Mid summer & Butterflies !

The local sea is warmer than average and a good early season for sightings of Bottlenosed Dolphins. A good start for Storm Petrel monitoring too with several successful visits to Mwnt.

The image of Cardigan Island through a Thermal Imager at 1am...taken from our Mwnt Storm Petrel ringing site.

Storm Petrel at Mwnt

Manx Shearwaters...writing this piece  watching 7200 Manxies passing the mouth of the Teifi in 60 mins - all flying west as they return to the Pembrokeshire island this evening...

This juvenile Great White Egret was seen feeding just below Priory Bridge on the 9th.

Photo - Hannah Cook

A huge increase in the breeding population of these large Egrets - 90 pairs in Somerset this year.

An adult Black-tailed Godwit and an adult and juvenile Redshank in front of The Webley 

(Photo - Hannah Cook)

The Webley sandbanks in the Teifi Estuary are favoured by roosting small gulls at this time of year, also Terns a bit later. There have been up to 7 Mediterranean Gulls with the Black-headed Gulls this week. Also the first juvenile Black-headed Gulls

Mediterranean Gulls - Jeff Slocombe

It is always worth looking through the flock of gulls there to look for colour rings. This Mediterranean Gull was seen and photgraphed by Hannah Cook. R8UN was ringed as a pullus  25/06/2022 at Polder de Sebastopol reserve, Vendée, Pays de la Loire; France. Hannah's sighting was the first since ringing.

It has been a good couple of weeks for butterfly and moth recording . 

A Privet Hawkmoth seen on the Teifi Marshes and four in a Llechryd garden moth trap.

Paul Taylor and Lin Gander visited Coed Maidie B Goddard reserve (Main entrance: SN208438) near Llechryd on the 13th July and had an excellent afternoon.  A Purple Hairstreak and Silver Washed Fritillaries were seen and a quick survey at some Elm trees resulted in a White Letter Hairstreak (possibly last recorded on the site about 1995). 

White-letter Hairstreak - Dyfed James

The blue dots show the locations where the White-letter Hairstreaks were seen on the 15th July

Coed Maidie B Goddard reserve 

A reminder to send your Butterfly and Dragonfly sightings to the county recorders.

For a summary of breeding successes in our area click on the following link..

Teifi Ringing Group - Breeding Bird Studies

(Wendy J and Rich D)