Hello everyone, As I write this the country is under strict Government guidelines to try and prevent the spead of the Coronavrus and Covid-19, that includes all of us at the RSPB. Our reserves are now closed. We hope you are all staying safe and keeping well at home. Yet it is Spring and for nature lovers this is one of the most loveliest times of the year. If you can take a walk from home as your daily excercise have…

Treecreepers singing

“I can never remember the songs and calls” is what people often say when I’m talking about birds.

Make it personal, I say, like the visitor on a dawn chorus walk a few years ago, listening to a wood warbler: “That sounds like a washing machine I once had, on its spin cycle”.

 “I can’t pick out one from the other”. Don’t worry about it - it’s more important to be out there…

Of our five hides, Marian Mawr is the most accessible, and the most popular. Look North at this time of year and you might see barnacle geese feeding on the saltmarsh, or shelduck on the Dyfi. Look West to the freshwater pools, and you may see teal, redshank and little grebe. We want people to come here and be impressed with the wildlife spectacle – large numbers of ducks, waders and geese – but this is not always the…

This weekend (25th-27th January 2020) is the annual RSPB's Big Garden BirdWatch. Now in it's 41st year with over a million people taking part in it last year.

The Big Garden Bird Watch gives an annual snapshot of the birds in our gardens and community greenspaces, there has been some striking changes over the years. While sightings of blue titst have increased by 68% since the first Birdwatch back in 1979, starling…

Cold first real heavy frost this morning saw ice spreading out on the pools.

Highlights of recent days include the female smew on Marian Mawr.

Geylag geese from saltings, usual flocks of teal and wigeon, female merlin on the saltmarsh. Red kites and buzzards.

Sparrowhawk from the visitor centre and lesser spotted woodpecker in the woods behind the centre.

Stunning views across the reserve in the winter sunlight.

Mistle thrush song

The weather in January can make for a difficult month if you work outside a lot, and I have to make a real effort to find things that make me feel happy. When I arrive at the reserve in the mornings, I often hear a mistle thrush (MT) singing from the top of a huge Douglas fir in Cae’rberllan woods. For me, the MT’s song is not as clear or as varied as the song thrush’s, nor as tuneful and sweetly voiced…

Amazing views from Y Foel today.

Checking the ponies each week is a personal victory for me, a small victory in the whole scheme of things, but a victory nonetheless. When I was four years old I was bitten on the face by a horse, (I was also, in another incident, licked by a giraffe, but that is another story) and I have been scared of horses ever since (but I have always loved giraffes). Checking the 7 Welsh mountain…

This time of year most of the birding action is out on the estuary, our pools and the wet grassland and saltmarsh. Wrap up warm against the winds and a walk out to these areas can be a delight. So far this month visitors (and volunteers!) have been able to enjoy a variety of bitds including: flocks of wigeon and teal, lapwings, curlew, barncale geese, pintail, goosander, and osyster catchers. Other recent sightings i…

The last few days it has been good hightides at the reserve, and even better it has been dry and bright too.

We are still waiting for the return of the Greenland white fronted geese, it seems groups have been arriving in Coll and Western Scotland so it should not be too long before they arrive here.

In the meantime visitors hav ebeen enjoying flocks of redwing and fieldfares passing through just before the cold spell…

It has definitely been a week maninly full of rain but wrap up well and a walk out to the Ynys Feurig hide is entertaining visitors at the moment.

The water in the fields in front are attracting some nice sightings: shovelar (15), up to 40 pintail, 2 Freat Egreats have been around for well over a week now, a couple of ruff, cetti's warbler(2) water rail 1 and views of sparrowhawk and hen harrier.

Following the heavy…

During the last week, Neil, one of our Wardens, has been busy spending his evenings on part of the reserve known as Foel Fawr, the hillside inland of Ynys-hir viewed from the picnic benches

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Not only does this provide stunning views across the lower reserve and out to the sand dunes at Ynys-las of the pretty seaside village of Aberdyfi, it is an important part of the overall jigsaw mix of habitats at Ynys-hir. However…

It has been a busy Spring at RSPB Ynys-hir. Our interns are gone and the warden team are busy with surveys.

This year waders are a focus so early mornings out on teh estuary, slatmarsh and lowland wet grasslands.

Our regular volunteers have also been busy surveying the 300 plus nestboxes on the reserve.

