teifi – Tales from Wild Wales

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.

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I think I’ve cracked it……

I ended my post of January 20th this year by saying “One of these days I’ll get a decent picture of a water rail.“. On October 10th I mentioned water rails again and said “My record with them is pretty sketchy. They are nimble and fast moving and tend to appear only close to dusk or dawn.“

On another visit to the Teifi Marshes at Cardigan early one morning last week all that changed. No sooner had I entered the mallard hide and sat down, than one of the little blighters started squealing from the tiny island just in front of the hide. Soon the bird appeared, quickly followed by another. It seemed as if there was some kind of dispute going on between them. This wasn’t the shy and retiring species of the text books. About nine thirty one emerged from the island’s reeds , walked towards the hide, immersed itself for a short swim, and disappeared again. A few minutes later it re-emerged and swam most of the way towards the reeds to the left-hand side, only to decide that it preferred being on the island after all, and returning. This was brazen!

I took several hundred images altogether, and it has to be said that entire sequences were either out of focus or just generally mushy. I’ve never understood why this happens. But there were enough sharp and well-lit images for me to be able to say ” When it comes to water rails, I think I’ve cracked it.”

Given that the species is renowned for being more often heard than seen, let alone photographed, I can’t imagine there is anywhere better for getting to grips with them than the Teifi Marshes.

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Wild goose chase numbers 1 and 2…….

The coming of some sunnier weather last week had me chomping at the bit to do some photography. I have never seen an eagle in Wales but a shower of records and photographs on Facebook suggested that the first-winter white-tailed eagle was still in the Llanuwchlyn area (near Bala) on the Sunday. I contacted my friend Jonathan and we decided to meet up there on Monday morning. A car-load of birders confirmed that I was indeed in the correct area – a tributary of the Lliw valley about three miles north-west of the village. It was a cold but sunny day with a smattering of snow on the ground. I had a an “interesting” time turning the van round on a steep, narrow and icy single track lane with few passing places but having done that it was time to go for a walk. By early afternoon it became apparent that the eagle hunt was a lost cause. There was no sign of it and I returned home disappointed. A post on Facebook during the evening showed that it had been seen at 9 a.m. that day about four miles to the east.

Chores kept me at home for a couple of days but on Thursday what did I do? Set off on another wild goose chase, of course! Four waxwings had been reported on the Teifi Marshes near Cardigan. I was determined to travel down by public transport this time but by 8.30 there had been no sign of the 8.15 bus so it was back to the van. It didn’t take me long to find the waxwings and I watched them on and off until mid-afternoon. They remained within a short section of overgrown hedgerow bordering the old railway track, which is now a foot- and cycle-path. A knowledgeable local birder said it was now their eleventh day on the reserve.

My only previous sighting of waxwings had been at Machynlleth in 2012. A large flock was frantically feeding on ornamental rowan berries outside the library on the main street. Perhaps on that occasion they had recently arrived in the UK after an energy-sapping journey across the North Sea. In contrast the Teifi Marshes birds were very relaxed. Now and again one would half-heartedly pull a desiccated hawthorn berry off a twig but it didn’t seem too concerned if it fell to the ground. In an unusually informative description the Collins Bird Guide states :

“In winter can eat frostbitten and semi-fermented berries, which may intoxicate the bird and render it temporarily incapable of flight”

While they were capable of preening and spent some time doing so, perhaps they were otherwise too sloshed to move! They did, however, fly off as a group just before I left for home. It also was evident that they had no fear of humans or dogs, either, so perhaps they had no previous contact with people in their home in the Scandinavian (or Russian) taiga.

I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the pictures I managed to come back with. The light was variable, from dark and gloomy to bright sunshine. Fortunately there were some periods of bright sunlight obscured by thin cloud. These conditions produced the best results as no harsh shadows were created and reasonably short shutter speeds could be used..

I also dipped in and out of several hides and had particularly good views of a snipe, while one or more water rails caused momentary excitement. But boy…. do they move fast! One of these days I’ll get a good picture of a water rail.

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Cheep, cheep! Cheap chicken ain’t cheap : Part One

Back in the 1990’s I was involved in a local environmental group – Friends of Cardigan Bay – whose focus was the bottlenose dolphins which frequented the Bay. One of our main campaigning issues was for the proper treatment of sewage. Until 1989 water supply and sewage disposal in the UK were both the responsibility of water authorities which ‘marked their own homework’. Britain was often described as “The Dirty Old Man of Europe” for its filthy beaches, rivers and coastal waters. It was only thanks to the UK’s membership of the EU that things did not get completely out of hand. European legislation led to Britain being prosecuted for water quality failings at our beaches and rivers.

