Llandefaelog Wood,Brecon

On one of our recent weekends up the caravan and whilst visiting the local tourist information office in Brecon I picked up a cracking guide to their 19 nature reserves published by the Brecknock Wildlife Trust. The guide is excellent and provides good directions,grid references,trail maps and details of all the flora and fauna you could with luck expect to see. Although now late in the breeding season I thought on Sunday morning 14th June that I'd give Llandefaelog Wood just a few miles north west of Brecon a go in search of Pied Flycatcher and I wasn't to be disappointed. The wood is a little gem,barely a couple of hundred metres long by about 70m wide with an excellent circular trail. The guide states that several nestboxes have been put up and after just a few minutes I came across my first one,nobody at home but upon inspection it had been used this season. I soon came across another box and after a wait of a few minutes a male Pied Flycatcher soon dived into the box to feed young. As soon as it departed one of the youngsters appeared in the hole soon to be fed by the female.

Shortly after the female had left the youngster decided to "fledge" and flew from the box which was about 30m from me to land on the ground only 3-4m away,I don't think it was expecting to be greeted by a big hairy birder and decided to seek the sanctuary of a tree a little further away.

Bit like an episode of the recent "Springwatch".

The male Pied Fly then returned with a mouthfull of food and seemed totally bewildered by the disappearance of the youngster.

I watched for a little while as both parent birds visited the box and between visits witnessed the bizzare sight of a Spotted Flycatcher perching on the lid of the box !!

A couple of juvenile Redstarts as I left the wood "mopped up" the woodland species I'd expected to encounter and this is certainly a place that I'll re-visit next spring.

The wood is well managed and there were also groups of bat boxes at high level on some of the trees,not sure what bats would use these - any guesses ?

Hats of to the Brecknock Wildlife Trust for an excellent guide -now where am I off to on my next visit to Brecon.