Its a week of three halves (Brian)

Just one trip to the Yeo this week so more from Dowlais and, inevitably the garden.

With Spring seemingly still delayed by a persistent blocking system there have been very few migrants around. An early walk up to Blake's pools only produced a handful of meadow pipits at most which was well below the expected bounty.

This Egyptian goose

was back, without its partner this time, but with a small group pf canadas.

Three black-tailed godwits flew out of the curlew roost at one point.

Also I managed to almost sneak up on a kestrel. It was so intent on watching for a vole that it did not notice me approaching but still left before I got especially close

Without even a wheatear, though, I did not think it worth while visiting again.

Dowlais is looking particularly wader friendly at the moment, way wetter than usual at this time of year. The deprivations of the crows last year does seem to have had a devastating impact on the lapwings. All 9 nests failed last year, though two chicks managed to hatch and survive a couple of days. This year there are only 3 visible birds that I can see though a week ago there were 6. I am hopeful that this means that 3 are sitting somewhere. As you can see there is quite a lot of room to hide in :

I did briefly think that a newly arrived group of 4 wagtails would be whites as this is the classic time for them. Not this time though

Finally at Dowlais there is an orchard where many of the, fairly young, trees had been knocked over by recent gales. I feared the worst when workmen were present early in the week, taking down the protective guards. However they simply replaced them all with new stronger ones so any redstarts, due to arrive very soon, on passage, will have places to perch still. Its great to report good news for a change.

The rest of the week, like almost everyone, was spent in the house or garden.

With the completion of the fence painting it was patio washing time with lots of breaks to stare skywards. Alongside the expected buzzards I managed to photograph a couple of very high dots. While not the ospreys, kites or even eagles recorded elsewhere these were at least birds of prey, namely sparrowhawk :

and one of the local peregrines

I dusted off the moth trap again and caught about 5 individual moths such as this small quaker and the early grey shown below

From late tonight, the wind is supposed to shift and this will unleash the pent up hoards of summer migrants just waiting to add my house to their google birds'eye view list so I expect oodles of goodies to report next week.

In the meantime; its back outside tonight, to string any old half-heard call into a flyover common scoter along with half of Britain's birding community. As these high-flying, nocturnal migrants are notoriously hard to photograph, even with a waxing moon...here's another picture of a goldfinch

PS the Scoter passage is genuine by the way. Look up the calls on Xeno-canto and go out and listen for 30 mins