OK 'Death' is never a pleasant subject to talk about but I thought I would just mention about the demise of a Tawny Owl seen dead on the roadside on the A.487 just after Bow Street near the road leading to Dole. I've seen a couple of dead 'tawnies' on local roads recently. I guess they are young birds. The death of wild animals on our roads is always a grotesque spectacle and more often than not what we see are badgers or foxes and goodness knows how many pheasants. If you are a regular traveller on the A.458 road between Mallwyd and Welshpool, which I call the 'Pheasant Run', then I am sure you will have 'bagged' your tally of birds, death not by gunshot but by 'rubber'. This stretch of road is a positive obstacle course each time you drive on it.
Anyway whilst on this rather morbid subject some of you might be interested in conducting a survey on 'mammal' road deaths for the organisation 'People's Trust For Endangered Species'. Details are on the following link www.ptes.org/surveys
On a lighter note driving through Talybont today I saw several kites (and a couple of buzzards) 'quartering' a freshly cut hay field. Many birds took occasional plunges to the ground to devour earthworms or other forms of invertebrate life which had been churned up by the hay cutting machinery. Tagged kite Black/Black '14' was one of them (born in 2008).