After visiting Bodnant Gardens yesterday morning I decided to pay a quick visit to the nearby RSPB reserve at Conwy. Very impressed with the set up and the way the paths are laid out.
The only downside was the birds weren't very obliging with very few venturing close enough to the hides for me to get a decent photo. I think I may have to invest in a spotting scope for the extra magnification.
Here are two of the photos, a coot and a swan.
Coot.jpg (154.71 KiB) Viewed 13740 times
Swan.jpg (130.01 KiB) Viewed 13740 times
I see the RSPB also have a reserve on the Dee Estuary at nearby Neston and I may pay a visit there next.
Glad you enjoyed the Conwy RSPB site Colin, the scopes looking out over the lake in the café area make you very envious don't they!
When we were there last, a friendly chap in the café spotted a large group of snipe settled in the reed beds about three hundred yards away.
He showed me where they were through an 80mm scope and they looked ten feet away and with amazing clarity, what a picture that would have made!
If you liked Conwy you will certainly like the RSPB site at Neston.
Its actually very close to Burton village and much closer to home for you, there's more diversity of birds there as its a bigger site, also they have a woods that's well known for its Bluebells display in spring.
As you went to Bodnant and then to Conwy Colin you could combine your trip to take in the lovely Ness Gardens, well worth the visit.
There's a nice pub there right on the marshes edge at Ness called 'THE HARP' where ( on a nice day) you can enjoy a pint in the beer garden with magnificent unrestricted views across the Dee marshes and back toward home.
I was a regular visitor there back in the 60's and 70's and have some fond memories of the place, and some folk there who are no longer with us.
The Cat and the Sea
It is a matter of a black cat
On a bare cliff top in March
Whose eyes anticipate
The gorse petals;
The formal equation of
A domestic purr
With the cold interiors
Of the sea's mirror.
R.S. Thomas.
The dippers were back in their spot on the concrete apron around the central arch of the road bridge in St Asaph this morning, a welcome sight as the river gets back to normal levels and clarity, which is more than can be said for my koi pond!
My pond is still cloudy from the removal of the water lilies tub, this is after a 50% water change, 23 days on and numerous flushes of filter.
The frogs have been busy this week as just about every time I've flushed the filter out I've found mating frogs in my Nexus centre.
Yesterday I found a pair at top and removed them and put the filter into flush mode.
Returned half hour later, opened 2" ball valve to flush and it stopped flowing after a minute. I pulled waste pipe open at first joint after ball valve and found another pair of coupled mating frogs jammed bums first in pipe peering out at me!
They were transferred to small pond as usual and I think they contributed to the growing lump of spawn in there as there was another lot of fresh spawn on top of previously laid lot this morning.
Tuesday morning this week I found a large Great Diving Beetle about an inch long voraciously attacking the first lot of frog spawn laid on Sat/Sunday.
I netted it out into big pond to try it's fortune in there with the Rudd.
Word of warning, do not pick up or handle these beetles as they've got a ferocious bite,
(as do water boatmen) they can, and do, kill and eat fish fry up to two inches long as well as tadpoles.
6 Nations Rugby Union Wales v France.
Anyone who watched the match last night including the game commentators and pundits got the impression that Wayne Barnes had swallowed his whistle!
A good referee should be invisible throughout a match for rugby or football and should let the game flow.
The scrum just before half time last night took Wayne Barnes over two minutes just to set the scrum!, what a nit picking, authorative, interfering prima donna he was, right throughout the match.
I thought he demonstrated last night everything a good referee shouldn't be!
Despite his best efforts we won but all the players on the pitch last night must have been totally frustrated at his perpetual interfering and he also made some very strange decisions?
It's the decider today in the 6 Nations as to who gets the wooden spoon?, my bet is Italy.
Had a dawn chorus of a different kind this morning, the frog chorus!
