Par for the Cors

A few days to catch up on, starting with Friday. Having a few hours to kill, I headed off to Borth where a water pipit had been reported during the last few days. Arriving at the turn car park, I set up the scope to scan the sea but little was on show, just a few rafts of common scoter and some g c grebes. Giving up on that, I wandered over to the briney pools at the northern end of the car park thinking that would be a good place for the pipit, and sure enough the second bird in my bins was just the thing I was looking for. With both meadow and rock pipits also in attendance it gave me a good opportunity to compare and contrast. After getting an eyeful, I strolled down the prom to grab a pasty for lunch, but was waylaid by a local birder who let me know the long staying male long tailed duck was showing well just opposite the train station. And so it was. As Steffi was in Aberystwyth, and due to get the train home back to Mach soon, I called and filled her in on the situation, so she could alight at Borth, see the birds and get a lift home. A win, win situation.
On Saturday, Steffi decided to check up on our local dippers, and so off we trundled to the stretch of river by our place where we regularly get them. Once we located them, I had to head off into town and left her camped out behind a tree with the camera set up. I took the long way into town, along the river Dyfi, and had little to report, except another dipper, grey wagtail and great views of goldcrest. Meanwhile, Steffi had spent a while dipper watching and had seen them gathering nesting material and, after careful observation, located the nest site. It is above a steep and slippery slate rock which makes it so inacessible that even the dippers struggle to get in which is good news in terms of human disturbance and predation. We shall keep an eye on the progress and report back. At the same time Steffi also observed a pair of grey wagtail feeding together.

Today we decided to head out to Cors Caron, a raised peat bog about an hours drive south. Despite being bitterly cold when we arrived, it soon warmed up and the sun shone down upon this weirdly beautiful landscape for the rest of the day. Plenty of buzzards and kites on show, but unfortunately no harriers. However, the appearance of our local celebrity golden eagle and a displaying goshawk made up for it. Lots of reed buntings, meadow pipits, linnets and singing skylark, plus good views of a host of common woodland birds kept us entertained between the views of raptors soaring around in the bright sunshine. A good day.
Back at the ranch, the heronry across the river is building up nicely (unless you happen to be a frog or vole) and the tawny owls are getting VERY vocal. Siskin numbers building up on the niger feeders, at least 8.