ducks; black Scoter kicking up white spray in grey seas as they chase and joust for ascendancy; Great Spotted Woodpeckers mentioned last week, hammer drilling hollow limbs, advertising for mates above a white winter landscape with grey skies and icy winds.

The day of the thaw, a Great Tit’s, simple, strident, two-note refrain rang out over the valley and woods; a Coal Tit started a more restrained version in woods next to the house, whilst high above, in the very tops of a Larch stand, Siskins scratched and whistled quietly to each other in subdued song between extracting seeds from cones with audible snaps.

During the freeze, a Dipper was noted singing in flight as it passed overhead, exceptionally high and far from the river; now back to normal, a pair heard early every morning, singing and calling as they buzz low over the water, preparing to build again under the bridge. Just now, outside the office, a Robin trills, first heard before dawn as they take over from hooting Tawny Owls.

From now on we can watch and listen for each new sign and thread of spring: first loud Thrush song, yellow spoked Celandine, liquid Blackbird warble. And before spring is in its stride, long before all risk of winter weather is passed, arrival of Chiffchaff, Sand Martin, Blackcap, Willow Warbler and Swallow all mark the start of summer to come.
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2010-01-14T04:01:00.001-08:00

Walking up from our wooded valley on snowy lanes, a Bruegel winter landscape emerges: hard, white fields; skeletal black trees, black walls threaded over the looming white bulk of the Rhinog Mountains. Passing a herd of warm, red-brown cattle under trees, breathing clouds of condensation as they chew from a big-bale, we take a sheep track up a lightly wooded slope to a bare hilltop. Stepping onto a rocky outcrop summit, a sudden blur of rufous brown wings startles as three Woodcock spring in separate directions from warm, sheltering Gorse below.

As specks of snow begin to blow on a face-aching east wind, a lone Lapwing oars its way along our hillside, sideslipping over bare, wind-pruned oak-woods. Beyond the wooded hillside, small white walled fields, a further, lower escarpment, and flat white coastal plain, the sea is grey under heavy skies, but in a white field just below, a band of bright, emerald green marks emerging spring-water.

Diverting a little from our route home, we approach the green hollow cautiously though open woodland and behind dense Gorse. Nevertheless, a party of thin-winged, grey-brown birds spring from the green wetland and jet away to the horizon, individual Snipe unable to help zigzagging as they skirt the landscape, awaiting our departure.

Three Lapwing stand in various attitudes, aware of our presence, before they too lift off in buoyant flight with squealing cries before alighting out of gunshot to await our departure. Scanning the green patch of wetland, several further Snipe crouch, green back-striped, straw-brown with heavy bills, relying on energy-efficient camouflage rather than flight, before springing to follow their fellows to the horizon.

Even in the deep mid-winter, there are signs of spring; sudden machine-gun bursts from treetops as Great Spotted Woodpeckers at three separate locations demonstrate head-banging prowess to potential mates.

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2010-01-07T11:32:00.000-08:00

Since further snow on New Year’s Day, white extends from mountains right down to the beach. Birds are on the move looking for frost-free feeding; another heavy Woodcock silhouette flickers over the lane at grey first light; a harsh piping whistle, apparently a single phrase of early Song Thrush, turns out to be a Dipper singing as it buzzes overhead in a high arcing flight away from the river.

At the coast, the low-lying, rushy, wet meadow previously referred to is white and iron frozen. On Tuesday a Grey Heron stood sentinel in the centre with a scattering of crested Lapwing and busily feeding Starlings, as last week. This time, also scattered across the meadow, were birds of upright stance and a range of sizes, each moving intermittently with two or three hops followed by an alert stop, a great opportunity to examine all four speckle-breasted Thrush species in one location: Fieldfares distinguished by contrasting rufous back and wings and grey nape and rump; smaller Song Thrush with warm fawn upper-parts; similar sized, with darker upper-parts, white eye stripe and red stained flanks was Redwing; and large, wild-looking Mistle Thrush, ash-grey with prominent breast spots.

Larger, warm golden-brown birds with pale bellies, intermittently running forward a few paces to stand stock-still, heads cocked, are long-awaited Golden Plover joining their Lapwing associates, eventually departing, sharp-winged and fast, with distinctive plaintive calls.

