Ages ago, I promised Carys, the warden of Llyn Fach, that come the autumn, I would try and show her and any of her volunteers who wanted, Ring Ouzel. Keeping my promise, we met up there this morning and spent a couple of hours watching from the moraine.
There were a couple of dozen Fieldfares (my first of the season), a few Blackbirds and just a single Redwing, all busy stripping the berries from the Rowans. It was interesting to watch them, as they constantly flew to and fro, between the Rowans and the clump of semi mature conifers, half way up the cwm. They would fly out of the conifers to the Rowans in singles and small groups, feed for a couple of minutes and then dash back into the cover of the conifers. They were obviously wary of raptors and limited their exposure time in response.
We had been there an hour or so, when scoping the Rowans for the umpteenth time, I saw a male RZ fly from one of them and into the base of a small spruce and out of sight. Carys kept her bins on the spruce, while I scanned the Rowans for more, but there were just FF in them. After several minutes, she saw it fly back out and I got onto it as it flew back to the Rowan and showed well, as we enjoyed admittedly fairly distant (but closer than Craig Cerrig Gleisiad usually provides) scope views of it.
Other species seen included Raven (1 pair) Goldfinch (charm of around a dozen), Stonechat (two families) Cormorant, Wren, Bullfinch, Goldcrest, Great-spotted Woodpecker and Crossbill (heard only).
Great place and glad you got one and it was up there last year i had my first fieldfare to.
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