It seemed sensible to me that water supply and disposal should become the responsibility of private companies while their activities should be regulated by a separate, publicly funded, body, the National Rivers Authority, later the Environment Agency, which in Wales morphed into Natural Resources Wales. I then took my eye off the ball, and, with so many other environmental problems to be dealt with, so, it seemed, did most activists. The assumption was that the system was working.

Perhaps the system did work for a while. But the Tory Party returned to power, and with it came austerity. The Conservatives believe in “light touch regulation” – or to put it another way – as little regulation as possible, preferably none – and rather than dismantle them completely, the regulatory bodies were starved of the funding they needed to function properly.

Privatisation of the water industry was never popular with the general public, and water quality has thankfully become a big political issue in the last few months. Thanks to high profile individuals like Feargal Sharkey, much criticism has appeared in the media over the polluted state of our rivers and beaches, the lack of investment, the huge salaries paid to company directors and the massive dividends paid out to shareholders. In Wales the River Teifi is so badly polluted by sewage and agricultural run-off that any housing developments in the river’s catchment have been put on hold. The river just can’t deal with any more nutrients.

A new threat has emerged in recent years – the proliferation of IPU’s (intensive poultry units), otherwise known as chicken factories. These are basically meat production units on family (and other) farms where upwards of 100,000 chickens (….. up to a million!) are reared in huge sheds at any one time. Typically there are seven or eight “crops” of birds per year, which means that each bird must reach its maximum weight by about six weeks old, to allow for cleaning and re-stocking. It is difficult to justify the use of the term agriculture to describe them; they are high-tech facilities in which heat, lighting and feed are controlled to a minute degree to maximise the birds’ growth rate. If they must exist, they would be more appropriately located in industrial units on the outskirts of our larger towns and cities. However, as long as they remain classified as agricultural developments, they largely fall outside the control of local authority planning system. This is described as a “planning void”. I am unsure of the exact business model underlying them but each individual farming business has little control of their operation other than the disposal of the waste products. And that is the big problem. Such huge numbers of birds produce massive quantities of excrement, and it is the farmer’s responsibility to dispose of it. Much of it is spread on land surrounding the farm. It is then washed into the nearest watercourse during periods of rain.

The River Wye is “protected” as a Special Area of Conservation from source to sea. Despite that, IPU’s are particularly common in its catchment on both sides of the English / Welsh border. It is said that there are 20 (or possibly up to 44….) million chickens in the area. The Wye and its tributaries are badly affected by the massive input of nutrients from chicken droppings spread on the land around the IPU’s. Notwithstanding its SAC status the river is in ecological decline (some say “crisis”) and has become prone to developing algal blooms. It is said that it is dying.

But why, oh why the Wye?

Here is my understanding of the situation in a nutshell. In 2013 the giant American multi-national agribusiness Cargill, through its newly formed subsidiary Avara, agreed with Tesco to process chicken meat on an industrial scale. As a result Avara invested £35 million in refurbishing and expanding its chicken processing plant at Hereford. Having done that it needed more birds to process, and farmers in the Wye valley were keen to sign up. Presumably each one has a contract agreeing to host a certain number of “crops” of birds every year, which remain the property of Avara, to buy all their feed and day-old chicks from specified suppliers, to supply only Avara, and use only labour supplied by Avara to remove dead stock and grown birds and clean the buildings out every seven weeks. Each IPU is, in effect, a satellite of Avara’s main processing facility, with one exception. Removing the chicken excrement is the farmers’ responsibility.

It’s funny that, because Cargill (Avara’s parent company) has faced court action in the USA over the last twenty years for polluting watercourses with chicken excrement. They have denied responsibility, placing the blame on individual farmers, but settled out of court. Avara would have known that their massive expansion of chicken production in the Wye catchment would lead to pollution problems, but carried on anyway. Throughout its history Cargill has been beset by scandal and controversy. Only this month (May 2023) it has been subject to a new legal challenge over deforestation and human rights violations in Brazil, where most of the soy used for chicken feed in Europe is grown. Cargill has been described as “the worst company in the world” and if you would like to read more about them click on the links below. But beware – it does not make pleasant reading.

For more information on Cargill see the following:

https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2020/11/25/cargill-deforestation-agriculture-history-pollution/

and https://www.mightyearth.org/cargillreport

Part 2 will follow shortly.

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Nine things I learned about kingfishers last week.

Kingfishers : juvenile on left, adult with worn plumage on right.

