It’s Autumn. The trees are changing colour and losing their leaves. The lush growth beside our trails has begun to die back and has been cut back to make room for next year’s early growth. The Hawthorns, Blackthorns and Dog roses are smothered in bright berries. Only a very few dragonflies and bees are flying, but the tiny midges are easily seen dancing in shafts of sunlight.
But that doesn’t mean that the reserve is settling down for a quiet winter. We find something exciting nearly every day. The female Kingfisher is back on the branches overhanging the café scrape and catching sticklebacks after spending the summer away from us (presumably somewhere with banks with nesting holes). Starlings are returning to the fields around us and beginning to roost in the reedbeds. Overwintering duck and wader numbers are beginning to build. And the staff and volunteers have been to the depths of their wardrobes to find their warm, waterproof clothing ready for the winter weather.
Hoopoes have a history of turning up on the Gwent Levels every few years and causing a stir amongst the local bird watchers. They usually turn up in private gardens and spend a few days picking over the lawns. But, on 10 October one was spotted and photographed in flight on the reserve. Later that day it was tracked down and photographed on Hawthorns alongside one of the trails.
These distinctive birds are scarce migrants in Britain. Their appearance is unmistakable with a fine, downwardly curved bill, matching crest, sandy coloured head and shoulders with black and white banded wings. They are seen most often in November and April. For Britain, records show that they are seen in ones and twos throughout the year and across the whole country (there are records from Orkney and Shetland). The nearest record in Aderyn is a few miles away and from 2009.
They are common in Europe and Asia. If you want a good chance of seeing one, a birding trip to Portugal might be a good idea.
Image credit: Ieuan Evans
Winter is usually thought of as a rather dull and not very colourful season (if you overlook Christmas cards with holly berries and robins). Our Autumn arrivals often turn up in the very non-descript colours of eclipse plumage in which males look confusingly like females. This plumage doesn’t last long, and the males soon regain their familiar colours.
We had the pleasure of the company of a group of 4 Teal on the café scrape for a few weeks and we enjoyed watching the males regain their boldly patterned plumage.
Keep an eye out for several arrivals: Teal, Shoveler, Wigeon, Gadwall, Pochard and Pintail. Teal are obviously smaller than our other ducks even with only a brief glance. Shovelers have a remarkably broad, flat bill. Wigeon have a unique whistling call and are easily identified at a distance. Some happily come onto our lagoons and (a visual treat) onto the café scrape and they can all be seen at the water’s edge on the estuary.
Image credit: Ieuan Evans - Eclipse plumage
Image credit: Andy Hay - Usual plumage (male)
Kew Gardens tells us that there are around 15,000 species of fungi in Britain.
The smallest we’ve seen is the Frosty Bonnet which grows to just a few millimetres (the fruiting body here is 5mm tall). Slightly larger is the Angel’s Bonnet at 1cm. Their size probably accounts for these being our first recorded sightings of these species despite the fungi being only a few metres away from the visitor centre’s front door.
The Shaggy Inkcap is easier to see and more of a stereotypical toadstool – tall stalk and conical cap which opens up to become wide and flat exposing the black gills. It gets its name from the cap with has a flaky surface (hence “shaggy”) and which breaks down into a black liquid containing the spores (the breakdown is a phenomenon called “autodigestion”).
It’s worth remembering that what we see (and what our photos show) are a small part of each fungus. The visible parts are the fruiting bodies. The rest of each fungus, and by far the most extensive part, is the mesh of mycelia out if sight in the soil or in dead or decaying material. Another interesting fact is that fungi are the principal decomposers in our ecosystems and thus vital to life on earth.
You can also find colourful fungi around the site. The final photo is a young fungal fruiting body emerging from a split in one of the benches on the coast path. I’m not sure what its name is.
