Saturday 14 May 2016

The last couple of days in the Cynon Valley

On Thursday morning before work I got a spare hour over abercwmboi lake and there seemed to be lots of Garden Warblers in, I saw at least three birds and felt there was more present. Also Common Whitethroat which was the first one for the year over the lake. Also heard Little Grebe chicks and found three young chicks with Adult. When I was walking back I flushed what I thought was a brown moth but on looking closer I found it to be a Dingy Skipper and a first for the year for me and as the day got warmer I also had a fly by Red Admiral. I also saw my first Damselfly of the year a Blue Tailed Damselfly and think it's all about to kick off and cannot wait to see Golden Ringed Dragonfly again. It was nice to see the female Swan sitting and hopefully Cygnets shortly and the male has chased all the geese of the lake now.


On Friday before work I went up Hirwaun Sidings for Green Hairstreak and was not disappointed with 12  in total. They were flying around chasing each other and was a great sight. I did not see one last year. I also found a male Orange Tip and and also saw a couple of common Lizards, bird wise there was a Garden Warbler and some Meadow Pipits and a pair of Linnets.




I found this Beautful Demoiselle this morning, it was drying it's wings out and Mark grabbed the dock leaf back for me to take the shot and very kind of him and did not take the shot himself.



I found this Blue Damselfly tonight at Abercwmboi lake and saw a couple in the day flying around the streets .

4 comments:

  1. I'm surprised you didn't mention the Spotted Flycatcher and the Tawny Owls.
    I had a look at that cup fungus I collected. It is currently on a microscope slide, hopefully producing a spore print, but there is another test that had to be done, so I took a small piece of it, cut some thin sections from it, mounted them on a slide and stained them with Melzer's reagent. Under the microscope, I could clearly see that the tips of the asci had turned blue, confirming that it was a Peziza. Unfortunately, there are billions of Peziza species and the books only show a handful of them, so the chances of being able to correctly identify it is almost nil. I took photos and made measurements of the asci and spores, but we'll probably never know. The fern rust I collected from Plasdraw turned out to be Milesina whitei; the less rare one of the rare duo.

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  2. Hi mark i was knacked and thought you was going to do it and had a fifth tawny owl in the old Aberdare hospital site

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  3. Where's Hirwaun sidings? - Marsh Frit' site?

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  4. I've emailed you the info, Martin.

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