Last week I decided to throw off the lockdown shackles and broaden my recent horizons. The first part of the plan was to try to capture the Neowise Comet, which I managed to do with some success; I planned to head off immediately afterwards down to Cardigan (about 40 miles away) ready for a visit to the Teifi marshes, the following morning. So in the early hours I hit the very empty A487 and soon arrived in Cardigan. After a few hours sleep I woke and lit the stove to put a brew on. I soon realised there was a gas leak: so no more cups of tea (or coffee….or toast…..or any hot food……) for me on this trip!

The previous night, as I stood with my tripod in the castle grounds at Aberystwyth, a photographer friend had loomed out of the darkness. She wasn’t up for photographing the comet but was thrilled about the kingfisher photographs she’d recently taken at the Teifi Marshes. A brood of recently fledged juveniles had been brought to one of the pools by their parents to learn how to catch fish; my friend had managed to capture the three youngsters lined up on a branch just as one of the parents joined them! It looked like a very promising time to visit the Marshes.

So by eight o’clock I was settling in to the mallard hide to see if anything would turn up; sure enough, within minutes a kingfisher had appeared. It perched on one of the strategically located branches directly in front of the hide. Between bursts of kingfisher activity I got chatting to another woman there, armed with a camera and long lens. She seemed to know what she was talking about, and I learned the following:

A few days previously a brood of fledged juveniles kingfishers had been brought to the reserve by their parents to learn how to fish.
At least eight juvenile kingfishers had already been ringed on the reserve by the local ringing team. That would make about 17 birds in the area by now, assuming that all were still alive.
Kingfishers have two broods a year.
It doesn’t take long before the youngsters have their own hunting perches, which they defend against allcomers.
Adult kingfishers have bright reddish orange feet; juveniles have muddy orange feet.
Adult females have an orange lower mandible (the underside of the beak); males’ are dark, like the upper mandible.
When kingfishers fly or drop down to catch a fish, they move very quickly! It’s virtually impossible to keep up with them at close range.
The kingfisher hide on the reserve had been burnt down by vandals earlier this year.
Despite this, the kingfishers keep on coming. They don’t seem to notice the line of admirers on the path nearby……….

After a rather lengthy lull in activity I took the opportunity to stretch my legs. It was a short walk down to the site of the kingfisher hide, which was pitiful to behold. The local youth presumably find these hides handy for all sorts of activities, not many of which are related to ornithology, I suspect. I can understand that, but why do these scumbags then find it so gratifying to burn them down? This is the second hide to have suffered the same fate, and another has been systematically vandalised to such an extent that it has had to be closed…… but I digress. By mid-morning the sun was so high and harsh that getting a decent photograph was impossible, so I took a long siesta. Having a coffee in the main street of Cardigan was a novelty after all these months!

I was back at the kingfisher pool by late afternoon, by which time the light was perfect. Kingfishers were active from the word go and I found a spot where I could point my lens through a gap in the vegetation for a different angle on a perch used by the birds for hunting. One individual looked like one of this year’s young, and there were interesting interactions between it and other birds. One such, which I was lucky to photograph (see main pic.), appeared to be with an adult, judging by the latter’s worn plumage and partial moult. As afternoon merged into evening I enjoyed the company of other people. We agreed on how lucky we were to watch these exotic little birds at such close quarters – living their lives in such a relaxed and unselfconscious way. They were totally unconcerned by our presence.

By this time I had taken almost eight hundred photographs in less than twenty-four hours, got through two full batteries, and there was no prospect of any breakfast the next morning. It was time to go home.

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Twice bittern.

A few days before Christmas I headed down to the Teifi Marshes near Cardigan with high hopes of seeing a bittern. It is a regular winter haunt for this extraordinary but elusive species and I had photographed one there in January 2015 (see this post). Furthermore there had recently been reports in the local bird blog of one by the Kingfisher Pool. It all seemed very promising. But after six hours in a very cold hide without a single sighting I felt somewhat deflated……and I’m sure the bad cold I suffered over Christmas was not a coincidence.

But they do say that every cloud has a silver lining, though, and in this case it was the kingfisher which made a circular tour of its perches around the pool at lunch time. Various sticks and branches have been provided here for kingfishers by the Wildlife Trust, but they result in rather conventional “bird on a stick” type images. I think the perch shown above shows the bird in a more natural setting and the falling rain gives the photograph a rather painterly feel.

Bittern at Teifi Marshees, Cardigan — Bittern at Teifi Marshes, Cardigan

The bittern was reported (and photographed) again on Tuesday so it seemed like another attempt might produce results. Another photographer was already in the hide when I arrived about 9.30 a.m. yesterday and we were soon joined by several others. One told us that the bird had spent two full days wedged between branches in a nearby willow. Local birders and conservationists became concerned for its welfare so reserve staff had climbed up towards it and poked it with a stick, whereupon it flew back down to the reeds!

