A mid January weekend...
Saturday 14th - An early wander up the Cippyn valley, the small stream that runs down the south side of Cardigan bay Holiday Park. As we hoped, a Firecrest with Goldcrests just before the red gate in the low vegetation. On the return walk, a Siskin feeding with Goldfinches and Long-tailed Tits in the Alders.
Geese in the Farm Park fields with Cardigan Island in the background. Usually we can find c130 Barnacle Geese and c300 Canada Geese, though the species often go their seperate ways.
Around the estuary, a pre dawn visit as the high tide dropped found a surprisingly high count of 118 Curlew - maybe they had roosted in the water as the high water only just covered the main mud ? Other maximum wader counts over the weekend - 380 Lapwing, 120 Golden Plover, 85 Dunlin, and the return of the Shelduck continues - now 43 birds.
The riverside fields just before the sawmill up the Teifi Valley
Currently this and the neighouring horse paddocks hold nothing more exciting that 5-7 Little Egrets and 2-4 Grey Herons. Surely inviting for another interesting species....A field c400m downstream held another 220 Canada Geese.
This morning on the river through the Teifi Marshes reserve, a high counts of 2 drake Goldeneye, 2 drake and 3 female Goosander. A Tawny Owl flew across the reserve car park pre dawn too.
The ponds were still frozen this morning - Monday, but Colin has managed some great results for us recording colour-ringed Reed Buntings.
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| Colour-ringed Reed Bunting - Colin Dalton |
We don't intend to discuss ringing in detail here, we have at least monthly summaries of the ringing studies in the area on Teifi Ringing Group - (click this link for more)
A quiet few days ahead following the Teifi timeline 19th- 23rd January.
The most interesting sightings of the last 5 years, a Barn Owl hunting over the marsh and our first multiple record of Purple Sandpipers on the cliffs below the Cliff Hotel on the 20th Jan 2018.
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| Purple Sandpipers at Gwbert 2018 |
This is one of the locations to look for them at high tide, again Cardigan Island in the background.
Rich D and Wendy J