Coastal path walk to the Pill 20+ Teal, 6Egrets,4 Curlew, 2Greenfinch, 6+Reed Buntings,6+Greenshanks, 1Kestrel, 1 Tufted Duck, 2Gadwall, 8+Stonechat.

Nice to have some sunshine yesterday. I was really surprised to see a bat hawking around the garden in bright sunshine at 1.30pm. Watched it for about 20 minutes. Used to seeing them around the house and garden at dusk but can’t remember watching one in the middle of the day before. Pretty impossible to capture on camera given speed of movement but blurry crop below under excuse of record shot. Seems bizarre against a blue sky.

Aside from the bat, red kite, 3 buzzard, raven, carrion crow jackdaw, magpie, jay, 20 redwing ground feeding in paddock with green woodpecker, blackbirds and goldfinch, bullfinch, robin, dunnock, wren, chaffinch, blue tit, great tit, coal tit, long tailed tit, nuthatch, treecreeper, 2 goldcrest, grey wagtail, house sparrow, herring gull

Pretty quiet. There were 30+ Redwing feeding in E paddock and 3 Jays in the adjacent wood behind the play park. I didn’t check the wildfowl for the fem Ring-necked Duck.

• 

• 

• 

I was talking to one of the site operators at Maerdy works this morning and we got onto the subject of birds, as you do, and he told me about this large bird of prey that landed here back in the summer( Here are the pics his colleague took). Neither of them thought it to be a Buzzard, it looked larger if anything. My first thought was immature Goshawk but the supercilium is a bit indistinct and the feathers on its wings look a little uniform in colour. Incidentally this is the exact location where I found a predated red legged Partridge last May. Any ideas?

20-Snipe this morning,all but three on south side of the island.

This afternoon, 28 Curlew feeding in field between Zigzag lane and A4106 just outside Newton, Porthcawl.

From this morning, a couple of the best photos I managed of the Ring-necked Duck – they’re very grainy due to big crops and the really dismal light. Also a couple of Mistle Thrushes and a Redwing near W paddock.

All 5 thrushes this morning in the W paddock area. 2 Sparrowhawks hunting along hedgerows, 1 in W paddock and 1 beyond dragonfly pond. Also the imm fem Ring-necked Duck with Tufties on W lake and 1 fem Teal. R-n Duck pix later.

Blackcap 1 male feeding in mahonia Tufted Duck 51 Teal 6 and colour ringed Black-headed and Lesser B/B Gulls.

There was a nice showing of thrushes in the newly mowed W paddock this morning, with a mixture of Mistle Thrush, Redwing and Fiedfare. Not large numbers and all very skittish in such an open location. Probably about 30 birds in all.

Flock of hundreds of Knot at Blackpill at high tide this evening. Not sure if I can upload video here, but there’s a clip of them in flight on my Twitter: NaturemanPhotoVideo (@NaturemanV) / Twitter

10 Grey Plovers, 8 Lapwing , 5 Wigeon, 1 Great Black-backed Gull + Curlew, Little Egrets among 19 species seen this afternoon at RGW high tide.

At around 8am there were c60 Redwings in the field behind Janet’s house and nearby trees – the most I’ve seen this autumn. Another group, perhaps 40 or more, flew over high and the ones behind the house all took off to fly in the same direction. Perhaps the group passing over were calling. I was excited to see so many of these beautiful birds fairly close up.

Apologies if this is rather trivial but this is a test post to check I can post here again, after a period of issues with my WordPress account. The new (to me) editor seems to be OK, but I’ve failed to add an image here (either ‘featured’ or ‘inline’), and I tried several including small file sizes.

Week ending Nov 21st

Flock of almost 100 lapwing in regular attendance in fields near coast.

Several buzzards ground feeding nearby.

Came across a flock of 12 confiding Siskins, mostly females, feeding just above our heads, in the Alders by the river 1430.

In spite of the blustery wet weather, everyone enjoyed the club birdwalk this morning, good to see friends old and new. Between us we found 41 species, and I think we all saw most of them- a bit tricky in the wind and drizzle. Highlights were 8 Turnstone at Sker, 4 Common Scoter wave hopping, visible with binoculars, 10+ Curlew over on the golf course- seen by folk with scopes, since they were quite far away, Tufted Duck and Great -Crested Grebe on the pool, 7 Lapwing over, and glimpses of an Otter at the far side of the pool. Some folk explored the back of the barn at Sker House, but couldn’t find the Little Owl today.

Black-headed Gull, Blackbird , Blue Tit, Carrion Crow ,
Cetti’s Warbler -heard, Chaffinch, Chiffchaff – heard, Common Gull,
Common Scoter , Coot, Curlew, Feral Pigeon , Fieldfare , Goldcrest ,
Goldfinch, Great Black-backed Gull , Great Crested Grebe ,Great Tit ,
Grey Heron , Herring Gull , Kestrel , Lapwing , Long-tailed Tit , Magpie,
Mallard, Meadow Pipit, Mute Swan , Oystercatcher , Pied Wagtail,
Raven, Robin, Rook , Shag , Skylark, Starling, Stonechat , Tufted Duck ,
Turnstone , Water Rail- heard, Woodpigeon , Wren .

Thanks to Dave Carrington for leading, and everyone for their cheerful company.

Same location as post of 18th and over a period of no more than 5 minutes :- 1 female G.S. Woodpecker, 1 fem. Bullfinch, 1 m Chaffinch, 3 fem. Chaffinch, 1 Robin, 1 Dunnock, 2 Great Tits, 2 Coal Tits, about 10 Blue Tits, 2 Goldcrests, 4 fem. Blackbirds, I Pigeon, 2 Magpies and a few Herring Gulls over.

A couple of Red Kites circling over fields near Lillipot farm, Bonvilston yesterday afternoon.