I’ve had some funny conversations over the past week or so. Birders in Wales often say how lucky I am living in Dorset because of the all the rarities and interesting species on offer. But a Dorset birder this afternoon said he’d give his left arm (not literally) to be in Wales watching Goshawks and Kites. Today was my first day back in Weymouth and was greeted to the sound of Chiffchaffs singing in the garden. The sound of Crossbills and siskin flying overhead were notable by their absence and Goshawks certainly weren’t on the cards.
Late morning a very excited Nick (the Radipole warden) came rushing into the office to tell us about Kingfishers which had been seen by a visiting birder to be excavating a nest hole near our Sand Martin bank! Not a bad thing to happen on your first day back at work after holidays!
Rubbish picture but it shows what’s going on!
I’ve been a bit slack since my last post so I need to catch up a little. If you remember a post a from the 16th March when I wrote about the wildlife value of coniferous woodland. I’ve since had a meeting with Blaenau Gwent Council, Forestry Commission and Coed Cymru regarding their plans for forestry in the area. It seem the Welsh Assembly Government are intending to try to revert large areas of commercial plantation back to its original habitats such as ancient woodland or peat bog. If this was to happen species which have featured heavily in this blog over the last week or two would suffer enormously. In particular our Long-eared Owl population which is purely dependant on pine woodland adjacent to open habitats. Good conversations were had and hopefully some goods come out of it.
I’ve also visited the forest of dean which is where I started my career with the RSPB. Didn’t get chance to see Peregrines at Symonds Yat but did see plenty of these.
A couple of these
And a few more Goshawk which you can clearly see flying over that green tree near to that bit of blue sky.
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