Choughs in small groups, maximum 6 together. No rings visible.

A relatively interesting seawatch for the time of year and given the settled weather.
The highlight was three Arctic skuas (1dk and 2 pale morph) all persuing the same herring gull at 06:10. The gull dropped some food, which was picked up by one of the skuas, which then disappeared further offshore almost immediately.
Common scoter movements were quite notable for the Tutt: 39 over the watch (27 west, 12 east). Including a flock of 19 (looked all / pred female).
Otherwise 6-8 gannet constantly present, with 20+ seen over the hour (no reliable count).
2 guillemot
1-2 porpoise seen regularly foraging.
Manxie passage mainly very distant (beyond effective viewing range) – only 110 (90% east) in 1 hour.
There were 39 Med gulls on the lower shore at Bracelet earlier in the week, but numbers seem to have dropped back to the 8-14 birds that have been typical of the past 2 weeks.
The scarlet tigers were still flying on Rams Tor at the weekend, and there are 2 grey seals regularly off Limeslade.

Only birds of any significance were willow wblr, Chiffchaff and Blackcap. Small and Large Skippers were about. Also 50 B-h Gulls on the beach as St Mary’s Well Bay.

A quail was calling from the large weedy field at Sker early this morning. Heard again by DGC at 0845 at the same time as the farmer started mowing the field!

Red-crested Pochard present until  at least 10:00, outside the reserve along east fringe of vegetation between the floating barrier and St David’s Hotel. Visible, albeit distantly, from by the first picnic benches on the barrage walk just past the drydock.

The first LBB gull of this years brood turned up a Cosmeston yesterday (Lol Middleton) and we took this shot this morning
http://andyburnsphotography.zenfolio.com/lbb/he142bee#he142bee

Perhaps it is one of the Flatholm ‘chicks’ that we saw last week. I guess it’s not much more than 7-8 weeks old. Still, it was holding it’s own (almost) in the scramble for bread. There was also another baby LBB on the lake.

There seemed to be a few more birds around than what we have been seeing with a couple of common sandpipers, goldcrest, long tail tits and reed warblers etc. There were still 3 chicks with the moorhen pair that Lol spotted for the first time yesterday at the north end of the west lake- the Herons must be keeping well fed on fish!

Andy

Red-crested pochard (fem type) found early morning, loosely associating with tufted duck flock. It was viewable distantly from the boardwalk. Also good to see at least 3 broods of tufted duck.

John, in response to your concerns about the ditches and pools vegetating over. This work is scheduled in the near future.

Hamadryad – Ad GC Grebe with fully grown juv, Coot sitting, Grey Heron being mobbed by LBBGs, Reed Warbler singing.
CBWR – Whitethroat singing by Yacht Club, several Reed W seen, 22 GC Grebes and a fem Tufted Duck with at least 6 ducklings in the lagoon. No sign of Red-cr Pochard reported on the Twitter feed.
CBWR is getting more and more overgrown. The small lake on the LH side is now a fraction of its former size and by next year or the year after will be completely invaded by Reed, if left. Also the ditch on the RH side that used to be good for Dragonflies & Damselflies is now completely overgrown with reed and other vegetation. Not sure if this is due to cuts or whether suitable habitat management is planned.

Little Egret and Curlew present this evening.

This weekend saw the annual gull ringing trip. Haven’t toted up the totals from the ringing teams yet but its roughly 140 lesser and a dozen or so herring gulls. Billy Whiz also caught three meadow pipits and a rock pippit

Other species recorded – woodpigeon, shellduck, oystercatcher, blackcap, robin, dunnock, swallow, raven, magpie, greenfinch, blackbird, wren, meadow and rock pipit and pied wagtail.

20 plus BH Gulls and a Curlew on Barry Harbour at high tide

hi all can u identify this butterfly im sure its a fratillery or some sort but which one, taken down aberavon sanddunes by the old BP

 

 

 

 

Female tufted duck with 10 young mallard with 6 young coot with 2 young a pair of little grebe

7 Sandwich Terns off the point this morning. 2 juv Wheatear, Golden Plover also seen along with 20+ Sand Martin and a few Swifts heading east.

Lots of very nicely plumaged linnets this morning giving close-up views from the car

Around Llanrhidian fledglings that have appeared during the last week have included a good crop of Little Egrets (Note, the Gowerton colony was abandoned this year, probably due to storm damage). I counted 63+ birds (adults and juvs) going into the Llanrhidian and Landimore roosts on Friday evening. Grey Herons have done well with young seemingly everywhere you look on the marsh. Broods of duck at Llanrhidian have included Mallard (~10 broods), Gadwall (5 broods), Shoveler (1 brood) and Shelduck (4 broods) though only single pairs of Lapwing & Redshank have produced young to fledging. Little Grebes are on their second clutch and are chasing off the young from the first brood, 17+ Moorhen chicks have been counted and Water Rails have been calling from the reedbeds, presumably breeding?

The start of passage has been slow with counts in the upper section of the estuary this week including Common Gull 6, Teal 8, Oystercatcher 369, Grey Plover 5, Black-tailed Godwit 9, Curlew 194 and Green Sandpiper 3. Gulls have been more conspicuous this week, but with so many Black-heads now being produced at Penclacwydd (246 chicks this year counted by Wendell Thomas plus the first successful Med Gull breeding), it’s difficult to detect if there’s been an influx, although counts of 24+ Meds there suggest additional birds have been arriving in number. Pleasing to finally see lots of Swifts feeding on the marsh this past week after what has been a very poor showing.

Users may notice a change in the New Post options form that comes up when you select New Post.Now it goes straight to the form without the ‘Text’ etc options. Also the post form now does not have the old “Insert an Image” option. Instead you will see “Drag & Drop files here to Create a Gallery”. I just did a test of this and you can drag pic files from your computer to the box and then click Publish and they shd appear, along with any text you have entered in the message box.
John Wilson

10 Black-headed Gulls on the W lake posts is a sure sign of approaching autumn. Other than that pretty quiet. Still many Ringlets and also a few Large Skipper, Emperor dragonflies at the Dragonfly Pond, plus Black-t Skimmer and Common Darter.

1-Short Eared Owl on glamorgan side at 13h00

…..I think it is still in Glamorgan!

Lol Middleton and myself went over to Flat Holm for a day earlier in the week to photograph some young gulls and try and get some first hand experience at Id’ing very young LBB’s and HG’s. I have posted a series of shots at

http://andyburnsphotography.zenfolio.com/younggulls/h2fd9dec8#h2fd9dec8

which look from eggs, to fullfy balls, to scraggy chicks, to our well loved juvenilles (or not). There are 13 shots in all which show quite a variation in colours and patterns – even the LBB’s eggs vary in colour.

The records seem to show nearly 10:1 LBBs to HG, but it seemed like there were more HGs than that. The HGs were all around the shore/cliffs(?) whereas the LBBs also were nesting in the fields and bushes.

In addition to the LBBs and HGs, there way one GBB (yes, just one!), double figures of oyster catchers, maybe a handful of pairs of shelducks, the odd wood pigeon and a single rock pipit. Not the place to go with all the gulls.

Well worth the effort to get the baby gull shots.