Western Cleddau: Tree Sparrow but no Kingfishers

I have fished the lower stretches of the Western Cleddau three times this week (to no avail!), spending around 10 hours on the river, and covering around 3km of water. This has confirmed my experience from last summer that this is a wonderfully fertile and productive river, with a huge variety of fly life providing big attractions for birds.

Most obvious have been the hirundines and Swifts: 10+ of the latter at any one time, and 60+ Sand Martins and Swallows feeding over the river and across the fields, with the Sand Martins just outnumbering the Swallows. Even a small number of House Martins, a species that I have seen very few of this year.

The Sand Martins are still only feeding: the 2 colonies that I found last year, of 20-30 holes each, are as yet unoccupied, and appear in need of a great deal of work given the erosion to the river banks from the winter floods.

These floods have been huge: the debris from them, both caught in the barbed wire fences and in the ditches, shows the high water mark to have been up to 8ft above the current (high and coloured) water level.

The other casualty may have been the Kingfishers: on a stretch where last year in June/July I saw birds hourly and estimated a population of a pair per kilometre, I have seen not a single bird all week. They may be sitting on eggs, but could also be victims of the cold winter.

Highlights, however, have been at least one Tree Sparrow that I heard twice in old ash trees towards the bottom of the beat (Crow Hill SM 953 178). My big take-away from the Pembrokeshire Birders Conference last November was that these birds should be renamed River Sparrows, and the habitat, both trees and river debris, would appear to suit them.

Also, 2 Great Spotted Woodpeckers, and a Lesser Whitethroat that called persistently from a dense patch of gorse and bramble, and then hawked for insects above it.