We had a successful and enjoyable walk at Pontneddfechan this morning, with 16 participants, in initially chilly conditions until the high cloud burned off. We didn’t expect a huge list but 26 species wasn’t too shabby. Gold star goes to Alasdair Flannagan who first spotted the two flycatchers – A Spotted and a very brief female Pied. In the end we definitely saw 2 Spotted Flycatchers. Dippers and Grey Wagtails amounted to approx 6 of each. Those with decent hearing, heard a few Wood Warblers. We also saw an active Great Spotted Woodpecker nest and a Mistle Thrush nest with 2 chicks being fed. The latter provided a sad note as immediately following a visit by an adult, one of the chicks fell out of the nest, which was quite high up in a tree, and fell into the river. It managed to struggle out and ended up on some rocks by the rivers edge, way below the nest. We thought its chances of survival were probably fairly low unless the ads could find it.

An unexpected sighting was a female Goosander resting on a mid-stream rock – she eventually flew off downstream. Link to the list is here – it’ll be updated if I’ve missed anything.