After a morning of doing BBS at a couple of locations and noting how few juvenile Blue and Great Tits there were in woodlands visited in the last couple of days compared with this time last year, we had an afternoon up at Llys-y-fran reservoir for a change.
On the way there it was great to see a fine male
Yellowhammer perched on the wires just off the A40 near Slebech where there has
been a good breeding population present over the years. We hadn’t been up that
way for quite a while. Hopefully we can find some time in the coming
weeks to get a better idea of the size of the Yellowhammer population in the area.
At Llys-y-fran, the water was a bit choppy in the breeze, but we noted at least 9 Great Crested Grebes, including one bird that was carrying a small fish into one of the more sheltered embayments, on the opposite side of the reservoir, suggesting that breeding had been successful.
It was also nice
to see a heron feeding two well-grown young at a nest-site there. About 100 or
so large gulls (mostly LBB) had arrived by the time we left at about 17:00 hrs.
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| Most of the grebes were just resting or bathing, but one was seen taking a fish into an embayment |
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| Two well-grown young Herons in a nest partially hidden by canopy leaves and a nearby adult. How many single Heron nests go unnoticed in the county? |