This past week has been dominated by black and red grouse surveys which has meant very early starts as they are easiest to find around dawn. The earliest start has been 2:15am but generally averaging around 3am to be on the moors ready to survey around 4am. Overall the weather has been kind, with no rain and just a couple of days where the wind was a little strong.
Sunrise by Gethin Elias
The method is to walk transects along moorland edges and ridges and listen for their eerie bubbling and whooshing calls as they ‘lek’ to impressive the females. A lek is the name given to a group of displaying male black grouse, a small number of other species also lek, and who are said to be lekking. They can be feisty encounters especially when there are several males trying to attract a single female, but here at Lake Vyrnwy birds are often lekking on their own and are hard to see. So far several males have been heard bubbling around the reserve with a few more surveys left.
Lekking black grouse by Gavin Chambers (Archive photo taken elsewhere)
With grouse surveys finishing by 7am there has been time to continue with other surveys such as woodland common bird censuses (CBC’s), ring ouzel transects and moorland raptor monitoring. The CBC third visits were started this week with the woodlands now in song with pied flycatcher, redstart, and tree pipit which should soon be joined by wood warbler.
One sunny afternoon temperatures rose high enough to complete the first butterfly transect of the season which produced 4 species (peacock, small tortoiseshell, orange-tip and comma) and an interesting moth species, an orange underwing. There have only been 3 records of this species in the county with the last for Lake Vyrnwy being in 1998. It is a day flying species which likes to fly around the tops of birch trees as the buds are coming out in March and April which may explain the lack of records as they can be easily missed.
Orange underwing by Gavin Chambers
Other sightings this week have included the arrival of cuckoos which could be heard anywhere around the lake and also the first sightings of common sandpiper below the dam and from the centenary hide. A ring ouzel and fieldfare have been lingering along the Dinas Mawddwy road with the occasional hen harrier and merlin being seen.
Only a couple more weekends of Lambing on the farm events left so why not check out our website for details and book a spot. Please note that the event on the 1 May has been cancelled and moved to the 2 May.
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