Quick visit to Caldey

Annie and I were were lucky enough to get across to Caldey for three hours or so this morning. We managed to cover a few tetrads and do a 2 hr timed-visit to the last one that needed some input for the winter atlas.

The wooded area through the village was alive with common residents - such as wrens, dunnocks, titmice, goldcrests, chaffinches etc - all seemed quite numerous and many birds were in song. It felt like Spring in the unexpected sunshine. Long gone were the large numbers of snipe, woodcock and lapwing we were told about during the early winter freeze. No red squirrels though (yet)!

On the coast, a few shags were busy nest-building, eg at Redberry Bay area. Small numbers of razorbills and fulmars were in various bays and of course several hundred herring gulls were pretty well everywhere along the coast. At least a couple of pairs of ravens were on territory. We failed to see a peregrine, though apparently at least one is around. We only noted one stonechat, not far from the Lighthouse.

Pleasingly, we found 2 pairs of chough - one pair at Redberry Bay, the other probably more focused on Drimkin area. All 4 were together at Redberry for a while. One was a colour-ringed bird (yellow/red left; red/BTO right) that had fledged from Stackpole in June 2004. It was last reported at Wind Bay, Castlemartin Range back in January 2007. It is good to know that this bird and the others had survived the early winter cold snap ok.

Let's hope it marks a good start to a week-long late winter snap-shot survey of chough and other coastal birds. A number of observers are hoping to walk the entire Pembs coast and others to visit the main islands to see how choughs etc are faring after the cold snap. It will also provide an opportunity to boost records from under-recorded coastal tetrads in the last month of the winter atlas.

Postings on the BLOG of coastal records of chough, red kite, kestrel, peregrine, raven, stonechat in particular but also other interesting coastal species, between 13th and 20th Feb. would be welcomed.

As the expected rain arrived at about mid-day, 13 ringed plovers and a couple of grey plovers were resting on the beach in Priory Bay. Just offshore, it was nice to see a great crested grebe feeding in the Bay. A little further out we had good views from the boat of a great northern diver in Caldey Roads as we returned to Tenby in the murky drizzle.