Blog by Kate Sullivan - Visitor Experience Manager

There’s been a lot happening at Lake Vyrnwy this summer. Whatever the weather, there’s always something to do at the reserve, whether walking the trails, exploring the sculpture park, bird watching in the hides, or having fun in the wild playground.

Back in July, we had a mighty meadows event, to celebrate International Meadows Day, where the public were…

Having spent 2016 in search of and finding all the 22 species of fern recorded on the reserve it was time a new one was discovered. In mid-May ferns were starting to unfurl and while checking nest boxes, a clump of fern for some reason caught my attention so I had to take a closer look. I immediately knew it was either hard or soft shield fern and almost assumed it was the hard variety due it being the one known on the…

Two dodgy characters around this last week, the first a very striking moth caught on Thursday night which had me scratching my head as it didn’t initially appear to match any moths in the book. It eventually dawned on me that it was in fact the common, widespread species that is the Hebrew character. This specimen lacks the typical forewing mark in the shape of the Hebrew letter Nun, hence the species name.

It has been a very eventful start to the ‘summer’ as I start a new reserve list from the 1^st April to 30^th September. Nothing came of the final week of ‘winter’, mainly due to the weather which was foggy and wet so ended on 90 species.

Given the 1^st of April was a Saturday I was able to spend the day searching for birds to add to my new list. It turned out to be a productive day with 49 species…

In the last week there has been a real burst of Spring with some glorious sunny weather over the weekend. Insects are constantly emerging during the warmer weather while trees and flowers are blossoming into life to feed the hungry insects.

White-tailed bumblebee feeding on willow by Gavin Chambers

An increase in insects is the perfect time for our summer migrants to start arriving and refuel, before moving further…

Often it can be very useful to read articles and ‘follow’ wildlife enthusiasts and experts to learn about new species that can be hard to find or be found in locations you don’t think of looking. So having seen a picture of some small fungi on sheeps horn on the Dumfries and Galloway Resources Centre facebook page (my home region) I thought I’d keep an eye out for it.

Onygena equine - Horn …

With February nearly over I’ve started to realise that I am running out of time to add more species to my winter list, which runs from the 1 October to 31 March. I last blogged about my list in mid-December when I had found a great grey shrike, my 80^th species. Since then new species have been hard to come by with January only bringing me a greenfinch, a small number are now hanging around the Coed y Capel hide…

It’s that time of year again when we start to see the first signs of Spring. Throughout February we have experienced fluctuations in temperatures which will have triggered some birds to start singing and setting up territories. Species such as raven and crossbill are well known for their early breeding. Raven have been seen paired up around the reserve as they show off their acrobatic skills, tumbling from the sky…

We are in the middle of Show the Love week, which kicked off on the 7 February, which is a campaign run by The Climate Coalition which the RSPB is a member of. The aim is to make everyone think about what we love about all the things that we could lose due to the impacts of climate change and let politicians know how we feel.

Here at Lake Vyrnwy we a running an event (details here) over the weekend to celebrate the Show…

With a flurry of snow and cold conditions over the last couple of weekends I decided to check out the Coed y Capel Hide by Artisans café to see what species would be forced to find an easy food supply. There were many birds already hanging around the feeders when I arrived to fill them up. I was then distracted by the distinctive call of a brambling up in the trees.

Once I’d filled up the feeders I decided to…

December has started off with some interesting sightings and some of the coldest days of the winter so far, though it has now warmed up again. During our monthly checks of rain gauges around the reserve on 1 December a great grey shrike was spotted distantly on top of small conifers along the moorland edge above the red trail. This is a typical spot for these shrike as it is close to open clearfell and open moorland with…

I finished the last blog asking what the first snow of the winter may bring. Well one of the answers is that it got warmer and quite considerably on 14 November with temperatures reaching around 13°C. This temperature remained into the evening which brought out many bats to feast on the flying insects that were also taking advantage of the milder weather. Using a handheld Thermal Imaging Scope it was clear just how many…

