10th – 20th March 2025 Swallows run through in loose flocks overland, stopping briefly in the early morning to forage in vegetated wadis; small parties of green sandpipers huddle on the coast; and garganey flocks move north low over the sea. The coast is quiet and migration is just commencing; this is time when species…
Tag: Osprey
Birds of the Gulf of Aqaba and Northern Red Sea – Autumn
The northern Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba are wild and beautiful seascapes; on exposed rocky coasts there are windy, deep blue waters lined with white horses and fringed by a coral reef; elsewhere brown and coffee-coloured sands meet calm, shimmering, turquoise bays. In autumn, the coastline holds a sprinkling of waders, herons and raptors…
Mid Wales Raptors
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…
Farasan Kebir’s Wild North Coast
By the bridge to the second largest island of Al-Sajid there are deep green, fringing mangroves and a range of migrant waterbirds along the muddy banks including small numbers of bar-tailed godwits, dunlin, Kentish plovers, slender-billed gulls and various herons. A female brimstone appears to lay eggs on the mangroves. We travel back east towards…
Llyn Brenig and Llyn Bugeilyn
7th and 8th July 2018 On the way to the Elenydd mountains to check a merlin’s nest on the edge of a forest of Sitka spruce that has sadly failed, we stop at a small village hall to try to catch breeding swifts. There are perhaps 10-15 pairs and they come and go flying in…
Summer days in Wales
In the conifer forests at Clocaenog, the night is swept by cloud and rain; in the few clear periods before midnight, midges and moths are on the wing and nightjars churr incessantly from the clearings. Tony Cross catches a male in a mist net but the female escapes and we miss the opportunity to find…
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…