Never before having seen the close association, it was surprising to find two stripe-backed Snipe, unusually breaking from rushy cover to scurry low in a squabble, to be smaller than a nearby Song Thrush.

As we moved around to put the sun on our backs, Thrush plumage glowed in true colour; Starlings turned glossy; Lapwing upper-parts iridescent green, pure white under-parts and burnt orange under-tail as they dip to feed.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2009-12-31T06:18:00.001-08:00

Face-aching east winds and Rhinog Mountains loom white under grey skies. Lapwing numbers multiplied since last week. On Saturday, distinctive squealing cries are heard faintly downwind, a cloud of black dots lifted from low-lying wet meadows beyond the estuary, wing beats winking white against a dark wooded hillside, undersides occasionally flared white in unison as the flock bank and turn. Still no fine-winged Golden Plover amongst paddle-winged Lapwing though, as last week, a few Starlings remain.

By Monday, an excursion to find the same flock meets only with a large party of Black-Headed Gulls hovering low over black rushes, heads to wind on fine, white and silver wings, occasionally alighting briefly to snatch a scrap.

Out on the salting, an elegant, white and grey wader stands in a sandy creek accompanied by a Redshank, small and dun beside the related Greenshank. Narrow triangles of white flare up tails and backs as they fly, Redshank with white trailing edges.

Driving to the next estuary, several low-lying reclaimed meadows hold scattered parties of Lapwing standing about with distinctive upright stance or dipping to feed. Stopping to check for Golden Plover, faint cries bring the main flock to view way across the fields, first in tight formation, gradually thinning as danger passes, individuals peeling back to return to winter-feeding.

Returning by the upper road, closer to the main flock, we stop to check for Golden Plover. None found, we move up to the next field, looking at a handsome Great Black-Backed Gull, huge by comparison, when several hundred Lapwing lift from fields beyond, lined out at tree height, before the whole flock suddenly jinks and drops in unison before recovering formation.

Scanning back to locate the cause of alarm, the only sign is a column of white feathers hanging in the still air.
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2009-12-24T05:02:00.000-08:00

Awoke to the clock radio news: airwaves filled with problems and difficulties of the first White Christmas for years.

En route to the beach, dark, snow-filled cloud lowered over a grey, wrinkled bay, just the start of a rainbow stood on the shore of the Llyn Peninsula: a short, broad pillar of colour set between thin buff sands and black cloud, another short segment set in a cloud break above.

Behind the dunes, rabbit-grazed greensward and black rushes showed through a thin carpet of white ice, frozen hail from the day before. The wet meadow behind the dyke lay dark with longer grass and mower-chopped rush clumps set under a pure white, bulky mountain backdrop, thin dry-stone walls picked out in black. The usual party of Black-Headed Gulls stood white at the top end and a few dark Starlings squawked as they gleaned invertebrates from soft ground.

Today, green-black backed, white bellied, cavalier-crested Lapwing stood about, possibly fifty scattered throughout the wet meadow; burnt orange under-tails flashed they dipped for invertebrates. Opportunistic Gulls spot any Lapwing to find food, often more than one pursuing the unlucky quarry in a low-level aerobatic chase until the morsel is swallowed or dropped.

Hard weather invariably brings Lapwing to low-lying fields close to the sea, ground least likely to freeze solid, or to south facing slopes in sunshine, occasionally accompanied by smaller, fine-winged, Golden Plover of warm, burnt sienna.

Later, yelping calls of Black Headed Gulls brought attention to a tight flock flashing black and white in a line above the horizon, wheeling as one before reforming the line. A binocular scan brought no expected Peregrine to view, and within a minute or two the Lapwing returned warily to settle back in the meadow, only faint mewing of Scoter audible from over the dunes.
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2009-12-18T03:43:00.001-08:00

With improved weather, last Saturday’s group managed to find 56 species in a day, a new kid’s group record and further motivation for future sessions. On returning to the house, putting the hens away for the night, a distinctive, broad-winged shape flew overhead at canopy level, silhouette against the winter evening sky: a Woodcock on evening patrol of the woodland edge.

Next morning, again walking up the garden having let the hens out for the day, the dog flushed a broad-winged, brown bird that flew quietly up the slope straight into a redundant, meshed chicken run; long, straight bill and distinctive, high crown striped across brown like the ribbing on a lawyers wig, clear as it fluttered in the corner. It may have been brought to hand were it not for the dog’s instinct to round everything up towards the pack, encouraging the Woodcock to brave the lesser evil and fly out past my right ear.