The most noticeable change over the last few weeks has been the influx of fieldfare to the reserve. One day there were a few about and then the next 1000+ were hurriedly scoffing rowan and hawthorn berries up and down the valleys around the lake. On the 23 October 773 fieldfare were counted over a 2 hour period, along with 149 redwing, flying across the moorland and down the Dinas Mawddwy road into the Eunant valley.…

The UK birding world has been all a twitter in the last few weeks with ‘megas’, firsts for Britain and 1000’s of migrants arriving from Siberia and Scandinavia. However, the majority of excitement occurs on the east coast where the birds first make landfall. Britain’s 4^th Eastern-crowned warbler was discovered at Bempton Cliffs RSPB along with a host of other rare/scarce migrants, but a black-browed…

The end of September saw the end of my ‘summer’ bird listing and the start of ‘winter’, which the cold mornings have certainly reminded us of what is to come. This has been my 4^th ‘summer’ (April – September­) at Lake Vyrnwy and in my previous 3 I had seen 107 species each time. However I have struggled this year and with a week to go I was only at 101 species.

Sun setting…

The Lake Vyrnwy reserve is around 10,100 hectares in size which makes the finding and recording of certain species rather difficult, needle in a haystack at times. Given the size, conducting comprehensive surveys of the whole site would be extremely time consuming and therefore surveys of specific habitats or areas are more realistic. The other method for recording species is Ad-hoc, which is basically coming across species…

In our recent RSPB magazine, Natures Home, it stated that 16,000 species have been found on RSPB reserves across the UK. It then breaks it down to the top 10 reserves and also the reserve with the most species of a certain taxonomic group (birds, dragonflies etc.). Lake Vyrnwy turns out to be the RSPB reserve with the most ferns, with 22 species, which I immediately saw as a challenge!

Given my limited knowledge of ferns…

In the last month we have enjoyed some nice warm sunny weather which has given the many invertebrates, from moths to hoverflies, a chance to emerge and not forgetting the midges! This has been great for the breeding birds as they relentlessly forage for food for their hungry chicks including the newly fledged pied wagtail chicks outside the volunteer accommodation.

Pied wagtail chicks waiting to be fed outside volunteer…

The prospect of a sunny Bank Holiday had me off to the top of the lake and a wander along the Green Trail to see what was around. Drop in to our shop and visitor centre to collect a trail guide to all our trails and find out the latest information before going out to explore the reserve.

My first sighting was of Tom, an ex-intern from a couple of years ago who had popped over for the day, which may have been the biggest…

The past week has been dominated by ffridd surveys. But what is ffridd? Well, ffridd is the Welsh name used to describe the habitat margin between the lowlands of good grazing and the moorland. It is generally slopes dominated with bracken with scattered trees and potentially scattered gorse and heather. Due to its nature of being the margin between two habitats it can be very variable and consist of different vegetation…

Remember the question I asked in my blog three weeks ago – Has Spring arrived? Well, if it had, we seem to have had summer and autumn in the last couple of weeks and already arrived back in winter! A couple more early mornings this week to look for grouse were cold and crisp with the weather turning dramatically on Wednesday morning while sitting on the moors at Tanrallt on the Mignient.

Telescope wasn’t needed…

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…

Wednesday (13 April) turned out to be a glorious day and lucky for some people. This year we are carrying out Common Bird Censuses (CBC’s) of all the broad-leaved woodland under our management, which totals around 170ha. The method requires 6 visits to each wood throughout the breeding season from mid-March to the end of June.

The view at the end of the woodland survey!

At this time of year the summer woodland…

It may be early April but there is still a touch of winter lingering on. April showers consist of hail and snow which isn’t much of a surprise given the temperatures, with the dam in full flow after a night of heavy rain.

Despite the cold, signs of Spring have certainly arrived with frogs spawn, daffodils and the first summer migrants starting to arrive. Swallow was surprisingly the first migrant back seen over…