The last couple of weeks have seen a great variety of birds here, and even brought us a new species for the reserve, a juvenile pied flycatcher, found by ex-Site Manager Alan Davies. They breed not too far away from us, up at Pensychnant on the edge of Conwy Mountain, so it's perhaps surprising that this is the first record. We've also had sightings of a few young redstarts over the last couple of weeks, another woodland species whose offspring are on the move at this time of year. A juvenile kingfisher was also spotted on the Ganol Trail on 24 July and a young goosander on the Deep Lagoon on 26 July, so we've definitely been a hot spot for youngsters leaving home this week!
Other highlights over the last fortnight have been a hobby over the reserve on 28 July, occasional sightings of the male scaup, regular greenshank and whimbrel, up to 48 black-tailed godwit and 9 dunlin. The two great crested grebe chicks are just about as big as their parents now, and the two broods of oystercatcher on the reserve are doing well (plus we spotted another brood out on the estuary this weekend).
Those of you with eagle eyes may have noticed an unusual addition to the Deep Lagoon out near the Tal Y Fan Hide this week. Unfortunately, a few years ago someone illegally dumped a terrapin here in the lagoons, which has managed to survive several very harsh winters since. Although they can't breed in the wild here in the UK, they can live for up to 30 years and over that time can eat a huge amount of our native wildlife - frogs and frog spawn, fish and they've even been seen to take ducklings. Conwy Water Gardens have kindly offered to re-home our terrapin if we can catch it (where we're sure it will have a much easier life), so the hunt is on! We've bought a specialist terrapin trap, which floats out on the water - the idea is that the terrapin comes up the wooden ramp to bask in the sunshine (hmmm, that may well be the tricky bit), we smear bait underneath the ramp, it leans out to try and get the bait and falls into the trap, which we then check regularly. That's the theory - let's just hope it works!