The small overflow pond where most of the frogspawn is had at least 7 male frogs croaking fit to bust, they were celebrating last nights warm night of rain, and St David's Day of course, they are Welsh frogs.
There was a bigger surprise to follow, I'd been waiting for the rain to stop and at 9.30am, just as the sun peeked out from the clouds I strolled down to my filter house to flush it out, Again!
In the Nexus centre I found another coupled pair of frogs with a third hanging on underneath and a further 5 males, 2 in the turbulent K1 and 3 in the centre chamber.
I removed them all to small pond and then had a repeat of Friday as the waste pipe stopped almost immediately.
The same procedure, pulled pipe at first joint after ball valve but clogging it this time was a large clump of frogspawn.
I had the devil's own job trying to free it from inside of pipe were it was glued.
When its first laid, frogspawn is condensed, gelatinous and very sticky hence the clog up!
I also noticed for the first time today that there were frogs croaking and moving about in the wild life pond at the bottom so it's looking good so far this year.
St David's Day and my Apricot trees in greenhouse have finished flowering already and are covering the floor with a scented scattering of white petals, I smell them each time I open the door, also in flower the peaches which are now in full bloom.
On my way back to the house, I spotted a large plump and unusually yellow frog on the pond parapet near my green house and managed to photograph it.
It just looks a picture of health.
Scarcely a street, too few houses
To merit the title; just a way between
The one tavern and the one shop
That leads nowhere and fails at the top
Of the short hill, eaten away
By long erosion of the green tide
Of grass creeping perpetually nearer
This last outpost of time past.
R.S.Thomas
Clear at last, clear at last!
My koi pond water is clear this morning!
It took a dose of PP on Wednesday morning followed by the neutralising dose of Sodium Thiosulfate on Wednesday afternoon then finally the polishing dose of Hydrogen Peroxide to finish the job yesterday.
I also removed the last lump of clay from pond bottom on Wednesday before PP treatment.
The frogs this week did a strange thing, there was nine lots of spawn in overflow pond in a large tight clump from first spawning on week end of 20/21st February.
The next bunch of nuptualista broke it up and scattered most of it around the deeper part of the pond before laying another massed clump of about six lots in shallow corner on Wednesday night and Thursday night.
I think they choose this corner for warmth as it gets most of the sun throughout the day.
Found another yellow frog this morning, swirling around in the K1 in the filter!
netted it out and possibly saved its life as it was pretty weak.
It's more yellowy green than last one and slightly smaller with brown ear coverts, quite plump and healthy looking though.
Peering through my new scope this lovely sunny morning I spotted two Nuthatches and four Siskins as well as the more usual bunch of feathered diners on our bird feeders.
No doubt taking advantage of the break in the snow and sleet.
The Clwyd's are snow free this morning, all melted and flowing down the Clwyd, unlike yesterday when there was a large snow capping, even on Cefn du and Moel Maenefa which are only about 270m to 280m in height.
The snow was almost down to the back of Tremeirchion village, opposite across the Vale but higher than us.
It's lovely to stroll down my garden path past the koi pond this last few days and see the fish clearly, swimming around on the bottom, even the elusive ever hungry Rudd prospecting about!
I've been feeding them live worms these last few days through digging and moving plants about, they really do appreciate them and of course worms contain a mild antibiotic and minerals as well as highly digestible protein.
The Elwy is finally fining down these last couple of days from it's fast and angry bank topping Khaki colour of late.
The concrete apron or breakwater where the Dippers hang out on the upstream side of the stone road bridge is just about showing above the floodwater and should be clear enough today for them to use.
No sight of the Dippers though, we did see a Grey Wagtail fly up into the gap under the centre of the new steel footbridge (alongside stone bridge) were they nested and raised a brood successfully last year.
It looks like they have returned early, hopefully for another go!
There were two Cormorants working the stretch downstream of the bridge along The Roe yesterday,
They will only move on when they've eaten every fish along the river.
