Author: Jeremy Moore

Recently described as "Wales' leading environmental photographer"; based near Aberystwyth, and specialising in Welsh landscape and wildlife. He has published the Wild Wales / Cymru Wyllt range of postcards since 1987. His most recent book was "Wales at Waters Edge" (with Jon Gower) published in May 2012. The National Library of Wales has a large number of his prints in its Collection. His exhibition "Bird/land" was shown at Aberystwyth Arts Centre from June until August 2016. It originally received support from the Arts Council of Wales.

Campare and contrast.

_{Visitor display at the Urdaibai Visitor Centre}

There’s no doubt that a highlight of my visit to the Basque country was San Juan Gaztelugatxe on the coast near Bermeo (see previous post) . But there were others too. We planned to do a “compare and contrast” exercise between the Dyfi Biosphere and the Urdaibai Biosphere as the areas are superficially similar. Both sit within regions using a minority language. Each is based on a single river catchment and each has a core area where wildlife is strictly protected. For Machynlleth – a town of about 2200 people in a very rural area of mid-Wales – think Gernika, with its population of 16,000, in the still rural but more highly developed Basque country. For the downmarket holiday resort of Borth in Ceredigion, think Bermeo, once the centre of a thriving whaling industry, now thankfully part of the town’s history. For the Dyfi estuary think the estuary of the Oka. The obviously very well funded Urdaibai is in startling contrast to the Dyfi, with two part-time members of staff, surviving on a shoestring and with its future very much in doubt. So there are similarities but the small scale and perceived lack of importance of one contrasts strongly with the other.

Each has a visitor centre in its core area and the fate of the two couldn’t be more different. In Wales, Ynyslas Visitor Centre near the mouth of the Dyfi was closed last year by its operator, Natural Resources Wales, in very controversial circumstances. It had been open in several different guises for at least 46 years and been steadily developed over that time; I worked there in 1978 when I first moved to Wales. Meanwhile the “Bird Centre” in the Urdaibai was opened in 2012, and is a startlingly modern (high-tech even) facility with large picture windows overlooking lagoons created in the wetlands. It is equipped with telescopes so that staff and visitors can study the estuary’s wildlife.

And what is more, you can stay there! The bedrooms are modern and comfortable and at breakfast time you emerge into the “guest lounge” reserved for overnight visitors. It is on the top floor and has a wonderful view of the estuary. Telescopes are available and every table has a pair of binoculars for each guest. What a lovely touch! A delicious buffet meal is laid out and you just help yourself. You can eat your fill over a leisurely breakfast and watch birds at the same time. The highlight for me was a black-winged kite, (a distant view only, admittedly), seen as I tucked in to toast, croissants, fruit and coffee. Talk about a breakfast with a view!

Edit: The top photograph lists Biospheres throughout the world but for some reason omits the Dyfi!

For more information about the Urdaibai Biosphere and the Bird Centre see the following –

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urdaibai_estuary

https://www.birdcenter.org/en

To read more Tales from Wild Wales as they are published, please click on the Follow button

As seen in the Game of Thrones (apparently)….

My partner Jane works at the Dyfi Biosphere reserve in Machynlleth, which has links to the Urdaibai Biosphere near Bilbao, in the Basque Country. So we decided to have a short holiday there in September. We’re both keen on train travel and it was a chance for me to use the Interrail pass which I had bought last December and which expired this month. So we took the sleeper train to Bayonne in France and then onward to Hendaye on the Spanish border. From there we transferred onto the narrow gauge (but electrified) line towards Bilbao. I can’t say I would recommend the latter. It took three hours and stopped at fifty-one stations! At each one the doors slid open and clanged shut, with numerous accompanying beeps. Think a three hour journey on the Tube and you’ve just about got it. But arrive we did, eventually. There is a very good network of local trains and buses in the Bilbao area so we used public transport exclusively while were there.

