An early winter visitor?

Today, whilst visiting the Walled Garden at Stackpole, I was pleasantly surprised to see a very smart fieldfare tucking into whitebeam berries in the garden - my first this autumn. Quite a nice range of autumn colours - greys, white, buff and and rich chestnut colours on the fieldfare contrasting with bright pink-red berries and yellowish green leaves. A firecrest was also calling in a nearby yew tree.

Earlier in the week, on Tues there were good numbers of GBB Gulls at Frainslake - a flock of at least 80 and there on Sunday there had been around 120 Oycs, 40 curlews, 2 Barwits and small numbers of dunlin, turnstone and ringed plovers - no curlew sands though.

Also on Tues a fine merlin was perching on a fence near Bluckspool and there must have been at least 4-5 kestrels feeding along the coast, one hovering over Frainslake beach where, a few years ago, a Norwegian ringed kestrel was found dead in the autumn.

Nice also to see shrill carder bees still flying amongst the Devil's-bit scabious at Castlemartin on Sunday.

Bob