Wheatear - What A Day!

Huzzah!

The rain and gloom lifted today, and we dashed down to Newport Wetlands for the day. We met up with my mate Nigel.

The forecast glorious day made way to maddening cloud cover, and gloom! But what the weather tried to spoil the birding did it's best to brighten!

The sky was packed full with flying acrobats! There were Sand Martins, House Martins, Swifts and Swallows all hawking the abundance of insects around. I could have stood there for hours as they dashed all around us, sometimes coming within a few feet before veering away. It is one of the highlights of the birding year for me. You feel utterly immersed in the feeding frenzy going on all around your ears!

Whilst we were standing there chatting and watching I clocked a large bird rise about the reedbeds. We only had a fleeting view of it, before it dropped back down by the lighthouse. It wasn't long enough to get a good ID of it, but we had our suspicions.

After we stood on the pontoon trying to see them damned elusive Bearded Tits we walked around to the Lighthouse, and flushed the bird we had seen earlier. Our suspicions were confirmed as a beautiful Short Eared Owl took off and flew right passed us. I managed a half decent shot of it.

But you know you are having a good birding day when that wasn't the highlight of the visit!

Our travels around the reserve gave us Whitethroats, the sound of two Cuckoo's calling, Great Crested Grebe fishing, Little Grebe diving, the sea wall was alive with Stonechats hawking for flies, and more Wheatears than I have seen there before. We came across this female Linnet feeding on the path.

After lunch we headed back out, and the sun came out!!!

We saw Cetti Warblers, not one but TWO Bearded Tits, Willow Warblers, Chiffchaffs, Reed Warblers, Reed Buntings, the list went on and on!

The day was coming to a close and we were back by the lighthouse again. We could see a large bird of prey being mobbed by Shelducks out over the salt marsh, we thought it was the Marsh Harrier at first, or a Buzzard. But the jizz just wasn't right. There were quite a few people watching by this point ... the O word got mentioned ... was it an Osprey. None of us had any optics good enough to really make it out, and it was against the sunlight ... so it looked destined to be one of those ticks with a question mark you can't really count ... and then bounding up the coast path came Mat from RSPB ... he had a smile as wide as the Uskmouth Estuary! Did you see the Osprey he said! He had much better views than us from the headland. I managed this photograph which is very heavily cropped, but unmistakably an Osprey!

What a days birding ... forty two species seen and two top birds in the shape of a Short Eared Owl and an Osprey. And to top it all off, Nigel picked up a year tick with a Green Woodpecker that flew over the car park ... what a day!