I knew little about the Basque Country before leaving and even less about the language. It’s fair to say that the distribution of letters in a Basque edition of Scrabble would be very different to the UK version……. X, Z and K would only score one point each, for starters! It is hilly and heavily wooded country with a dramatic coastline. One of the most well-known features of the latter is the islet of Gaztelugatxe – complete with a chapel dedicated to San Juan on its summit – linked to the mainland by a stone bridge. It is considered to be a pilgrimage site, and has always been a popular destination for visitors. It was used as a location in The Game of Thrones, and now, at busy periods, you need to book a ticket online before visiting. And there can still be queues. I knew nothing about this, of course, and was disappointed to discover that no passes were available for the day that I could visit. It took me a while to discover that in late September there were no longer any restrictions. Lucky me!

My visit started with a bus journey from Bermeo (the nearest town) well before dawn on a showery morning. It was still dark when the bus left me at the side of the road above the island. By the time I had reached the coastline it was light but no sun lit the island. A passing break in the clouds allowed a few sunbeams to hit the chapel but the camera was still in my bag. I then discovered that I had left my polariser in the hotel. This was becoming a habit!

However, when I got to the bridge and looked along the coastline things started took a turn for the better. Talk about moody! Stormy skies, rock stacks, skerries with white water breaking over them, and rain showers passing across the landscape. I decided that long exposures using a neutral density filter would make the best of the conditions. Without a tripod I had to brace the camera carefully against a stone wall and rely on the image stabilisation for which Olympus kit is renowned. I took a series of exposures in the region of 1.6 to 4 seconds long and hoped for the best. Short breaks in the cloud even allowed the sun to illuminate the most prominent stack, leaving everything else in shadow. All my extremities were crossed at this moment! And the islet with its chapel was illuminated for short periods of time too.

I spent hours processing some of these photographs on my return home to the UK. Most of the long exposures needed some serious sharpening, but taking into consideration how long they actually were, that’s not surprising. Without the latest technology they would have been virtually impossible (without a tripod), say, ten years ago. Thank goodness I had arrived early because by mid-morning the area was thronged by visitors. And thank goodness it hadn’t been a blue sky day!

To read more Tales from Wild Wales as they are published, please click the Follow button.

My fifteen minutes of fame.

I wonder if most landscape/outdoor photographers are as solitary as this one? I suspect not. But if I’m not out in the landscape with my camera or binoculars I can usually be found sitting at my desk watching cat videos on Youtube or scrolling though Facebook er….. sorry……. er ……..processing images and running my business. Rarely does the phone ring or an exciting proposal arrive by email. I’m not naturally gregarious and promoting my work comes pretty low down on my list of priorities these days. But an unexpected opportunity came my way last weekend.

I was attending “The Eye” photography festival at Aberystwyth Arts Centre.. It is devoted to documentary photography and photo-journalism and its organiser – Glenn Edwards – has been able to bring some of the biggest names in the genre to little old Aberystwyth over the years. While these are not my specialities I do appreciate good photography of all types and I have always found it a stimulating event.

During the first lecture I noticed that my friend Will Troughton was in the audience. He is the photography curator at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth and has always been a supporter of my work. So I went over to have a chat, during which he told me that one of the afternoon events was a visit to the Library. He had selected some prints from its huge Photography Collection (almost a million prints altogether) for attendees to browse through. As well as work from some of the greats of 19th Century photography, he had also chosen some more contemporary work including some of mine. So alongside Carleton Watkins prints of the nineteenth-century American West, and a set of prints of Native Americans from the same era by Edward Sherriff Curtis, was a selection from my exhibition Bird/land (click here to visit my website).

As it happened I had a one-off copy of the Bird/land book with me, so I offered to come down to the Library with him. While I hadn’t prepared a presentation I was introduced as the photographer and it gave me the opportunity to talk about Bird/land with some knowledgeable and interested photographers. I also had a copy of another one-off book with me – the result of a very long term project variously known as ‘my black-and-white project’, the ‘Fay Godwin project ‘, or, most definitively, ‘A Sideways Glance‘ (click here to visit my website.) The two books are so different in style and subject matter that it must seem difficult to believe that the same photographer could have produced both. But I am living evidence that he did! Both books provoked a great deal of interest and some good feedback.

