Saturday 15 April 2017

Rubbish Photos of a Nice Bird.

As Martin and I were doing our lower BBS square, this morning, I was telling him about the fact that three Stock Doves have been visiting seed I throw for Chaffinches, over the back fence. They are very wary and flighty, but have been coming off and on for about a month. I also here one calling from time to time.
These are the fist Stock Doves I have ever seen in the valleys, let alone Cynon. I only have a 105mm macro lens, with a x1.4 teleconverter, so the images are heavily cropped and just to illustrate the point.



5 comments:

  1. Cracking record Mark. I've never seen one in the Cynon Valley.

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  2. or me and nice to know there about and great record for the valley mark

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  3. That surprises me, as they are not that uncommon over by me.

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  4. Looks like they might be slowly colonising the upper valleys from the south and east. Steve Moon recorded one at Llwydcoed in the mid eighties, but I've certainly never seen or heard them here before and I never struggle to ID them in areas where they do exist. Maybe in good breeding years, the population range expands into new areas only to retreat again, but not to where it previously was and so a very slow expansion of the ragne takes place. Just a theory.

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  5. I seem to remember sightings in farm fields on the Merthyr valley side of the 'Gap' although I do not appear to have entered them up on MM. My only sighting on MM is with Mr Bell foraging on fields just north of Penrhiw Farm at ST109989 (just east of little owl site)13/05/2012.

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