A Climbing Day

Martin Bevan and myself decided to go to Craig Cerrig Gleisaid this morning to look for Ring Ouzels. We arrived at about 7.30 ( both of us remembered to put the clocks forward ) to a lovely fine but chilly morning.  As we reached the quarry we could hear two Ring Ouzels calling but try as we might could not get any sight of them.  We moved further up into the quarry with the same result, one was calling close right in front of us but was definitely in stealth mode.  The temperature was now warming up or was that the coffee and I managed to get one in a short flight, noted where it landed but with two scopes trained on that area no more was seen of the bird. Martin then said that he was happy to have heard them and was confident he would see them in the Cynon Valley in the autumn.

We then decided to climb up to Site A to see if we could find some Red Grouse.  Nothing really of note on the climb until we got to the bog at the top and stopped for a cuppa and Martin found 2 Golden Plover on the edge of the bog which after a few minutes flew right over our heads.  Another Golden Plover was seen flying in and yet another half way across the bog.  We walked over to the bog and located 2 Red Grouse straight away so we decided to cover tracks and leave not to disturb the birds.

On the way down we saw a group of 4 Buzzards and a flock of Corvids hassling a Sparrow Hawk right above them.  A little further down in the other direction we had a Goshawk, Buzzard and Red Kite in the same binoculars view using the same thermal !!!!

On the way home we thought we would stop off at Cwm Cadlan and when we were having another cuppa our first Wheatear of the year popped up quite close to us.