This was a real boost to my confidence. Back at the Arts Centre I collared Glenn Edwards and showed them to him as well. The documentary style of A Sideways Glance was more to his liking, I suspect, and he looked through it very carefully, finally giving me very positive feedback. A few years ago I had hoped that he might give me a slot at “The Eye” but I think his intention has always been to bring photographic excellence to Aberystwyth, rather than showcase local photographers.

The following morning one of the other photographers asked me if it was possible to buy a copy of Bird/land, and I had to explain it was a one-off, and therefore quite expensive. But we agreed on a price and I’m just about to send it off to him down in Pembrokeshire.

As for me, until the weather improves, it’s back to the cat videos!

If you are interested in buying a copy of Bird/land, please let me know. It is in hardback, 28 x 28 cm in size with 20 double-page spreads, on very thick paper in “lay-flat” style. It contains a total of 117 images mostly in the form tryptichs. The price would be £95 including postage.

NB. Sadly it looks like this will have been the final “Eye” in Aberystwyth due to declining attendances. It was good while it lasted!

To receive more Tales from Wild Wales as they are published, please click the Follow button.

Some reflections on my Pembrokeshire trip.

After a session trying to photograph St Davids Cathedral (click to read), I decided to go for a coffee. It was while I drank it that I had a brain wave. Why not take a wildlife cruise out from St Justinians later in the day? Conditions seemed perfect. So I compared the options available from the various boat operators in St Davids and chose a ninety minute “evening shearwater cruise” leaving at 6.30 p.m. I was so sure I would have some great photographic opportunities from the boat that I slouched around the St. Davids area for most of the day. I suppose some measure of complacency had crept in.

Come 6.30pm I boarded the boat. It was a RIB with fixed seats and once seated the punters were expected to stay in place. The boatman told us that “every seat is a front row seat”. The company owner was on board with four of her friends; needless to say they had the best seats – at the front. We were then informed that – actually – there were very few shearwaters around at the moment. Once underway we did a clockwise half-circuit of Ramsey Island: this meant that those in the seats on the starboard (right-hand) side of the boat (and the front…..) had uninterrupted views of the few seals in the caves and coves. I was on the port side – and it was very frustrating. Then we headed a couple of miles offshore to search for shearwaters, and there were a few, but all very distant. It also occurred to me that there were hardly ANY seabirds around at all. I should have known better than to book a wildlife cruise at the end of August when most of the seabirds would have left the cliffs several weeks earlier.

But the boat company should have warned potential passengers that this would be the case. Falcon Boats was the culprit in this instance but I’m sure they all do it. I’ll certainly be far more careful before going out on a tourist boat again.

I recounted in this post how I managed to get some good photographs of an osprey from the Curlew hide at the Teifi Marshes on the journey down. There were other photographers in the hide and a few visitors popped in and out. The “locals” engaged in conversations with each other over the heads of other people in the hide. On the way back I called in there again and inside was another bunch of local photographers in there. They talked very loudly to each other about some incident in a car park that one of them had experienced. It was as if they owned the place. How must other people in the hide have felt about this? It was so rude. I left suddenly and shut the door after me. I wished I had slammed it harder to make my feelings known.

The problem with the Teifi Marshes is that access to the hides is via a multi-use path from Cardigan to Cilgerran that is frequently used by non-birders, including families with small children and dogs. In fact, judging by some of the vehicles I have seen in the car park, the path is also popular with commercial dog-walking and child-minding operators. Some of these people have no idea of how to behave in a hide. Several years ago one of the latter, complete with toddlers and a pram, crammed themselves into one of the hides and began chattering away to her friend. I asked her to keep the noise down and was met with a mouthful of the foulest language you can imagine.