In winter, Woodcock are often flushed from woodland edges in these parts, including several from different parts of the garden, effectively a woodland glade: one from the car park below the house; another sprung from rough lawn margins within 10 yards of the back door.

Several years ago, returning home after dark by car, on turning into the lane a strange, duckling-like bird was caught in the headlights, squatting low on short legs, head pointed away from the light. Stopping and opening the car door must have pushed it to brave the blackness outside the dazzling headlights, for it was gone from the spot by my arrival. Woodcock, like Rabbits, have eyes set each side of the head to give 360’ vision; an asset for avoiding natural danger; a liability when caught in man-made lamps and headlights that dazzle wherever the head is pointed.
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2009-12-10T07:14:00.000-08:00

The river flushes the water away to the sea very effectively, but after 18 gallons a square yard (15”) of rain, lowland fields reclaimed from the estuary are partially flooded, water stands even on upland pasture, and the woodland path is a running stream for the first time in a twelvemonth.

The first morning with clear skies, a Song Thrush sang in an Oak top, clear notes ringing out across the valley; thin squeaks, whistles and calls from the Oak canopy keeping parties of Tits together as they worked through, an occasional harsh note from Long-Tailed Tits. Tree Creepers and Goldcrests also use thin, penetrating calls, audible over the sound of wind in leaves. Kingfishers and Dippers are unrelated river birds, both with piercing whistles that penetrate the sound of rushing water. Grey Wagtails are familiar sights of weirs and rapids, alighting on emergent boulders, tails bobbing, canary yellow bellies and backs of slate grey. Their calls are similar but much more urgent and penetrating than related Pied Wagtails, also effective at overcoming the sounds of rushing waters.

This morning on the beach, a couple of black Shags fished between breakers just off shore; packs of Wigeon rode out the waves, parties of black Scoter scattered all across the bay, sleeping, diving for shellfish, or kicking up white spray as they joust for status and mates. Next to two black drakes and one brown-black duck, a tiny, exotic form popped up: white streaked crown and sides over treacle brown; thin necked and turkey headed. The eponymous long tail was not visible whilst swimming, but soon the drake Long Tailed Duck stretched out and winged its way forward, pattering across the water until in full flight, low over the waves, long-tailed and crested like a white, cream and brown streaked Parakeet.

Image by Eric Dougherty: dougherty.eric@gmail.com

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk

2009-12-03T10:32:00.001-08:00

A couple of bright days with snow on the tops, then back to grey, wind and rain. During the brief respite, birds moved about again, possible to see without rain-smeared lenses, calls clear without wind in the ear, seabirds visible on calmer seas.

The regular walk of estuary and shore yielded forty-one species, all expected in winter: great to see once again long, grey and white Red-Throated Divers in the bay with characteristic up-tilted bills. The dog, racing across silver estuary mud, flushed parties of calling Redshank; flocks of Wigeon and Teal whistled fast by, silhouette against winter sun. Warning ‘pee-wit’ calls found two, cavalier-crested, black and white Lapwing, standing with resting Curlew on the salting.

On the boulder shore, a Herring Gull lifted up in a bracing northerly breeze to repeatedly drop a large Dog Whelk onto rocks below, stopping occasionally to eat meat thus exposed. Crows and Ravens, better known for fast learning, are often seen using the same trick. Gulls, Rooks and Jackdaws often flock together on fields, foraging for worms, leatherjackets and cockchafer grubs. Herring Gulls often stay close, dead, white eyes set above a pale yellow pickaxe bill with distinctive red spot, grey-pink legs and feet often padding the ground with a rhythmic, shuffling tread to bring worms to the surface as anglers use a garden fork in the lawn.

Smaller, tern-like Black Headed Gulls quarter the ground in flight, fluttering over a possible edible morsel before descending to take it lightly, quickly off up again for more.

On sunny days in May and June, when copper Coch-y-Bonddu Garden Chafers are emerging in millions from grassland, charcoal-backed, yellow-legged Lesser Black Backed Gulls soar over mountains and valleys, or scatter fields and hillsides to pick wind-blown beetles from the air or as they emerge from grass.

Wildlife Wales Activities: www.wildlife-wales.co.uk