Sunday North of the county

First stop this morning was Llwyn Onn Reservoir to look for the Great White Egret and the Black Grey Heron but I failed to find them. I had 6 Grey Herons and they all looked grey even with sunglasses on and I think Mike has been in the sun to much. It's been sometime since I saw the old bridge. This reservoir would make a cracking wader scrape and some on Facebook said they are doing work on it has been drained on purpose. Bird wise  I had 2 Cormorants, 2 Great Crested Grebes, about a dozen Mallard and about 20 gulls and they were Lesser, Herring and 1 Greater Black Backed. The only waders were 2 Common Sandpipers. I also had Otter Tracks and they seemed to a youngster going by the size of the tracks. Next stop was Cwm Cadlan and the dragonfly ponds up near the limestone pavement.

First pond was almost dried up and which the local ponies were using for a drink and a bath. I found three dead sheep and think if we don't have rain soon there will be more stuff dying up there .

The main pond had lots of water but it's been fenced off. However the fence is down in the corner and the livestock have been drinking from there, it looks pretty deep and if one of them falls in they will not get back out. There was lots of dragonfly activity going on. I had about half dozen Common Hawkers and two Emperors but sadly they were the bog standard ones and not the foreign visitors which are in the capital at the moment. There were still a couple of Four Spot Chasers there also I saw Large Red and Common Blue Damselflies. I also found this Common Hawker doing back stoke and I managed to stretch over and lift it out to dry it's wings. It does not matter how many times you handle a dragonfly it's still a great pleasure to get that close to nature. Also of note I flushed a Common Snipe and it almost give me a heart attack.

 I also found 6 Palmate Newts swimming around and this is the most I have seen there.

Next stop was the Cwm Cadlan reserve and by then it was very hot and hard work getting about. I went to check another dragonfly pond but it was all dried up and very little going on. When I walked back I found this gold spot moth and it looked very smart in the sunlight. I was having a coffee when I saw this very dapper helicopter going over.

The stream running thought the reserve was almost dried  up where I found this Beautiful Demoiselle trying to cool down by flapping it's wings. All in all it's just nice to get out for a couple of hours and chill.