Hide etiquette can be tricky. I’ve often enjoyed conversations with fellow birders in hides and the exchange of information there can be useful. I’m happy to help less experienced visitors with bird ID as well. Sometimes a position in the front row of a hide is a very valuable asset and the photographer is reluctant to give it away. I’ve done it myself – at the Snettisham wader roost, for example. My thinking went something like this: “I got up really early, walked two miles to get here, waited for my turn and I’m damn well going to take my time.” But there is no excuse for the rudeness I experienced that day in Cardigan.

Well, I know this post has been a bit of a moan. We all like a moan sometimes but sometimes there are good grounds for it. Just don’t get me started on the dog-owners who don’t control their pets while out in the landscape!

To read more Tales from Wild Wales as they are published, please click the Follow button.

Watching me, watching you.

Following a successful and worthwhile visit to the Teifi Marshes, culminating in a stunning photograph of an osprey carrying a fish (click to view) , I continued towards St Davids. One of my very best postcard customers has a shop there and I had been asked to do some more designs of the area. I have to consciously think “postcard” when this is the objective. I suppose I expect other people to have the same visual sense as I do. It was a sunny day with little cloud and a rather dusty atmosphere – not surprising considering all the dry weather we have had this summer. Long distance visibility was not great.

And I couldn’t find my polarising filter. I had “mislaid” (not quite officially “lost”) my first choice polariser and could mentally picture my spare sitting on the desk at home. I don’t use one for bird photography but find it indispensible for landscapes. Without it, what would I actually do on this trip? I decided to concentrate on the area around the Cathedral and Bishops Palace, both situated in the shallow valley of the River Alun, west of the main built up area. I was on the edge of the woodland overlooking the Bishops Palace when I happened to glance upwards – and there was a fox calmly looking down on me as I went about my business.

*_{First sight of the fox (ISO 1600, 1/13 sec at f4)}*

The only lens I had with me (a 12-100 mm zoom) was long enough. I had time to adjust various settings for optimal quality, but I was grateful for the image stabilisation built in to the lens. By this time light levels were rather low.

Eventually the fox carried on its way. I quietly followed it on a parallel path and then, reaching a track, went upwards. The fox re-appeared from the vegetation and looked at me silently again. I took another burst of images, including the main photo above. I’m going to have to admit here that there was some extraneous and out-of-focus vegetation around the animal but I found it was easy enough to remove it using Lightroom’s AI Removal tool. (Almost too easy, really: where will it end?) None of these images would win the Wildlife Photographer of the Year for that reason , but I’m contented enough. What do you think?

*_{Would this make a good postcard, I wonder?}*

I had a fitful night’s sleep, waking about 4 a.m. and frantically ransacking the van again for my polariser, but to no avail. Come the morning I looked through my bag again and there was the polariser. It was just sitting there in one of the pockets. How could I have missed it?? So it was over to the Cathedral with a spring in my step. As well as being a crucial photographic tool for me I think it must also be a comfort blanket. The Cathedral has surely been photographed a million times and it was difficult to envisage anything different, especially with a postcard in mind. I spent a while around the Cathedral grounds trying to find something new but I’m not sure I succeeded.

To read more Tales from Wild Wales as they are published, please click the Follow button.

Oh the irony of it.

I’m a fairly regular visitor to the Teifi Marshes, at Cardigan, which has a selection of easily accessible hides allowing excellent views of interesting birds at close quarters. It must be one of the best places in the UK to photograph water rails, for example (see this post), and kingfisher. It is about fifty miles away from home, and I tend to visit the reserve if I am on my way down to Pembrokeshire for some reason. What I usually do is leave home the previous evening and sleep in the van, meaning that an early morning visit is easy. For a number of years I had a favourite park-up, about a mile away, in a very wide and deep farm gateway, where I had never seen any farming activity.

