Ceredigion Birds

1 chough flew over Ynyslas golf course at day break. This afternoon 3 little egrets were on the Clettwr and an otter had left pawprints on the bank. Tarka was doing his usual rounds of the Leri today. Scaup and female goosander upstream of the railway bridge.

There were seven purple sandpipers on the rocks at Borth this afternoon. Divers in flight offshore and on the sea and lots of scoters plus a great crested grebe. Stopped off at Ynyslas I didn't see the otter but it had been seen (and photographed by Janet). The scaup was upriver of the railway bridge. At about 4.45pm a barn owl made an appearance. I was on the road bridge when I saw it. Its quite a pale bird. It was hunting in the area for some time and I had great views of it in fact it perched on a fence post by the roadside at one stage! This bird would be amenable to being photographed I imagine. Kev/Janet/Mike over to you again guys! The chap living in the cottage on the hill who is also the owner of the boat yard had seen a grey seal upriver recently not sure if he said last week.
There were lots of curlew (I counted 70) in the field beyond the boat yard. Lapwing in the field before the railway crossing and a mixture of starling, fieldfare and redwing in the Ty Gwyn fields at Ynyslas.

This morning I witnessed an extraordinary bit of behaviour between a crow and a lamb in the field below my house which I've never seen before. A carrion crow was persistently harassing a lamb by chasing it stealthily but with caution this action clearly annoyed the lamb as it reacted by chasing the crow with its head down in the 'butting' mode! The crow took evasive action and was not at all put off by the lambs defensive action it just took part in some 'displacement activity' by picking up some grass and dropping it presumably to give the lamb a 'false sense of security'. What happened next solved the mystery of this crows incessant interest in this particular animal. When the lamb had his back turned the crow sauntered up to it and gave its tail a couple of sharp tugs with its beak! I then saw that an elastic band had been fitted higher up on the lambs tail by the tenant farmer effectively stopping the blood flow to the tail which would eventually result in it dropping off. This of course is common practice among sheep farmers and in fact the 'severed' tails are a good source of food for kites in the spring! Anyway the crow's 'tug of war' trying to 'dislodge' the lambs tail failed as the startled lamb bolted off to a safe distance away from the crows unwanted attentions.

Postscript- Of course 'intelligence' in corvids is a well known fact but what intrigues me about this incident is what was the 'trigger' which caused the crow to behave in such a manner? I wondered whether it might have been the coloured rubber ring on the lambs tail which stops the blood flow or did the crow somehow 'know' that the tail was probably close to disengaging with the lamb's body! If anyone has any theories on this I'd like to hear them.

On my way back from a great Birding Group walk, there were four Whooper Swans (2 adults and 2 young) near the end of my journey on Bwlchcryws pond, just off the Devil's Bridge road near Trisant.

Twenty one of us met at Borth Railway Station this morning to be guided across the bog by Harry Pepper. It was very, very cold to start with but eventually the temperature climbed to cold.
As we congregated on the platform a Stonechat showed itself very well just the other side of the track. We saw a couple of Reed Buntings as we walked along the path by the Leri. Instead of turning across the golf course Harry consented to continue on towards the Railway Bridge for a chance of seeing the Scaup that has been hanging around there. We found the Scaup and as we watched it Tarka, the magnificent male Otter put in an appearance. He was very active, continually diving and re-surfacing with tit-bits and getting ever closer to where we stood. There were some appreciative oohs and ahhs, I know that at least one of our group had never seen an Otter before, so it was very good of him to turn up. He entertained us for 15-20 minutes before it was time to move on. We retraced our steps then headed towards the coast for a bit of sea-watching. We saw 3 Sanderling, a Ringed Plover, a Great-crested Grebe and several Common Scoter before calling it a day.

On the way to the railway bridge early this morning I disturbed a female merlin chasing reed buntings and a female peregrine was sitting on a molehill nearby. The dog otter was patrolling his territory round the road bridge, yesterday there was a smaller otter catching breakfast near the railway bridge. A single purple sandpiper was by the wooden jetty in Aber all afternoon yesterday.

Ynys Hir, Saturday, 6th February From the breakwater hide around high tide; 60 bar-tail godwit (possibly black-tails among them ? ), 6 goldeneye on estuary and a peregrine on the ground. 3 pintail still on car park pool and a good number of shoveler throughout the reserve. The barnacle geese have almost certainly moved on and no sign of white-fronted today either. Chris Wallbank