Bird surprises

A quiet start to the week so far, with not even a sermon to plan for next Sunday, as Margie, one of the Chaplaincy Readers-in-training is going to preach while I celebrate at Llanos. She showed me an early draft of her sermon when I was there last, so this will be an opportunity to listen and give her feedback. She certainly has the right kind of enthusiasm for working with biblical material, and I've already heard how much she's appreciated by the congregation.

Yesterday, after a visit to Lidl's for supplies, I went and inspected what new birds could be seen on the charco and just missed snapping that elusive picture of a grey heron coming out of hiding and landing in a prominent place. I find it curious what while the large number of coots moorhens stays roughly the same, mallards and pochards vary considerably. They may well all be hiding away in the reed beds and emerge from cover to dive and feed according to minor variations in conditions which a casual observer cannot be aware of. The more I have time to watch, the more curious I am about this. The visit highlight was utterly fleeting - the distinctive iridescent flash of a Kingfisher flying at high speed under the road bridge. Just once before I've caught this here. The first time, so quick, I wasn't sure if I believed my eyes, but this sighting confirms it.

Walking back along the beach from the shops this morning, I saw a flock of a dozen Sanderlings in their winter plumage, foraging in the gravel for small invertebrates washed ashore by the waves. Apart from gulls pigeons and straying starlings it's unusual to see other birds along this shore-line. The beach is a mixture of sand and gravel, and doesn't seem to support much plant life in the first thirty metres from where the waves crash in, so it's rare to see birds pecking among the stones for insects. The sight of the Sanderlings dodging the surf, running as they do along the waters edge, was a surprise, to be followed by another later on. I had no camera on me to record it, however.

The few egrets and herons that frequent the charco nature reserve aren't to be seen every day I visit, but at midday one of each was perched at a usual roosting place of dead trees and stones projecting from the bank into the water, about fifty metres from the road bridge.

In addition there was a large black bird, the size of the grey heron with a white front, and distinctively different beak. I checked on-line later and learned it may be a juvenile Cormorant, although to my mind it was rather big for a young bird. Back in Cardiff Bay, I've seen large-ish cormorants with white fronts, groups of them, in fact, identified later as being females in the breeding season.

There are certainly plenty of fish in the charco waters. It'll be interesting to see if any others turn up in days to come.