One such visit was late last winter. It was a cold and frosty night and I woke early to find the van enveloped in thick valley fog. I opened the rear doors to see a group of white ponies standing the other side of the gate in a white-out. It really was magical. I put the kettle on and began making my breakfast. Then I heard a vehicle arrive next to mine and its door opening. “Oi…. you can’t park there ….it’s private property!” came a voice (or words to that effect) . It was the farmer, coming to feed his animals. I hurriedly threw on some clothes and apologised profusely, switching off the kettle and moving into the driver’s seat. Turning the ignition key there was a click, and then silence. The battery had died overnight. I was so embarrassed! To his credit the farmer could see that I was harmless and was in an impossible situation. He easily carried his bales of hay the few extra yards from his trailer to the gate, and was away. I called the breakdown service and settled down to a long wait and a leisurely breakfast. I wouldn’t be visiting the Marshes that morning…….

Since then I’ve found another park-up not far away and have spent a few nights there. One such was last week, and I arrived at the reserve about 7 o’clock on Thursday morning; the tide was high, the river full and the hide overlooking the (tidal) creek seemed to be a good place to start. I spent some time there and saw a very good selection of species – kingfisher, water rail, greenshank, and curlew among others. The problem for the photographer is that both the Creek and Kingfisher hides face east; the light can be very difficult at both until at least mid-morning. Nevertheless I did manage some close-up images of a kingfisher from the latter; I also watched a water rail there fly to the island, and then swim back to the main reedbed a few minutes later! Returning to the Creek hide I photographed a small wader creeping around at the water’s edge. Although the photograph is nothing to write home about it was good enough to identify the bird as a green sandpiper.

It had been reported earlier in the week that three different ospreys had been seen fishing on the Teifi river alongside the marshes. They had been identified by the colour rings fitted to their legs as nestlings. One was unringed, another had been ringed in Germany and the third in Scotland. I returned to the Curlew hide on the river-bank in the hope that one would turn up. And turn up it did! Another photographer was droning away about all the birds he’d seen and where, when I noticed the gulls on the river had all flown and scattered. There was obviously “something about”. And sure enough, an osprey appeared over the river and, at its first attempt, proceeded to catch a fish right in front of the hide! During the minute it took the bird to gain enough height to fly away I was able to get a sequence of images of it with its prey. They weren’t all sharp but by judicious use of the denoise, selection and sharpening tools in Lightroom (and even a tweak in Topaz Photo AI) I was able to get several I am very pleased with.

I’m not sure if ironic is the correct word to use here but I chose the main photograph from the sequence because of the fish’s position. I doubt if the poor creature appreciated how this single split second (one four-thousandth to be exact) during its final moments of life in the osprey’s talons gave this meticulous photographer the most creative satisfaction.

NB. I’ve just cropped the main photo to enlarge the bird.

To read more Tales from Wild Wales as they are published please click the Follow button.

Into the ice cave……

Earlier in the year in a post about willow/marsh tits I happened to mention that I had been in the Swiss Alps during March. How did that come about? Well, if I had had a bucket list it would have contained two must-do’s ; revisit Venice and travel across the Alps by train on the route of the Bernina Express. Using the indispensible “Man in Seat 61” website* I discovered that I could do both on one trip – travel out to Venice on a sleeper train, and back over the Alps via the Bernina Express. Talk about killing two birds with one stone!

I had four days in Venice followed by three elsewhere on “The Lagoon”, and then made my way to the Swiss border for the start of the scenic route. And scenic it certainly was, but not in the way I was expecting. For most of the three days I was in and around the Alps the cloud was well below mountain top level and fine snow fell almost continuously. Think hill fog and drizzle at 6000 feet altitude and temperatures around zero. While in some ways this was disappointing, it was very atmospheric.

I stayed in Pontresina, a resort not far from St Moritz. Winter sports are very big there, as you can imagine, particularly cross-country ski-ing. There is a network of XC trails which are apparently swept every morning to make sure conditions are just-so for the skiers. Walkers are also well catered for; there are two low level, easily do-able (even in complete snow cover) walks from Pontresina; one up Val Roseg to a mountain hotel famous for its cakes (I had cheesecake) ; the other involving a short train ride then an uphill walk towards the ice-cave at the mouth of the Morteratsch Glacier. I say ‘towards’ because the first section is easy enough but then you need to go off-piste, upwards and cross-country. I doubted whether I would be capable of it. For one thing my walking boots were completely unsuitable for deep snow. I decided to go for it anyway and see what might happen.

