If you're our Friend on Facebook, you’ll have noticed that in recent weeks we've been promoting our new RSPB North Wales page.  We will shortly be closing down our Conwy (and South Stack) Facebook pages and we understand that some of you will be disappointed to see these pages go.

Here are some questions that you might have about this change...

Why haven’t you just changed the page name?
Unfortunately…

Blwyddyn newydd dda! Happy new year! The calendar may have changed but the weather has not and it’s been a frustrating week for those who hoped to get outside during the Christmas break. The wind and rain has made it hard work to find small birds in the bushes, but the mild temperatures and the lack of frost means there is plenty of natural food.

With no very cold weather in Britain, mid-winter is a time when…

You may have noticed that it's been a bit stormy recently!  Conwy escaped the worst of the tidal surge on 5 December, and when we saw pictures of some of our reserves in eastern England, we felt relieved (for a report about the effects on our reserves in Norfolk and Suffolk, read Steve Rowland's blog). Without Thomas Telford's Conwy Cob - the embankment that leads to the bridges - we would have taken more of…

It just goes to show that when people visit RSPB Cymru reserves, they are sometimes so inspired by what they see they land up fighting the cause for nature in the most unexpected places in the most unexpected ways!  

This is what happened to 12-year old Niamh Stewart from Dubai, who after visiting the RSPB Conwy last summer has decided to try and raise £250 by taking part  in the United Arab Emirates 5k Color Run on 14…

A little burst of colder weather and we very quickly saw a change in the birdlife. On the water, we've had plenty of ducks. The stars have been three scaups, a bird more usually found feeding in inshore coastal waters, but these three immature-type birds have been here since Friday 15th, usually in the Deep Lagoon, close to the Ynys Screen. Thanks to Dave Williams, who took this lovely photo of two of the scaup…

The last few weeks have seen us welcome the ponies back on to the reserve, and we're now back up to the full complement of six. Instead of our customary Carneddau ponies, this time we have some Welsh cobs in the mix, and they look huge compared to our usual short stocky ponies. But they're definitely doing the job - for the first time in many years we took the ponies off the reserve for the summer (so that we could…

Over the last few months, quite a few visitors have been surprised by how low the water level is, particularly in front of the Coffee Shop. As Sarah explained in an earlier blog, lowering the water level during the late summer and autumn is exactly what we want to do, so that we can provide lots of food in wet mud for migrating waders. While it looks low in front of the Coffee Shop, if you look at the same lagoon from…

I was out early this morning - well, it felt early because it was only just getting light when I arrived at the reserve. It was totally calm, the thermometer in the car read 14 Centigrade and the overnight rain had cleared. A robin sang close to the entrance gate, and in the distance I could hear a chiffchaff singing. The trees are fully-leaved, clothed in green.  I set off around the reserve trails, and it's gloriously…

It's just over a year since work started on our Conwy Connections project, and throughout that time we've taken hundreds of photos to record our progress.  We've blogged (fairly) regularly, and now that the project is approaching its end, I thought it would be good to look back on what we've achieved.  And it isn't quite finished yet. Read to the end to see what else is still to come.

The potholes'…

Meet Jack. He doesn't come here often - and when he does, he usually hides on the edge of the reeds.  Jack is usually shy.  But not this weekend!

Through the late summer, as the water level has slowly dropped, revealing a centimetre of wet mud each day, we've seen lots of Common Snipe with other waders in front of the Tal-y-fan Hide.  Yesterday, Warden Sarah noticed a couple of smaller 'snipe': Jack S…

What an amazing month we've had for waders - up to 2 ruff, 3 green sandpipers, 3 greenshank, 5 bar-tailed godwit, 20 black-tailed godwit, a wood sandpiper on 19 August, up to 60 dunlin, up to 4 curlew sandpiper, a golden plover over on 7 September, 2 knot on 9 September and a little stint on 10 September. And, best of all, most of these birds have been actively feeding on the lagoons. We've managed to achieve our…

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Ar ddydd Gwener a Sadwrn wythnos dwethaf, dathlom ni mêc-ofyr, neu wedd-newidiad ein gwarchodfa...ac yn wir, roedd yn ddathliad a hanner!

