At Cwm Irfon Lodge, outside Woodpecker Cottage
Raven, buzzard, red kite, jay, blackcap, spotted flycatcher, chaffinch, robin, swallow, crow, pied flycatcher, pied wagtail, blackbird, blue tit, song thrush (and those within an hour of arriving!), willow warbler, jackdaw, house martin, great tit, swift, woodpigeon, bullfinch, great spotted woodpecker, goldfinch, greenfinch, collared dove, peregrine, dipper (well, just down the road), nightingale (heard singing) and possible sightings of garden warbler, goldcrest
Nearby, in addition to the above
Grey wagtail, mistle thrush, meadow pipit, herring gull, pheasant, skylark, magpie, nuthatch, starling, cormorant, mallard, mute swan, chough, rock pipit, whitethroat, wren, stonechat, dunnock, fulmar, grey heron, chiffchaff (heard singing), (plus I think a wheatear - it disappeared over a rock leaving only a brief glimpse of a white bottom)
We're just back after a fantastic week of watching Welsh birds. I was delighted to find a big oak tree directly out the back of our little cottage when we arrived (see above), full of birds singing and flitting busily for flies - and to see a red kite within about twenty minutes of sitting down (along with the ravens and buzzards). Amazing. I think that's 28 species of birds seen on the doorstep, which is quite respectable, plus 20 other sightings nearby. If we count the nightingale and chiffchaff, which I certainly heard, we get to 50 - with only one species of gull, no waders, and one duck. And three birds of prey with no kestrel and no sparrowhawk.
Nearby, we went to the RSPB reserve at Gwenffrwd-Dinas near Llyn Brianne (which was absolutely beautiful - I've run out of space on Flickr for now, but here's Catherine among the bluebells), climbed Pen Y Fan (encouragingly, full of skylarks really giving it some) and wandered along the coast at Aberaeron (where we saw the choughs and fulmar).
Top three birds of the holiday for me were:
- the red kite Catherine spotted flying directly across our path as we drove above the Cwm Irfon (near here) - who gave us an excellent display as we pointed and cooed (I reckon we saw about 15 red kites in all - almost as many as we saw buzzards);
- the pied flycatcher who I reckon was nesting just out of our back door and was kept busy the whole time flitting to and from a few favoured scoping points (with an honourable mention for the blackcap(s) that kept singing to themselves as they pottered around the nearby maple tree); and
- the peregrines that Catherine noticed flying down the valley on a warm Wednesday evening when we went for a walk while waiting for the football - and then spent a lazy half an hour circling the area until they were almost invisible even through binoculars (made me think of the excellent book The Peregrine).
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