With Saturday morning breaking bright, warm and sunny, we took the opportunity to head out and finish off the remaining river surveys, giving us a free afternoon to wander the beautiful and remote Cors Caron. A dragonfly bonanza was on offer, with numerous species making the most of the autumn sun. One, a common hawker, was so taken with my silver birch coloured hair, it decided to eat its beetle prey on my ear, giving me a unique sound experience of crunching and munching. According to Steffi, the german translation of common hawker is 'peat mosaic virgin' (Torf-Mozaikjungfer), just thought we'd throw that in for no good reason.
Along with the dragonflies, lots of common lizards of all sizes were on display - most of the larger ones were in the process of skin shedding.
Bird wise, reasonably quiet, with a distant hobby keeping the remaining swallows alert, and adding to our pretty good weekend raptor list of red kite, buzzard, kestrel, sparrowhawk and the local celebrity golden eagle, which came close enough for some reasonable photos (The day before, we had a hunting merlin at Ynyslas spooking the dunlin flocks). Unfortunately we could not add our target species to the list, hen harrier, which have been seen here recently.
Golden eagle's a cracking bird for Wales! How long has that been around?
ReplyDeleteAs for 'Peat Mosaic Virgin' I think we need more of these enlightening translations...
It's been around for about two years or so, we saw it for the first time last year. It is presumed to be an escapee but as far as we know no one knows where it came from. Very frustrating, I think I may have to take it off my list!!!! Maybe I can change my dissertation topic to proving it came over from Scandinavia. I could mist net it and when I handle it, a feather may become dislodged accidently(happened to pied (former atlas) flycatcher in East Yorkshire) and I could do a DNA analysis.
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