A busy week for birds. Highlights include a female merlin, a female hen harrier, 300+ barnacle geese, c50 pintail, c300 wigeon, c300 teal, the first goldeneye of the autumn, 20 grey plovers, a ruff, two curlew sandpipers and three black tailed godwits. The best hide has been the new Ynys-Feurig hide, although the Saltings and Breakwater hides have been good too.

A trip out to the Saltings hide today  - excellent views of barnacle geese and about a hundred redwing flying over.

A quick look around the Saltings hide was well worth it with incredable views of barnacle geese. Overhead about a hundred redwings flew over, all heading westward-autumn has truely arrived!

There seems to be an incredable amount of fungi around this year. Yesterday in Coed Penrhyn-bach, a quiet corner of the reserve and there were loads, including a whole fallen birch trunk absolutely covered.

We have had some interesting visitors in the past couple of weeks worthy of note.

Jack Snipe, Glossy Ibis, Ruff, Black Tailed Godwits, about 30 Lapwings  and 150 Teal. Also recent sightings include Otters, Kingfisher Water Rail Spotted Crake and  Curlew.

So you can see there is a lot of winter interest here at present.

Also remember there are two events at Ynys-hir this weekend! 

Join Dave Anning on Sunday morning at…

Staff here at the reserve chose a beautiful day on Thursday 22nd August 2013 to do a WEBS count on the reserve.

A good number of waders were seen including 6 Wigeon, 277 Teal, 15 Goosander, 36 Little Egrets, 186 Oystercatchers, 21 Curlew, 29 Dunlin, 34 Cormorants and 14 Black-tailed Godwits.

Many of our spring migrants are still in evidence, including Redstart, Stonechat, Sedge Warbler, Lesser Redpoll, Reed Bunting…

I know a Blog is meant to be up to the minute information, however I thought it would be useful to have a brief summary of recent sightings here at the reserve.

Starting with our Lapwings, 54 nesting pairs this year, now dispersing around the lowland areas of the reserve.

In addition a week or so ago we were visited by a pair of Great White Egrets which stayed for a few days.

At present there is a rich diversity…

Some of Britain’s most spectacular flyers are also our most obscure: moths. Over 2,500 species of moth live in the UK, and over 30 of them have been seen at Ynys-hir over the past few days.

On Sunday we ran a moth trap event for visitors, and set one up again today for a group of 6^th formers visiting the reserve. Perhaps the most common night-time visitor was the Mottled Beauty, which comes in all sorts of patterns…

Imagine you are a ground nesting bird, looking for that safe, hidden nook to make your nest and raise your chicks. Would you tuck yourself away in some long grass or reeds, so no one could find you? Would you flee when a predator came, or would you defend your eggs?

Now imagine you’re three or four years old trying to think like a bird, and you’ll have an example of what education can look like at Ynys-hir. …

Fledged birds seem to be everywhere now and some birds are far easier to see than usual with redstart families feeding frantically throughout the woodlands. Great spotted woodpeckers have been bringing their young close to our bird feeder, a lesser spotted woodpecker was seen very close to our tractor shed and a green woodpecker (now very scarce here) has been heard waffling in the woodlands. A suprise yesterday was a great…

...you will be struck by how quiet it is. Most of our woodland birds seem to have fledged young and have disappeared into the canopy-very different from last week when birds seemed to be everywhere. However, craning ones neck to look up to the canopy does have it's advantages; I would have never seen this chicken of the woods fungus otherwise.

During the three weeks we have been host to BBC Springwatch we've been running four “Springwatch Tours” a day. These have proved to be very popular with our visitors, with over 900 participants in total.  Visitors met at the picnic tables looking out over stunning backdrop of our pools and one of the mountainous parts of the reserve, Y Foel. Here the tour guide (over 10 staff and volunteers took on this…

When Springwatch arrives the reserve is buzzing with excitment. But not all the jobs are that thrilling. Probably the worst is manning the overflow car park. In the first week I spent 14 hours standing there. As boredom sets in, one starts to think of ways of amuzing ones self.

