Tricky Grebe

I went to Whitford on Sunday with the Gower birding group. The saltmarsh area had large numbers of Wigeon, Teal and Pintail, as well a Great White Egret, and a Merlin hunting overhead. An interesting looking grebe was found out on the estuary fishing up one of the channels. It was always distant, and with poor light it was hard to pick out much detail. It had a dusky head with undefined markings making it look good for Red-necked Grebe. It also at times seemed very long necked and long bodied. However, the beak always looked short through the scope and I couldn't detect any yellow at the base. Size was hard to judge, but when a Great Crested Grebe was briefly in the same view it looked a little on the small side for Red-necked to me. The other possibility is that it's a Slavonian Grebe moulting into summer plumage making the head markings less defined. I think the only way to know for sure is if better views are obtained, so hopefully it'll be re-found. I'm completely torn either way, but perhaps slightly more on the Slav side because of the shortness of the beak.

Grebe sp.

Offshore there were two Great Northern Divers, a Slavonian Grebe and c.40 Eider.

Eider

GNDs and winter Whimbrel

A walk along the coast path to Pwll on a calm sunny day was surprisingly profitable for birds. I wader in a field by the water treatment works caught my eye - a Whimbrel! It seemed unbothered by passing dog walkers, and only flew when they got too close. Luckily it flew in and landed at about ten metres distance from me calling as it did so. Not the most well marked bird. The feathers are very worn and it only showed a weak crown stripe.

Whimbrel

Off the estuary wall were, 13 Great Crested Grebe, 10 Red-breasted Merganser, a Little Grebe and three Great Northern Divers close in feeding on crabs. Nice to see this species at such close range.

1st winter Great Northern Diver

Two Chiffchaffs in the bushes by the side of the path were noteworthy, as was a female Goldeneye on the lake just to the east of Sandy Water Park and two Red Kites overhead.

Firecrest

There's a nice scrubby area just by the entrance to the yard with a few pine trees. There's nearly always a few Goldcrests here, and I'm forever checking them for anything rarer. Today, we'd just been doing some habitat hedging on the reserve, and on my way back into the yard for lunch a crest was flitting about in the area. I got a view of its bright greeny orange back, and then it turned to the side to reveal a white supercillium - Firecrest! It quickly moved into denser cover where I watched it skulking about for about ten minutes before it disappeared. Hopefully it'll bring in a few more visitors!

The only shot I got of it!

Yesterday, I found my first dead bird since I've started working here - a Herring Gull on one of the roost islands of the saline lagoon. Luckily there weren't many birds (or birders!) to disturb so we put on some waders and went out to collect it. I took both a buccal swab and a cloacal swab, and after a lot of form filling in, took them to the post office to get sent to a lab for analysis for disease. The bird has been frozen just in case a post mortem needs to be carried out.

Me swabbing a dead Herring Gull.

On Monday I had my first opportunity to photograph the Bittern. I first picked it up in a line of sedge at the end of the channel we created a couple of months ago, but it soon flew in and landed on the opposite side of the lake, unfortunately just behind a small island.

Bittern

Partially leucistic Teal

A Teal has been around for at least three or four months now with an area of leucism on both sides of its head. When I first saw it it was in eclipse with the same white markings, so its been interesting to see it moulting into breeding plumage. It also has small areas of white in the wing and on the outer tail feathers.

Teal

On today's WeBS count, a Kingfisher was showing nicely at the Canoe Safari and four Spotted Redshanks were on the Saline Lagoon along with eight Greenshank. A few additions to the 2015 patch list include a Raven, a Stock Dove, 11 displaying Goldeneye and a Bittern on Thursday afternoon. Still plenty of easy ones to get; Coal Tit, Treecreeper and Mistle Thrush to name a few.

Kingfisher

Work over the last week has included all the usual stuff like entering the wildlife we see onto a database and doing the dead bird patrol. This week we had to train other members of staff how to take swabs of dead birds in case they found any at the weekend.

We've also been clearing a bank to provide an increased area for Water Voles to breed and feed on. We started off checking for signs on Monday - none in the area we were going to clear, but we found food stashes in an area of sedge adjacent. We started off by strimming the bramble away and then cut down the 25 odd trees. All of the branches were made into hedges to provide a place for insects to winter, and the logs are hopefully going to be sold.

The tree stumps will be poisoned, and throughout the spring the sedge should begin to grow.