The bittern was first seen not long afterwards. It was crouched low to the ground, fluffed up like a big round feather duster, and appeared quite immobile. It did not look like a healthy or a happy creature. But after a while it began to walk slowly towards the hide, its weight breaking the ice at one point. It came closer and closer and motor drives began to rattle away in earnest. Over the next hour it was hardly hidden at all. It walked slowly, and then more quickly, around, pausing to take the sun from time to time. The light was lovely, either bright sunshine or light cloud. Either was excellent for this large, cryptically patterned bird. It can’t eventually have been further than 20 yards from the hide. Then there was a crouch, a pause, another crouch, and it launched itself into the air, flying away quite powerfully low above the reeds and blackthorn crub.

It had been a truly exhilarating hour for everyone in the hide. One always opens oneself to disappointment by a making a tightly focussed photography expedition like this. Without the bittern it would have been a rather dismal morning – dismal and cold. So we were all happy, although we all knew we would have many hours of file processing to look forward to. Let’s just hope that the bird itself stays well and finds enough food to get through the winter.

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The patient birdwatcher.

Last Thursday saw me heading south to the Teifi Marshes, a Wildlife Trust reserve near Cardigan. After days on end cooped up in my home-office cum prison cell thanks to rain and/or wind and/or cloud, the forecast for Thursday was promising. I decided to make an early start. So on a lovely morning I arrived on the banks of the Teifi just a few minutes after sunrise. The tide was high and it was flat calm. What a picture!

I spent a minute or two in each of the hides as I walked down the old railway track into the reserve. At the top of my day’s wish-list, I told another photographer, was a bittern. It may not have been very realistic objective but what the hell………aim high! I quickly moved on until I reached the Kingfisher hide, because a bittern is occasionally seen from there in winter. I’ve always liked this hide because it overlooks a small pool, more or less surrounded by reeds; it is quite an intimate space. I opened a wooden flap and looked out.

At first I didn’t believe it was even actually a bird. It was too still – a fence-post perhaps? Too tall, too thin and too dark to be a bittern, anyway. I dropped my camera bag on to the wooden floor, the sound – I’m sure – carrying far on such a still morning. Trying to keep calm, I retrieved my Canon 5d3 / Tamron 150-600 zoom combo and took another look. It was a bittern, sunning itself! The sound of the shutter would travel equally clearly in these conditions; by the time I had taken the first few shots, there was no doubt that it was aware of my presence. It turned around, then began to walk along the edge of the reeds. Within three minutes of my arrival it had disappeared. I silently cursed my clumsiness.

The other photographer arrived. We waited another ten minutes or so. Then there was movement in the reeds and I located the bird half way up some reed stems. From this launch pad it flew across the pool and disappeared. Would it ever be seen again? In fact, it flew again quite soon and landed opposite the hide. This small reed-bed is somewhat degraded at the moment, the result, apparently, of being used as a starling roost. Over most of the area the reeds are bent over (or broken) to barely half their normal height. (I believe the technical term is “trashed”…..) A crouching bittern was still completely hidden but at full height it was easily visible. Over the course of the day the bittern could be seen with varying degrees of success as it visited various parts of the reedbed. Having said that, though, its position was most often given away by the black cap to its head. It is a wonderfully camouflaged creature. The starling hypothesis gained credence after a couple of crows brought a small dark bird corpse out of the reeds and ate it. There would be plenty of food there for a bittern, too, as they are not that choosy about their diet.

Discussing the finer points of eating a dead starling...... — Discussing the finer points of eating a dead starling……

I was still hoping for the ultimate bittern picture so I stayed put, despite the temperature, which must have been pretty close to freezing in the shade. The six layers of clothing I had donned early that morning weren’t really enough. A succession of other visitors joined me in the hide, and I helped them locate the bird. They donated sandwiches, biscuits and chocolate in return. I hadn’t expected to be there so long! One christened me “the patient birdwatcher”. Towards mid-afternoon the bittern moved quite close to the railway track and I was able to photograph it reasonably successfully through the overgrown hedge (see above). Eventually a combination of thorough cold and fatigue meant it was time to call it a day. But what a day!

I’m still not sure I have the perfect bittern picture. In one otherwise excellent series of images, the bird’s surroundings are untidy. In the picture above the inverted v-shape, out-of-focus reed stem is irritating. I wonder if the content-aware cloning abilities of Photoshop would remove it successfully. Does anyone know?

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