*_{My Swiss friend inside the ice cave}*

Shortly after leaving the railway station I fell in with another man who was going my way. He was from a town not far away, a proper mountaineer and a photographer to boot, and kitted out for the occasion with camera bag, tripod, heavy duty footwear and XC skis. He was heading for the glacier. We talked photography and landscape non-stop and in what seemed like no time at all had arrived at the end of the marked trail. Here he persuaded me – in the nicest possible way – to accompany him to the ice cave. I couldn’t say no! So he jammed his skis into the snow, left them there, and we set off. When progress got more difficult he loaned me his walking poles, and even carried my camera bag for me in the trickiest sections. How kind of him!

I can’t say it was easy even with his help, in some places wading through deep drifts of soft snow overlying boulder scree, but we did eventually arrive. At that point we did our own thing, he with his heavyweight full frame Nikon gear including a clutch of prime lenses and me with my puny (but effective) micro 4/3rds set-up. A guided walking group arrived before we left and they formed a nice contrast to the primeval scenes within the cave. I found myself particularly visually drawn to a ribbed ice formation just outside the cave entrance, which allowed some nice abstract images..

It was soon time to leave as I had a train to catch – the first stage in my journey home. I slithered and slid down to the trail where we parted ways again. He had been so patient with me! We said our goodbyes, he fitted his skis and was soon whizzing away downhill. I walked quickly back to the station and ….. surprise, surprise ….. there was a restaurant with a fine selection of cakes! Earl Grey tea and a slice of apricot tart for me please!

* NB : For anyone considering long distance rail travel to or in Europe or elsewhere I cannot recommend The Man in Seat 61 website highly enough.

www.seat61.com

To read more Tales from Wild Wales as they are published, please click the Follow button.

Immaculate birds, constant activity and plenty of noise!

I might be a raptor nut but I love terns too. Wales is a bit of a “tern desert” and with one exception (little terns near Prestatyn) one must visit Anglesey to connect with them. Cemlyn Bay on the north coast is the Welsh tern H.Q. with its large sandwich tern colony, alongside smaller numbers of arctics and commons. On a good day one might see a roseate as well. I can confidently say that a visit to Cemlyn is one of the finest wildlife experiences in Wales. But your timing needs to be carefully judged.

The ideal time is just after the tern chicks have fledged because their parents then guide them to the shingle spit which divides the lagoon from the sea, away from the chaos of the nesting islands. But leave it too late and the whole damn lot of them will have left altogether! Last year I arrived on July 23rd to find that most had already gone, whereas in 2020, August 1st was just perfect.

This year I discovered that the North Wales Wildlife Trust helpfully posts updates on the progress of the colony on its website. It suggested that a visit sooner rather than later would be advisable. So I headed north late on July 12th. The following morning I was there bright and early for the full tern colony experience. Immaculate birds, constant activity, and plenty of noise! Despite nearly 50 years of birding experience I have never totally got to grips with the differences between arctic and common terns. Many birders refer to them as “comics” because they are so difficult to separate. However after this visit I think I’m getting there! Sandwich terns are comparatively easy, and I have so rarely come across roseates that identifying one would be a real adventure (but see this post…..).

*_{^{Roseate tern (r.) with three sandwich terns. Note its long black bill and long-ish red legs..}}*

As it happened I picked up my first roseate quite quickly. It was visible on and off on the near edge of the main nesting island during the morning, and around lunchtime there were two together. I was able to get a few (rather poor) photographs of them. One of the tern wardens arrived soon afterwards and I was able to point them out to him. How about that for confidence! But as he had been seeing them throughout the breeding season he wasn’t too excited. He told me that one pair had attempted to breed early on but had failed, while he was still hoping that another pair would soon appear from the denser vegetation on the island with a youngster.*

For some time prior to that I was in “spray and pray” (or point and hope) mode. In other words: point your camera at a bird in flight, press the shutter button and try to follow it. This seems to me to be rather a technical task more dependent on luck than anything else, and I find it rather unsatisfying.

