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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.
6.00 to 9.00am at Port Eynon with Ed Hunter and Chris Brewer. Ed picked up an osprey immediately over our heads and heading south towards Devon. Another high spot was an Arctic skua chasing a tern no further from us than the East Helwick buoy: kleptoparasitism in action. Ed showed me his brown booby on the back of his camera; and he will post it on this site.
2 gannets very close in at Oystermouth Square
Absolutely amazing Seawatch today from Port Eynon 6.30 til 9 ish . First a Great Skua closely followed by a really close in Pomerine Skua which i could have photographed but the camera was in its bag … so i got it set up. -Kittiwakes – 350 and Sandwich Terns (150 totals for both) streamed through with a handful of Commic terns and a constant stream of Gannets. Then a Brown Booby!!! close in landed in the swell briefly seen but panic set in as I lost it, After 20 mins it had drifted with the tide toward the buoy.… Read more »
Per Ed Hunter (Twitter). Port Eynon, Gower today (23/08) – A Brown Booby! at 7.30am – landed on sea when lost in the swell for bit then picked up again before flew west also 1 Pom, 1 Great and 4-5 Arctic skuas,3 Storm Petrels.
Photo of booby on Twitter.
Our herring gull pair is still with us. Two or three days ago the male (now distinguished only by size) seriously injured its right leg and now hops pathetically, falling frequently onto its belly and staying down. The pair was getting excellent protein in the shape of crabs (of four species, shore, edible, velvet and spider). Now it will do poorly if it lives on what we feed it. The female, having only recently attained full adult plumage, is now getting the grey winter flecking in her head feathers. 0630 today a pied wagtail and four ringed plovers at Port… Read more »
Tutt Head Bracelet: 08:30-0945: 2 storm-petrel, 7 Manx shearwater, 9 gannet, 6 common scoter. Harbour porpoise. 2 Sandwich tern off the pier.
1.5 hours at Bracelet Bay 32 Gannet, 2 Manxies and one very distant dark phase Skua powering through, only id’d as a skua because of the flight, far too far away to be certain or tell which sort. All passing westwards. Numerous Kittiwakes but not counted as milling about and nesting locally.
Per Edward O’Connor: 2 Black, 47 Sandwich, 3 Common Tern, 6 Storm Petrels, 1 Bonxie, 1 Arctic Skua, 242 Manx, 69 Kittiwake and 23 Fulmar past Port Eynon, Gower in two and a half hours this morning
Flock of six choughs on Langland GC above Whiteshell point thus afternoon.
flock of 30+ linnets on Pennard Golf course this afternoon.. and 20+ house sparrows around a chicken coup top of Sandy Lane.. always hoping to find a tree sparrow amongst them..
Interesting to see about a dozen swallows sitting on one of the putting greens at Pennard this morning.. feeding? Or just resting out of the winds..
3 green sandpipers on Oxwich pill, 25 yards upstream from wooden footbridge on beach Aug 17th, circled marsh several times, calling and flashing white rumps, before settling further upstream.