Winter Atlas records - the penultimate day

Annie and I spent today trying to mop up Pembs tetrads with no or few previous winter records. This took us north into SN24 (Abercych to Cilgerran area) where we were able to add quite a few records of mainly common species and fill a couple of blank tetrads with 20-25 expected species.

On the way up we noted 2 kites circling low over centre of Clunderwen village, another just south of Llechryd and a fourth one when heading back south (close up views of an un-tagged adult) over Mynydd Morvil. Further along north of Mynydd Castlebythe c. 20 ravens were putting on quite an impressive display, hanging in the air in the strong breeze next to the road. We finished off on the Dale peninsula to cover two coastal tetrads that were still blank. We got most of the expected target species - including, chough, raven, peregrine (a pair mating) - so yes Spring is clearly very much in the air! A Gannet was also in Dale Roads.

There are just about 24 hours left of February for fieldwork for the Winter Atlas. A special thanks to all who have input records so far, the recording effort has been great! If you still have any outstanding records though, please do try to add them if you can. Remember that not only do these help inform the national picture, but will be available for the Pembs Bird Group for a local winter atlas - based on the records input between Nov 2007 and Feb 2011.



This is the picture for 25th February, you can see the up-to-date version at the Atlas website tomorrow morning. Note that SN24 is administered as part of Ceredigion, so doesn't show here.

Click on the map to enlarge it.