Roedd cymaint o fwrlwm i’w gael o amgylch y safle yn ystod y ddau ddiwrnod. Cafwyd cefnogaeth aruthrol gan y rhai oedd yn bresenol o gynghorwyr lleol i Ysgrifennydd Gwladol Cymru; o’r holl grwpiau cymunedol i’r artistiaid, contractwyr, staff a’r gwirfoddolwyr…

It's been an incredible nine months at RSPB Conwy since the Conwy Connections makeover began. And we’ve documented all the highlights in the Conwy Connections Bulletin. This is the final Bulletin of the project, as we have very nearly finished! I hope you will enjoy reading it.

As we’re approaching the end of the project, we hope you can make it to Discovery Day next Saturday, 31 August, and discover the reserve…

Mae hi wedi bod yn naw mis anhygoel yn RSPB Conwy ers i’r gwaith gweddnewid gychwyn. A rydym wedi bod yn dogfennu’r holl uchafbwyntiau ym Mwletin Cysylltiadau Conwy. Yn drist iawn, hwn yw Bwletin olaf un y project. Ond un rwy’n gobeithio y gwnewch ei fwynhau ei ddarllen.

Fel rydym yn nesau at ddiwedd y project, gobeithio’n wir y gallwch ddod i’r Diwrnod Darganfod, dydd Sadwrn nesa, 31 Awst a darganfod…

Autumn migration is in full swing now, with the lagoons full of waders busily feeding away. Managing freshwater areas for waders is a bit of a juggling act - we need to have high water levels during the breeding season to ensure that it's hard for ground predators like foxes and stoats to get out to the islands and raid the nests, but as soon as migration starts we need to drop the levels and keep on gradually dropping…

We needed some rain.  Although we didn't get a deluge last night (less than 1 cm), it was enough to freshen up the reserve after more than three weeks with barely a drop.  At the start of last week, we started to pump water from the Deep Lagoon into the Shallow Lagoon. We're not aiming to fill it, simply to stop it from falling any further. The current levels are just about what we want if we are to provide a crucial…

Fiona Wynne, Stewardship Manager at The Crown Estate, offers an insight into a day in the life of a volunteer on site during the construction of The Lookout.

Huge thanks to the team at RSPB Conwy for letting us loose on The LookOut! The Crown Estate team had a fantastic day and didn’t want to leave.

Over the years we have been able to watch the reserve grow under the careful management of the team at Conwy.…

No, it's a crab spider!  We received an email from Richard Gallon at Cofnod, the North Wales Environmental Information Service this week, with this photograph he'd taken.  He was walking around the reserve last weekend, looking at the honey bees on some hemlock water dropwort.  One bee wasn't moving, and when he looked more closely, he realised that that it was rapidly becoming lunch for a spider!  In fact, the white…

It's been a couple of weeks since we last updated the photodiary of The LookOut, our eco-building near the Coffee Shop.  It's not that we haven't done anything, it's simply that we haven't had a chance to write a blog about it. And although we've managed the occasional tweet, it quickly became apparent that smartphones don't really like hands covered in clay. (And if you can operate one while wearing rubber gloves…

It's been a big week for young birds at the reserve.  Our great crested grebes, despite losing their first nesting attempt earlier in the spring, hatched on cue earlier this week, and our Guided Walk volunteers this morning confirmed that there are three stripy chicks riding aboard the backs of the parents.  A couple of days later, a brood of eight day-old shelducks were spotted on the estuary; although we're not sure…

Several weeks later than usual, the stoats have finally brought their young into the outside world.  Over the last couple of days, several adults and a couple of kits have been seen and photographed along the estuary.  There are more than a dozen bee orchids along that section of path too, so just because the tide is out, don't assume you won't see much down there!

This morning, three Sandwich terns were on the…

It's been another busy week at Conwy as we've been working hard to get all our visitor projects completed before the start of the summer holidays.  If you've visited us this week, thank you for your patience as we worked to complete the car park surfacing.  And thank you to the team from Brenig Construction who managed the project in a way that meant we didn't have to close during the works.  Next…

It's been a busy few weeks for the team, as we're working hard to complete everything by the end of July, in order to meet our funding deadlines.  So, here's a quick update on how everything is going:

Car park: you'll know that we made some considerable improvements to the car park last autumn, but we didn't have sufficient funding to resurface the whole area as we had hoped. Now, thanks to the support and…

I'm ready to be shouted down, but for nature, autumn has already arrived. Of course, birds don't see the seasons as we do, but most wildlife in the temperate northern hemisphere rears its young in the spring and early summer, and then they either moult their feathers or start their southbound migration.  If birds fail to breed for any reason, they'll start their migration sooner, and that's what we're seeing…