My "Nature Notes" for May

 Enjoying the Birdsong

Many of you reading this may already have come across Merlin - not the wizard, nor the bird, but a handy app supplied by Cornell University that allows your mobile phone to hear and identify bird songs. I’ve found it very helpful, although it isn’t entirely foolproof. On a walk along the canal towpath Merlin told me I was listening to a Zitting Cisticola, which might well have been a first for Montgomeryshire. It’s a small brown warbler that can be found in southern Europe, but not here.  Merlin also suggested I was listening to a Chough at Powis Castle, but I doubt there were any nearer than the hills above Holyhead - it will have been a Jackdaw.

But it’s still a useful aid, and identified lots of singing birds when taken to Llyn Coed y Dinas a week or so before Easter. Not the one I’d hoped to hear, though - a Reed Warbler. They were still to arrive, though a Chiffchaff came down to inspect the reeds just in front of the hide instead.  Two Swallows were swooping across the water, and not all the winter visitors had departed - two drake Widgeon and one female were cruising the right hand side of the pool.

Two days later I came back for a second look. I’d seen my third Swallow of the year as I walked the canal towpath, but all of a sudden the pool when I arrived there was a flurry of Sand Martins, small brown members of the same family, nesting usually in sand banks along the river. They are among the earliest summer migrants to arrive.

I noticed a Herring Gull on the island constantly flying almost vertically upwards and then down again. Through my glasses I could see what it was doing. Having acquired some sort of clam, probably a freshwater mussel, it was repeatedly flying up with it and dropping it, hoping to crack the shell.  It took seven or eight tries, but at last, success.

Birds on the lake included Greylag and Canada Geese, Coots and Moorhens, quite a gang of Cormorants, Tufted Ducks, plenty of Mallard and a pair of Teal. The Wigeon were not to be seen, buta Great Crested Grebe appeared from behind the island, a lovely bird once hunted and killed for its feathers, used to decorate ladies’ hats and dresses.  No Merlin this time, but I could identify Robins, Wrens, Blue and Great Tits, Blackbird, Chiffchaff and Blackcap.  Two white farmyard geese on the island shepherded a party of seven fluffy goslings towards the water, then back towards the shelter of the trees, seeing off a couple of Canada Geese that got too close. They’ll have kept an eye on that Herring Gull, too.

Two Buzzards happened over, and one had the idea of settling on a tree on the far side of the pool, only to be unceremoniously driven off by the resident pair of Carrion Crows.  Crows themselves can of course also be on the receiving end of attacks like that - last year I watched a pair of Jackdaws dive-bombing a Carrion Crow that had entered what they regarded as their airspace. The Buzzard drifted away, pretending not to be bothered.

A pair of Oystercatchers, distinctive black and white waders with a bright red beak, had settled on the island, and maybe are nesting there, or planning to.  There are not many oysters to catch in these parts, but this is a bird that is increasingly found inland.  Last year I watched a couple (maybe the same birds) prospecting the area around the pens at the Smithfield, so they’re clearly fairly flexible as regards sources of food.  Meanwhile, another wader appeared, on the small island in front of the hide - a Common Sandpiper, busily probing the muddy shore, all the while bobbing its rear end up and down.  This is a much smaller bird than the Oystercatcher, clothed in soft grey and white. Suddenly it took off, flying close to the water right across the pool with some sharp zig-zag swerves before landing on the larger island.

And then I heard it - a jumble of chatter and churring from somewhere in the reeds just in front of me. Can you really call this birdsong - at times almost musical, but at others quite definitely not? I couldn’t see anything, but it had to be my first Reed Warbler of the year, freshly arrived from its winter quarters in Africa. More will join it in the coming weeks.  At last I noticed a reed stem swaying, and was able - briefly - to see the bird itself as it climbed higher. A true herald of summer.