Sunday, January 26, 2014

A day around Cardiff.........

It was good to meet up with Wayne when myself and Peter Morgan rocked up at the car park at Forest Fawr,Tongwynlais after Peter had picked me up at Sarn.
I'd had one previous search for the Hawfinches earlier in the year but with no luck and after about 10 minutes Wayne spotted one high up in the trees near Ton-Y-Bwlch Cottage from the top road,it hung about for 10mins and then flew off so we decided to go back down to the main track through Forest Ganol when after a while I spotted a large flock high in the trees.
They were quite mobile but Wayne did manage to make a count of seventeen different birds,photography was difficult to say the least with grim light and twigs and branches always in the way and disappointingly I could only manage some very poor "record" shots.

We saw the birds several times in the next hour or so and it looked as if the flock had split up into a few smaller groups and after a while we decided to move on to Cardiff Bay in search of the Black-necked Grebe.
We found the grebe off Windsor Quay just south of the A4232 road bridge and it showed well although a little too distantly for any really good photos and after a group of canoeists paddled past it quickly disappeared.
Wayne decided to depart and myself and Peter then crossed over to Penarth Marina where a change in the weather put paid to any hopes of catching up with the elusive Black Redstart,we moved on to Cosmeston Country Park hoping that the adult Bonaparte's Gull found in the morning may have returned but the weather was getting progressively worse and so we headed for home.
An enjoyable day out,good to catch up with both the Hawfinches and BNG and with patience and some decent weather it may be possible to get some much better photographs.

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