A chance meeting up with John Walmsley yesterday and a follow up visit to friends at Landshipping were both interesting encounters.
John was on the upper reaches of the eastern arm of the Cleddau between Picton Point and Slebech last Wednesday ( 14th July) when he and his wife saw 2 Ospreys hunting over the river. He cycled there again on Thursday and again was lucky to see the 2 birds again.
Alun and Lori who live at Landshipping then related several stories of these birds being seen over the summer period sometimes within 20m of the shoreline at Landshipping, fishing and returning to the trees upstream round the bend towards Slebech. Lori said that in the last couple of weeks they had both started to moult and had lost some primaries. She is convinced that the 5 they saw together in late summer 2019 were adult and 3 youngsters but that was also at the peak of autumn movement so is just a (reasonable!) observation but it is interesting that in the last few years there have been increasing reports of Ospreys in this area. So perhaps we do indeed have a pair breeding somewhere in that vast area of trees between Picton Point and Blackpool Mill - its 5 to 6 miles of almost continuous woodland with some grand trees and very few accessible observation points after all.
Anyway we spent over 4 hours there and didn't see an Osprey but lots of Black headed gulls and a few Curlew during a lovely afternoon and early evening.