Last years inaugural Patchwork Challenge turned out to be an unprecedented success with birders around the country willing to fly the flag for their own regular haunts. For me the real delight was in the range of different habitats covered from world renowned nature reserves to small unknown localities, such Read more…
On Saturday we got our birding year off to a flying start with the traditional visit to our local WWT reserve near Llanelli. These first few weeks are always a doubly exciting time as when else can you go hunting for and ‘tick’ our commoner species such as Robin and Read more…
Every check of the news throughout Thursday brought an ever increasing sense of doom as it became clear that the west coast of Britain was to be hit by its highest tides in at least sixteen years. That sounded bad enough but with every new severe flood warning issued i.e. Read more…
Thursday night saw yet another huge Atlantic storm move in across Wales bringing with it gale force winds and more rain. Fortunately the latter didn’t persist into the next day but those winds most certainly did. Following an aborted attempt to walk down Bishopston valley (footpath extinguished apparently) we found Read more…
The closest we got to a white Christmas this year were several hail showers which although undeniably wintry could never make up for the real thing. Fortunately a glance northwards revealed the snow topped peaks of the Brecon Beacons so it’s not hard to guess where we ended up on Read more…
Christmas Eve Eve was, to put it mildly, a little on the windy side. Throughout the night a constant barrage of hail, sleet, rain and god knows what else found itself hurled against our bedroom window making me wonder what the morning would bring. Fortunately drawing back the curtains on Read more…
A brief sea-watch in extremely blustery conditions from the Bracelet Bay car park yesterday afternoon revealed little passage so it was left to the ever reliable Mediterranean Gulls to keep us occupied. Initially numbers were only just creeping into double figures until the arrival of a blue car caused another Read more…
My parents were down to visit this weekend (and to provide those all important Christmas presents of course) which meant an opportunity for our first full day out in a very long time. Perhaps foolishly I’d assured them I could almost guarantee Otters at Bosherston against which my Dad could Read more…
I gingerly climbed out of bed on Sunday morning and was more than pleasantly surprised to discover that not only did my legs still function, they didn’t even ache. A quick glance out of the window showed storm clouds hanging over Gower but with a promising forecast for the rest Read more…
Way back in January I drew up a list of certain things I’d like to achieve over the coming twelve months. Several of these were generic in nature and would most likely have appeared in your own new years resolutions as well, but others were very specific to me and Read more…