What I found more challenging was to place the terns within the landscape to give them some kind of context. At low tide, during the middle of the day, many roosted on the beach or on rocky outcrops along the foreshore. One could thus place them within an unspoiled landscape, suggesting that all is well with the world, which is perfectly valid. Alternatively, shooting from a different angle, one could set them against the massive hulk of Wylfa nuclear power station , now disused, only a couple of miles away. The viewer can then make up their own mind about the state of the world.

As I mentioned this was during the middle of the day when the sun was at its highest. This is never a good time to take photographs of anything in summer so one does one’s best to compensate for it at the processing stage. Some of the newer features in Lightroom are excellent for this – in particular the ease with which “objects” can be selected and processed individually without affecting the rest of the image. And “denoise” is excellent, although rather slow on my PC.

Another thing I noticed very clearly was how the apparent colour of the power station changed during the course of the day. Its colour scheme at breakfast time matches the colour of the lichen covered rocks on the foreshore very well, and it would be uncanny if this had not been part of its design. I included a photograph illustrating this in my book “Wales at Waters Edge”; I wonder if anyone noticed….? But by early afternoon the plant was naturally bathed in blue light and looked quite different. To put it more technically, the colour of sunlight is towards the blue end of the colour spectrum (“cooler”) during the middle of the day, while it is “warmer” earlier and later. This is well known among photographers but I have never known it being demonstrated so clearly as it was that day.

Arriving as early as July 13th was, in the event, quite a close shave. A note on Facebook from the tern wardens on the 18th said that most of the terns (95% of them) had already left the area. I wish them good luck on their travels and hope they make it back to Cemlyn next year.

*N.B. : The second pair also failed …..

To read more Tales from Wild Wales as they are published, please click the Follow button.

My website : www.wild-wales.com

Little and Large

*_{Unfledged youngster on the right, fledged bird eating prey brought in by adult on the left}*

As I may possibly have previously mentioned ( see this post, or this post for example) I’m a bit of a raptor nut. My favourite species is the peregrine. In 1979 I did my first species protection contract for the RSPB, keeping watch on two peregrine eyries in north Wales that were regularly robbed by falconers. The nesting sites were very distant and I barely saw the birds themselves! Most of my work consisted of driving a particular stretch of road looking for dodgy characters and checking off car registration plates against a list I was provided with. However things improved in the early 1980’s when I monitored peregrines (and other species) on the Isle of Mull and northern England for the RSPB; then in Ceredigion as a volunteer in 1983, and the following year just inside the Arctic Circle in Greenland. My activities then gradually shifted towards a full-time photography career and I soon had no time for birding. Now I have more time again and I’m spending more time watching and monitoring raptors.

Enough of the background! My point is that I know my peregrines.

I was surprised to discover in 2021 that peregrines had returned to nest in inland Ceredigion and I began occasionally visiting two cliff nesting sites near my home. In 2023, one pair reared three young and did so again in 2024. This year I visited the cliff at the beginning of May, then again at the end of the month. It was clear from the latter visit that they were using the usual ledge (an old raven nest) and probably had small young. By June 19th two young were visible and the interesting thing was that one appeared to be up to 14 days younger than the other. One looked full grown although it still had flecks of white down adhering to its body; it was exercising its wings vigorously. Comparing its appearance to the illustrations in “The Peregrine Falcon” (Derek Ratcliffe) it looked about five weeks old. The other was small and downy all over with stumpy little wings, and looked about 3 weeks old. .