Pied flycatchers, are back and very much in evidence along the route to Marian Mawr hide as well as along the woodland…

Spring time at Ynys-hir is very special. There are the breeding lapwings, the woodland birds in full song, sheets of bluebells and life abounds everywhere. For the staff who manage the reserve it is also a time of reflection. How well did our management work turn out? Will numbers of our key species increase? What can we do next winter to make things better?

Perhaps now is as good a time as any to look back on some of…

Middle of April is a time of year on the reserve when the migrants are heading back. In the last week we have had redstart in very small numbers, pied flycatcher and willow warbler. Still waiting for these to arrive in large numbers and for other species to put in an appearance such as sedge warbler and wood warbler. Other sightings these last few days include osprey, great white egret, little ringed plover and little…

During my internship at Ynys Hir, I was given the opportunity to set up and run my own project, and so, in collaboration with the Vincent Wildlife Trust, I set up a number of camera traps around the reserve. The goal of the project is to see whether pine martens have started using the reserve following the VWTs Pine Marten Recovery Project.

Between 2015 and 2017, a total of 51 pine martens were captured in Scotland,…

Winter is now in full swing at Ynys-hir, the woodlands are increasingly quiet but for the odd burst of activity from mixed flocks comprised of various tit and finch species, Lesser Redpoll, Siskins and the odd, elusive Brambling.

In contrast the wetlands are alive with activity, large numbers of wildfowl and waders have made their journey south from Northern Europe, the freezing temperatures there forcing them south for…

There are lots of challenges when it comes to managing lowland wet grassland, the biggest and most fundamental is control of water levels, if you get water control right then everything else becomes much easier. Waders that breed on wet grassland, in particular, Lapwings, require fields with short vegetation and shallow pools with exposed bare mud around the edges. Holding water in the fields through the breeding season…

After the long hot summer . . . It’s time to introduce our new  Interns at RSPB Ynys-hir.

Here at Ynys-hir we offer two 6-month  internships. A  internship catapults aspiring conservationists on to the front line of work undertaken by the RSPB. This can include anything from helping with bird surveys, to getting involved with large scale land management projects. Teaching and inspiring the next generation of wardens…

The end of the school  holidays signals a change in the Seasons.Most of the visiting summer migrants such as the redstarts and pied flycatchers have left to make their journeys south. Last week saw  the leaving of this season's Dyfi Osprey Chicks, one visitor was lucky enough to watch one of the 3 young catch a fish and devour it before heading south. Barnacle geese began arriving back  at the end of August and we have…

Naomi Davis, volunteer at RSPB Ynys-hir summarises how the nest box survey and other nests has gone this year...

Small nestbox monitoring comes to an end for another year. The late cold-snap pushed back the breeding dates of the blue and great tits to coincide with the pied flycatchers, normally the tits nest 2 weeks earlier, but didn’t appear to affect our later continental migrants too badly. Our woodlands of ancient…

We are just at the beginning of the best time to see our key woodland species, knowing a little bit about the habitats these birds use and their behaviour can be the key to getting to see them. Below I will go through some of the best places to spot one of our key species and how to give yourself the best chance of memorable encounter. Pied Flycatcher’s are the species a lot of people come to Ynys-hir wanting to see,…

Did you know, we have just over 300 nest boxes at Ynys-hir for our small birds? In the past few weeks we’ve been busy cleaning out all boxes and mending any problems before the birds start surveying for potential nest sites in the coming weeks. Raising a brood of chicks can leave a box looking (and smelling) pretty bad so we give the birds a helping hand by removing any old nest material from the previous year, this helps…

My intention was to write a blog all about the wonders of the Greenland White Fronted Goose, their journey from their breeding grounds on the low arctic tundra of Western Greenland to the Celtic fringes of Britain via southern Iceland. And trust me they are fascinating birds, like a lot of other goose species they are highly social, have a fascinating life cycle and are extremely site faithful. It is this last fact that…

Seasons have shifted and there any many changes to report on at Ynys-hir since the last blog. Firstly, August saw the welcoming of 3 interns for their 9 month posting; Darran, Philippa and Naomi. All will be working on site creating homes for nature and improving the experience for visitors.

Our recent conservation work has focussed on clearing large areas of bramble, holly, and rhododendron from our broadleaf woodland…

It's that time of year when the woods go fairly quiet for birds. Pied flycatchers have fledged and dispersed into the top canopy making them almost impossible to spot., and it's a similar story for the redstarts. Yet there is still plenty of wildlife to see. We are enjoying yet more sunny weather at the reserve which is great for butterflies, emerging dragonflies and damselflies,not to mention the reptiles such as grass…