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Guidelines for Reporting Rarities and Submission of Annual Records
Detailed records of nationally or locally rare species (guidance on these is
here) should be sent to the County Recorder Eddie Hunter (
goweros23@gmail.com) as soon as possible after the sighting. An appropriate description should be provided of the species, your previous experience of it (and similar species), the circumstances and weather conditions in which the sighting occurred and any other pertinent information (such as photos). He will then circulate to the local or national records committee as relevant.
Day to day observations, including of nest sites, flocks of birds and species of local interest, should be collated in the Annual Record Form and sent to Eddie as an email attachment following each calendar year. Receiving these by the end of January is ideal as an early start can then be made on compiling the annual report.
PLEASE NOTE
Please could we ask that detailed locational information that may lead to the disturbance of the nest sites of species listed under Schedule 1 of the Wildlife & Countryside Act (1981) is omitted from any posts. This may otherwise lead to an offence being committed.
Schedule 1 species that regularly breed in the recording area are Dartford warbler, chough, honey buzzard, crossbill, goshawk, kingfisher, hobby, red kite, barn owl, peregrine, little ringed plover and Cetti’s warbler.
Fairwood common 26th April: 3 Grasshopper warblers heard and 1 cuckoo at dusk. Also 3 male reed buntings with one singing.
On Cefn Bryn 26th: Skylark, male Wheatear, male Reed Bunting, Meadow Pipit, Stonechat, Buzzard and (on Broad Pool) Grey Heron.
First cuckoo of spring heard on Pant y Sais fen this afternoon. Numerous birds in reed beds but we need another birdsong recognition walk to remind us what they were!
Hi Ann; The next bird recognition walk at Pant Y Sais is on June 24th at 18.30. Hope to see you there.
Thanks, now on calendar!
First sighting of a Cuckoo this spring near the former Graig Merthyr Colliery (Now the Pontardulais Flood Risk Management site)…with the bonus of three hare’s playing in the field directly behind it… 5pm 24/04/22
Couple more from Rhossili yesterday. Pipit (rock?), female stonechat, and (very) distant gannet.
Pipit looks more like Meadow Pipit. Well marked streaked back would not be so visible in Rock Pipit. Rock Pipit is also a sturdier bird.
Lesser Whitethroat heard singing and seen in a patch of farmland next to frogmoor early this morning. A first for me. Nice to hear and see a couple of Yellowhammers nearby too and 1 Yellowhammer calling on Cefn Bryn by Reynoldston.
Ilston 3.30 pm April 23, cuckoo calling to the west of the quarry.
Good fun meeting many of you today at Rhossili!
However… you all left a bit too early! I went and had a sandwich on the cliffs just down from the carpark and thought “those gulls circling below me look a bit weird” so I went down the grassy slope and got a closer look…
Thanks to Derek Jones who took these shots of the Peregrine and, the most numerous of today’s birds, the Linnet.
Lovely peregrine! My best of it was not that good, sadly. Still, very nice to see one.
Despite Ed Hunter being ill with the pandemic, we had a successful morning at Rhossili today. Seventeen of us set out for a walk along the cliff top to the look-out hut and then around to Fall Bay. Together we found 40 species. We hadn’t stepped more than a few yards from the car park before a pair of choughs went over head and, just a little further and a Peregrine sat obligingly on the cliff edge for us all to get a good look. Other highlights were a large number of Wheatear; six in one field alone, and Linnets in profusion. A distant… Read more »
4 Sand Martins up on Tor Clawdd…1 emerging from a hole in an earthy gravel bank
200+ starlings on baglan school playing fields 6 .30 pm