Image credit: Jeremy White - Angels Bonnet
Image credit: Jeremy White - Frosty Bonnet
One of the most common questions that we’re asked by visitors is how and where they can see Bearded Reedlings (or Bearded Tits as they were formerly known). The honest answer is that they can and do appear almost anywhere in the reedbeds and that means they are out of sight most of the time. A more practical answer is that we get most reports of them from within about 100m of the lighthouse (although we often wonder if that’s only because the lighthouse is where we send most people). The birds spend most of their time just above water level, so you’ll need a vantage point with a view of the bottom of the reed stems and the bouncy bridge is a good starting point. Another worthwhile tactic is to wait by a path through the reeds and hope to see them flying across the open path. And you’ll need good hearing as your first, and probably only, indication that they’re nearby is their pinging call and a faint movement of the reeds’ seed heads.
We’ve had several sightings each week during September and October. I’ve seen seven birds fly across the bouncy bridge having first heard them and then actually seen them at about 09:15 one morning. I noticed them again a couple of weeks later from the sea wall path at the western (Uskmouth) end of the reserve – I estimated about half a dozen birds from the loud pinging and the movements of the reeds (although I wasn’t in any position to see them this time).
Only the very patient and the very lucky get a good view of these birds.
We often wonder why our Bittern’s breeding success over the past three years hasn’t left us knee deep in Bitterns. Each spring we watch two pairs flying round the reserve as they move round their hunting locations. Each summer we’ve seen youngsters flying round. But the next year we seem to start again with the same number of breeding birds. Do they migrate for the winter? Do the young birds disperse locally or further afield? We don’t have much evidence.
As a species we know that Bitterns can and do migrate for the winter, but this is a generality and not necessarily what ours do. We have some evidence of dispersal as we have photos of Bitterns from Goldcliff Lagoons and from the wet meadows so we may be seeing some local dispersal. But this is still a mystery which our local birdwatchers may be able to shed more light on.
Image credit: Jeremy White
If you’re the first to walk onto the reserve and go quietly and carefully, there’s a good chance that you’ve be able to watch a Green woodpecker feeding on the ground without disturbing it and seeing no more than its rump disappearing into the distance.
The like the shorter vegetation around the visitor centre and alongside our trails
Garden spider, Splay-legged harvestman spider, Barn owl, Bearded reedling, Bittern, Blackbird, Blackcap, Black-headed gull, Black-tailed godwit, Blue tit, Bullfinch, Buzzard, Canada goose, Carrion crow, Cetti's warbler, Chaffinch, Chiffchaff, Collared dove, Coot, Cormorant, Curlew, Dunlin, Dunnock, Firecrest, Gadwall, Goldcrest, Goldfinch, Great crested grebe, Great spotted woodpecker, Great tit, Great white egret, Green woodpecker, Greenfinch, Grey heron, Herring gull, Hoopoe, House sparrow, Jackdaw, Jay, Kestrel, Kingfisher, Lapwing, Lesser black-backed gull, Lesser redpoll, Linnet, Little egret, Little grebe, Long-tailed tit, Magpie, Mallard, Marsh harrier, Meadow pipit, Merlin, Mistle thrush, Moorhen, Mute swan, Oystercatcher, Peregrine falcon, Pheasant, Pied wagtail, Pintail, Raven, Red kite, Redwing, Reed bunting, Reed warbler, Robin, Sedge warbler, Shelduck, Siskin, Skylark, Snipe, Sparrowhawk, Starling, Stonechat, Swallow, Teal, Treecreeper, Water rail, Wigeon, Woodpigeon, Wren, Frosty bonnet, Shaggy ink cap fungus, Common carder bumblebee, Brown argus butterfly, Peacock butterfly, Red admiral butterfly, Small copper butterfly, Speckled wood butterfly, Common Darter Dragonfly, Emperor dragonfly, Migrant hawker dragonfly, Ruddy darter dragonfly, Marmalade hoverfly, Barred sallow moth, Brindled green moth, Figure of eight moth, Green brindled crescent moth, Green-banded crescent moth, L-album wainscot moth, Large wainscot moth, Pine carpet moth, Pink-barred sallow moth, Red line quaker moth, Sallow moth, Satellite moth, Vestal moth, Fox, Grey squirrel, Otter, Stoat, Weasel, Grass snake