My next visit was on June 30th. When I arrived both young were on the nest together; they were pretty much identical in appearance. It looked as if the younger bird had “caught up” with its sibling. Very soon one flew from the nest and landed clumsily in the ivy above the nest. After some time it flew and visited a number of different ledges before landing in full view of the other youngster, as seen in the main picture. In flight it looked confident and skilful. How long ago it had fledged I couldn’t tell. The nestling was clearly desperate to fly, standing on the edge of the nest, screaming and flapping its wings furiously. Several times it appeared to run from the back of the ledge to the front, and then slammed on the brakes. It just wasn’t confident enough to take the plunge into the outside world. After a while one of the adults arrived carrying prey, ready plucked and glistening bright crimson in the sunshine. It dumped the prey on the ledge next to the fledged youngster, leaving its poor sibling flapping and screaming even louder!

I was able to document this photographically, but I must emphasise that I was very distant from the cliff to avoid causing any disturbance. To have done so would have been illegal and also pointless, because natural behaviour patterns would have been disrupted. The photos themselves are not great, having been taken from afar and then cropped drastically. But they do the job.

Derek Ratcliffe’s masterwork “The Peregrine Falcon”, published in 1980, is a superb and comprehensive example of a monograph on a particular species. But there is no mention in it of such a wide age difference between peregrine youngsters, so I wonder how common this phenomenon might be and how it happened. This snapshot in the life of a peregrine family was absolutely fascinating. It might seem that the adult behaviour was cruel. But it is typical bird of prey behaviour designed to encourage the youngster to leave the nest if it wants food. The little thing was desperate to go but this most momentous event in its short life was yet to come.

NB. I haven’t added images of the nestlings individually or together (showing the age difference) as they would be too small. However if anyone would like to see them, just let me know.

To read more Tales of Wild Wales as they are published, please click Follow.

Pipsqueaks.

Bardsey Island (Ynys Enlli in Welsh) is situated off the tip of the Lleyn Peninsula (Penllyn), separated from the Welsh mainland (Y Tir Fawr) by only a short sea crossing, but it could be many miles away. With its remote location, the island tends to attract rare migrants; it also has a manx shearwater colony and a bird observatory. Together with Jane (my partner) and three good friends, I spent last week there. It was actually my seventh stay on the island; each week has been quite different and I well my remember my first. I picked up an infection, probably from the spring water supplied to the houses, which laid me low for a few days. Alone in my accommodation, I felt very ill indeed and believed I could have died there without anyone knowing! Fortunately in recent years a water purification system has been installed.

After another visit I was chatting to a Welsh-speaking neighbour and told her I had just spent a week on Enlli. She looked at me very strangely, and then explained that Enlli is the name of the psychiatric ward at the local hospital. I’ve always used the name Bardsey since then…….

I don’t usually resort to cliches such as “bird of the week” but just this once I’m going to. It could have been the (scarlet) rosefinch which my friend Jonathan first identified, and whose song could be clearly heard from our kitchen table for a couple of days. The island has a large population of my favourite bird, the chough, and their calls could frequently be heard wherever you were. But the chough is a Schedule One (specially protected) species during the breeding season so I tended to avoid them. So I’m going to plump for something much more familiar – the oystercatcher. As you walked around the island you would pass from one oystercatcher territory to the next, and you would be subject to a new tirade of raucous high-pitched screeching. One bird was particularly aggressive, repeatedly flying noisily towards me at eye-level and only veering away at the last second. I believe on one occasion its wing tip brushed my arm as it flew past.

Their behaviour and alarm-calling is designed to alert their youngsters of the presence of a potential predator (in this case me) and it is obviously very successful. No matter how hard I tried I never managed to locate a single chick. They leave the nest as soon as they hatch and must hide amongst the pebbles and boulders amongst which they are feeding. But I wondered how intelligent the adults actually are. I found that while I was standing upright I was fair game for all the aggression that they could muster. But if I made a half-hearted attempt to “hide” or lower my profile their behaviour became calmer and their calling quieter. It was during these moments that I was able to photograph them in a more relaxed fashion. I ended up with hundreds of oystercatcher images, and have spent many hours deleting and processing them since I returned home.

It was during these lulls in activity that also I coined a new name for the species – “pipsqueaks”. After all, they don’t actually eat oysters ………….

Enjoy…….