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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.
Our herring gull pair has intensified the behaviour which makes us think an egg can’t be too far away. We have been warned that a herring gull nest in the garden will not be attractive.
At 2.30 today we heard a green woodpecker in our neighbour’s sycamores. It flew down into our garden and was with us for, say, 12 minutes, inching its way along the face of a dry stone wall until it (a female) was thirty feet from where Cris and I were sitting in plain view. It was very alert, but more probably for sparrowhawks than us. We only had to sit still. When it flew back into the trees, it did so quietly and perhaps without having seen us.
Lockdown garden news… West Cross
First swallow of the summer this morning..
First song thrush recorded this year
Family party of starlings being very noisy
And a pair of collared dove have reappeared after a very long absence
I am getting used to hearing Cuckoos every day – it’s difficult to know how many there are although there are at least 2, one on either side of the valley. On my walk to the west side yesterday, one was very close but I couldn’t see it. Today I saw a male Stonechat carrying food and another with 3 juveniles, both on the east side of the valley.
Bit late with this one sorry – five choughs on Pennard East Cliff on April 8 afternoon
Whiteford Bay dunes today – loads of stonechats, meadow pipits, very noisy whitethroats (presume common), a few martins. Lovely
Mumbles old RNLI station by the entrance to the pier car park – two rock pipits on stones below the rowing club and then on the high rock face opposite going in and out of the greenery – Wednesday afternoon I think
Shld edit that to say the dunes behind Broughton Bay, not Whiteford
Clyne Common this afternoon. Several stone chats and meadow pipits, buzzard mobbed by a crow. Sky lark hovering and singing, two swifts flew over and a male cuckoo calling from the direction of Blackhills. And a fox stopped to look at me.
Spotted Flycatcher active in garden.
Hi all, a friend of mine sent me the following picture of a newly emerged dragonfly(?), from her pond asking for identification, over to you boys and girls, thanks
Swift over Langland Golf Course Monday 8.00am
The Herring Gull pair, which might have nested in our garden in Brynfield Road, has been mating for the best part of three weeks. Both birds are still with us each day, but in the last five days or so they have spent less and less time here. The peanuts they get here are undoubtedly a welcome dietary supplement. However, it is clear from pellets that they successfully get crabs, edible and spider. Langland Bay by air is barely 30 seconds away; and they have the skills they need to feed themselves well at low tide and still spend idle… Read more »
Morning walk at Baglan Burrows to Neath river mouth 9.30 a.m. Still warm this morning with plenty of birdsong from Skylarks 4, Meadow Pipits which must have young in the nest as adults have beaks full of insects, singing Whitethroat, Linnet, Goldfinch also a family party of Stonechat. Butterflies were also out in numbers in the dunes including Common Blue 10+, Orange Tip 5, Small White 4, Peacock 1, Small Heath 2, Small Blue 4 and a single Brown Argus. I also disturbed a Treble- bar moth. At the Neath river mouth a small flock of 41 Oystercatcher 2 Whimbrel… Read more »