New Year

I've signed up to Patch Work Challenge this year using the WWT reserve as my patch. I'll only have until August to try and see as many species as possible, but I should be able to manage 120, and hopefully a few more.

The highlights of last week were a female Goldeneye on the estuary and four Spotted Redshank amongst the waders.

Work last week mainly consisted of cutting down dangerous trees before the high winds this week. On Friday I took a load of photos of the views from all the viewing platforms, because starting on Monday, a team of tree surgeons are coming in for a few weeks to clear all trees five metres from the waters edge all around the Deep Water Lake - a massive job! I'll take some more photos after it's finished so we can see the transformation.

Yesterday I checked Sandy Water Park. There was a sizable gull flock on the grass to the east of the lake which consisted of 12 Common Gulls, three Lesser Black-backed Gulls, but no Mediterranean Gulls. One of the Black-headed Gulls had a white ring which I think means it's from Reading. On the lake there were 11 Tufted Duck (including the ringed bird from Radipole), a Pochard, three Shoveler, five Gadwall and two Little Grebes. Three Goldcrests were with a flock of Long-tailed Tits around the lake.

Today on a visit to Swansea Bay there were two Red-throated Diver and 130+ Great Crested Grebes in the bay, with c.25 Mediterranean Gulls at Mumbles with around 20 Kittiwakes passing offshore.

Increase in Lapwing

I did the WeBS count this morning since the high tide was two hours before sunrise on Sunday. Lapwing numbers have gone way up from last weeks maximum count of 113 to an impressive 929 this morning. They were very easily spooked (as Lapwing are) for the whole count, but I manage to quickly get through them without any major movements.

Other counts include; 1225 Dunlin, 500 Black-tailed Godwit, 350 Curlew, three Bar-tailed Godwit, 391 Knot, 11 Greenshank, a Spotted Redshank, a Grey Plover, 45 Redshank and eight Snipe.

Duck numbers from the reserve included 221 Pintail, 206 Wigeon, 76 Tufted Duck, 40 Shoveler, 126 Gadwall, two Pochard and a disappointing count of only 23 Teal.

Wigeon

A Red Kite (not that common here despite being in Wales) flew over on Tuesday while we were cutting down some large trees which were deemed unsafe by someone who came in and did a tree survey a few weeks ago.

Other work carried out over the past couple of weeks has included mostly cutting trees down and strimming and clearing areas of scrub. We've put up quite a few bird feeders now the cold weather has set in, and these are already being visited by large numbers of finches and tits.

Colour-ringed Tufted Duck!

Yesterday I went for a walk along Llanelli beach and up to Sandy Water Park. A Chiffchaff landed in a bush breifly, called once, and then flew high to the east. On the lake were a single Pochard, c.16 Shoveler and c.10 Tufted Duck. Some of the Tufted Duck were taking advantage of the almost constant feeding by members of the public that takes place in the south east corner. While scanning over them, I noticed that one had a pale yellow ring on its right leg, and when it turned I could see that it had an orange ring on the left. The colours were quite hard to judge through the water and the bird soon went behind cover. I came back today to have another look, and thankfully it was showing much better. On the left leg there was a metal ring under the orange which I hadn't noticed yesterday.

This bird was ringed at Radipole Lake in Dorset in 2007 in a study with the WWT. Twelve males were ringed that year, but even though I can make out the first five characters of the metal ring, it still isn't enough to narrow it down to an individual.

Most birds from this study seem to migrate to and from their breeding grounds in Siberia through the lower counties of England, so this bird is a little unusual in that respect. Perhaps it over shot its wintering grounds?

On Monday I saw a Bittern again as I was locking up the hides, and on Wednesday I picked up a Merlin perched up over the saltmarsh, the first I've seen here. There were good numbers of waders roosting on the Saline Lagoon with 890 Dunlin, 640 Knot, 222 Curlew, 474 Black-tailed Godwit, 17 Greenshank and three Spotted Redshank. Four Water Rail were also showing nicely from the hide.

On Thursday, we helped out catching some of the collection birds to update the records. We caught all the Red-crested Pochards and Philippine Ducks bar one which wouldn't come out of cover. In the previous week we caught all but one of the Buffleheads, despite spending an hour with five people in the pond armed with nets after just the one bird! It kept diving through the line we formed from one side to the other, and never seemed to tire.