This is not good from the perspective of the angler (sometimes me) or the environment, as the fish stocks will take a long time to recover from such efficient predators.
We used the Park and Ride service for hospital visitors from Bodelwyddan to Glanclwyd Hospital yesterday for the first time and noticed that it operates from the old Hotpoint factory car park.
What a disquieting sight to see such a large industrial building closed down, lying derelict and abandoned, and all those many many jobs; just gone!
The gravel beds around the car park were full of the yellow flowers of Coltsfoot (brought to Britain by the Romans for curing Catarrh) there were thousands of them, even growing in the cracks in the concrete.
They actually looked quite pretty in the sunshine against the grey drabness of the concrete car park.
RBS SIX NATIONS
England v Wales yesterday,the last 15 minutes was the stuff heart attacks are made of!
At the score of England 19 Wales nil I thought I was going to see a repeat of the game between Ireland and Italy I had just watched earlier on the goggle-box when Ireland convincingly thrashed Italy 58.15.
At 25 points to England, Wales 7 points, I was convinced, this is sweet revenge for last autumn's ignominious World Cup exit for England at the hands of a albeit late awakening Wales team.
It looked like Eddie Jones dream team had resurrected itself and was hell-bent on victory.
The sin binning of Dan Coles late on in the last half for his offence of collapsing the scrum? ( the Welsh penalty was then reversed due to nose pulling in the scrum!) this was offset by the stretchered off injury to Sam Warburton but the Welsh team game stepped up several gears from that moment.
History repeating itself in the last few minutes of the game was the thoughts behind every fervent Welsh supporter at Twickenham, including my other half and sister in-law who were at the game, but, despite a last ditch brilliant rally, the clock stopped in England's favour at 25-21.
Speaking of history repeating itself, Craig Joubert the match referee for the England/Welsh game, also officiated in the World Cup last autumn between Scotland and Australia.
He made a monumental cock up and awarded an erroneous last minute penalty to Australia thereby handing them victory.
Rumour has it he has been having sprinting lessons since from Usain Bolt, so in the event of any further rash decisions, he can sprint down the tunnel at Twickenham even faster than he sprinted in the autumn!
Rumour also has it he was smuggled out of Twickenham after the World Cup autumn game on a coach,
I'll bet any money it wasn't on a Scottish coach!
1. The first of this years frogspawn has appeared in my small wildlife pond. I also noticed that a few of the tadpoles I rescued when clearing the pond of leaves are now starting to appear as the water warms up.
2. Walking the dog yesterday morning I could see that the lapwings, with their distinctive 'peewit' call, have returned once again to an adjacent field.
3. The Council have restarted collecting their green waste bins after suspending collections over the winter.
I'm now debating whether or not to put the netting back over the fruit cage or are we still due a snowfall? I think I'll leave it a few more weeks yet, just in case.
None of my fruit nets put up yet Colin, I would say about May/June is early enough, starting with the Tayberries and goosegogs.
The Lapwings will be starting their courtship display of tumbling about the sky with much bat like flapping, there's none about here locally I've noticed. I like the call of the peewits, it reminds me of my childhood roaming across Simonswood Moss.
My frogs seem to have gone barmy this year, I'm having a bonus year like 2014 with lots of spawn again but its extended over a longer period from February the 21st to present and still being laid! The first lot is hatched and tiny tadpoles are starting to mass on the top of jelly, those clumps kicked into deeper water and broken up and not covered in silt that is.
Saturday was a mild damp night after recent frost and the frogs seemed to accelerate the spawning frenzy as I removed 15 from my Nexus over the course of Saturday and Sunday.
The frogs repeated their scattering of the previously laid spawn on Saturday, kicking it down again into the deeper water in order to clear the same favoured corner.
This corner gets the early morning sun so it makes sense really. Survival of the fittest, or last put-in!
I've only spotted one Newt up to now feeding on the newly hatched tadpoles, it looked like an adult Palmate.