The Clywedog reservoir in Mid Wales supports breeding ospreys; on a recent trip with Tony Cross to ring the two young it was a chance to snap the anxious parents and ruffled young. Over the weekend we also ringed a brood of kestrels in Cwmystwyth, sparrowhawks on the edge of Borth Bog and an albino…
Tag: Colour-ringing
A Curlew in a Cage…
…does not put all Heaven in a Rage, in fact quite the opposite; it is 10 minutes to settle the captured bird after it has been colour-ringed and a GPS tag put on; a small but important part of the ongoing conservation work for this rapidly declining breeding species . It is late April and…
Curlew country
A weekend in the spring sunshine and a cold east wind helping my old friend Tony Cross colour-ring curlew and dippers in Wales and Welsh Marches. Male curlews are highly territorial so they respond to a playback of their effervescent bubbling call alongside a stuffed curlew (inappropriately called ‘stuffy’) placed by a net and we…
A Few Jars
The nightjars in the clear fells within the conifer forest are slowly being located. Late on a damp, cool night, heavy with cloud, suffocated by the humid air and an irritation of midges, we immediately find one of the four radio-tagged males. Tony knows he is likely to be sheltering the first brood, with the female somewhere…
Hinterland
The weather is uniform grey again in West Wales and the coast desolate and uninviting. This stretch of coast south of Aberystwyth was where the sad-eyed detective from the television series ‘Hinterland’ had his isolated mobile home. Beneath the long grass slope, the lively, lime green shoe-box looks out of place in front of the…
Ringing Breeding Birds in Wales
Friday evening near Llyn Brenig in the Sitka spruce forests of North Wales. The warm, humid air that brought storms has been replaced by a chill northwesterly and clearing skies. In the clear-felled forest, the nightjars ‘churr’ at dusk and we try to lure a male to a large mist net with a recording of the…