Having been out looking for communal chough roosts every evening this week, checking various parts of the Pembs mainland coast, without too much success, we thought we'd better walk over to the Pickards (Angle peninsula) yesterday afternoon. We went there to see if we could find a flock of feeding birds prior to checking out previously used roosts near Freshwater West and in the Castlemartin Range. Jane Hodges and Holly Harries also watched roost locations further along the Angle peninsula last night.
Suffice to say that few birds roosted at expected roost locations but we did see at least 18 choughs feeding on the slopes at the Pickards (a typical day-time location) although no where near the high numbers being recorded on Skokholm/Skomer at present - presumably there is something very tasty out there and in abundance too? We don't know where our 18 or so choughs actually roosted, but probably not far from the Pickards we suspect.
Whilst on the Angle peninsula,a young male merlin was being pursued by corvids (our first merlin of this autumn) and later on another much greyer male (almost adult plumage) was resting on a rock inside the Range near Pen-y-holt Bay. There were hundreds of linnets/goldfinches feeding on various coastal and ruderal plant seeds inside the Range - so plenty of food for merlins! There were no signs of kestrels though. It was a bit strange not to see any at expected locations along this stretch of coast at this time of year.
Wheatears seemed quite numerous. There must have been 30+ between Linney Head and Pen-y-holt (noted feeding along the coastal track). Plenty of stonechats too, especially along Freshwater West to Angle coast - they appeared to have had another bumper breeding season, including some very recently fledged young being fed yesterday - presumed 3rd brood?