This is where the car park challenge started. Within ten metres of the car park gate, how many species of bird could one see? As it turns out, quite…

With the Springwatch rush as well as the school half term, Ynys-hir has been buzzing through the past couple of weeks. As well as seeing the birds, the stars of Springwatch, visitors have had the opportunity to experience the range of different wildlife seen on the reserve. One of the events has been pond dipping, which has been proven to be very popular with children (and adults!).

The pond, on the edge of the woodland…

Ian Hayward is an old friend of Ynys-hir as he went to Aberystwyth University, which is just down the road from here. Last week he left his usual RSPB job at Wildlife Enquiries at the Lodge and headed back to West Wales to help us during Springwatch. This is his diary of two, rather hectic days...

I’m a big fan of springwatch and try to follow it every year, the shows from RSPB Ynys-hir over the last couple of years…

At last, a sunny day and with the sunshine has come the last of our regular summer migrants, spotted flycatchers. Cuckoos have been seen and heard on the reserve for the last few days and swifts have been screaming over the local villages for a fortnight now. Approaching the end of May, passage migration is slowly tailing off but out on the mud and sand from the Breakwater hide small flocks of waders are still feeding…

It was very pleasing to see the raised mire at Ynys-hir on the BBC Springwatch programme last night. The raised mire restoration project has been a long-term project on the reserve over the last 10 years and the project is at last coming to fruition. Prior to habitat restoration work, the area known as Covert Coch was an impenetrable mass of mature Rhododendron with Scots pine growing around the edges. Following funding…

Springwatch’s third year at Ynys-hir got off to a sunny start yesterday, with warm weather and plenty of ice creams all round. Twenty visitors got up bright and early for the Bird Ringing event, lead by Site Manager Dave Anning.

'The bird ringing event was a huge success,' said Dave, 'we caught 20 birds in our nets in the woods next to the Visitor Centre. Things started well with a nuthatch in the net…

After weeks of planning it is almost ready, the new look Ynys-hir visitor centre, new seating, soft lighting and a better range of snacks, it is the perfect place to relax after a hard days birding or for a quick break. Next week the last few finishing touches will be done. I personnally am already looking forward to taking a break in one of the new comfy chairs.

 

Excitement is mounting as the first live broadcast is due from the reserve next Monday evening. The BBC Production Village, on a neighbouring farm, has been completed and all the cables, cameras and associated technical equipment have been set up. Our tractor shed, cleared of reserve equipment, has been transformed back into the studio and all is ready for Monday evening. The BBC are covering a different part of the reserve…

It has been a strange spring so far, dry with cold easterly winds early in April, strong westerly winds last week and heavy rain over the last few days. With such changeable weather It suprises me how our breeding lapwing manage to cope. Driving along the reserve's tracks at the edge of the lowland wet grassland this morning I carefully scanned the fields where the lapwings are nesting (53 pairs this year). To my joy…

Despite the occasional sunny day spring has been rather slow to arrive here. The majority of our summer migrants are now in with lots of pied flycatchers, wood warblers and redstarts busy making a home for themselves in the woodlands. An occasional cuckoo call in the low temperatures reminds us that it is really spring although, at times, it feels more like autumn. Our lapwing and redshank are also a bit late this year…

The monthly co-ordinated wildfowl and wader count on the Dyfi was carried out at high-tide this morning. I covered the Ynys-hir RSPB reserve section whilst others counted the other three sections further down the estuary. The barnacle geese, all 321 of them, were feeding on the remaining grass not covered by the high-tide. Most of the waders were roosting on the flooded fields near the Breakwater hide with over 200 curlew…

Colder weather over the last few days has seen an increase in winter visitors to the reserve. Yesterday there was a strong passage of redwings through the reserve and the first goldeneye of the winter was on the Dyfi. 278 barnacle geese are feeding on the salt marsh and ten Greenland white-fronted geese were feeding on the lowland wet grassland with large numbers of Canada geese. Wader numbers on the lowland wet grassland…

Despite the sunny and warm weather a few winter visitors are already here. 63 barnacle geese have arrived on the salt marsh, some 3 weeks earlier than normal. Wigeon numbers have incresed to 400 and teal numbers are building up too with 600 counted yesterday. Some summer migrants like spotted flycatcher and blackcap are still here but most are moving on. A juvenile marsh harrier was hunting over the salt marsh today and…