News from North Wales

Hi all
Just a couple of observations and updates from an (happily) exiled ex Halifax naturalist.I keep an eye on the Calderdale blog and it’s great to see it going from strength to strength with some excellent posts everyday now. Here in North Wales the birds I rarely saw or thought that they were scarce at best, are around in huge numbers, Birds such as raptors, ravens, choughs are so common place that you have to keep reminding yourself that in much of Britain they are scarce or declining, its very easy to get blasé about it all if you are not careful.

One species that seems to be bucking the national trend, and a bird I was very familiar from a young age back in Calderdale is the House Sparrow which is around in huge numbers still on the Llyn Peninsula. Having done a spot of “farm sitting” for the last couple of weeks ( also Yorkie exiles) its not hard to spot why House Sparrows are around in the numbers I remember from my childhood in the late 50’s and early 60’s in Calderdale. The farm I was looking after has a series of old stone stables which now house goats, donkeys and sheep as well as stored hay and straw. Each morning I would get up to go and tend to the animals before it was light and as I switched on the lighting in each stable dozens of roosting House Sparrows would start chattering and flying out of the buildings. Given that this one small farm of 27 acres has a large resident House Sparrow population it’s not hard to see that by multiplying that by the hundreds of similar small farms on the Llyn the sparrow population must be huge. Because most of the farms also have extensive old stabling and barns then the potential nesting sites on offer (as well as the farm houses themselves) is massive. I usually have large numbers of House Sparrows at the feeding station by the van and it’s been nice to watch the youngsters from this year gradually moulting into adult plumage.

Most British finch species are around in large numbers due to the old fashioned low intensity family farming carried out on the Llyn. Much of the winter food for the livestock is grown on the farm so lots of seed is left lying around before and after its harvest. Given the huge number of small farms there are also lots opportunities for small birds to forage around the farms themselves in winter for food. Obviously given the size of the finch and thrush population the raptors are around in huge numbers to feed on this large food source.Because we also have a huge number of hedges here around most of the fields which are tiny by current agricultural standards then the potential feeding, roosting and nesting sites are also large. Although the area is extensively shot for the pot, rabbits, pheasants, duck etc, predators such as raptors, stoats, weasels etc are in the main left alone in my experience with no illegal killing of raptors being reported to my knowledge. Foxes, crows and magpies are shot on sight by just about everyone here because of predation on free range chickens chicks and eggs and also maybe surprisingly, simply because people like to think they are removing threats to song birds nests. Ravens, Jays and Jackdaws are left well alone and not persecuted. Even with all this pressure on crows they still thrive in healthy numbers on the Llyn. For example I personally know of 150+ crows bagged in one session when four people where shooting wood pigeons on some stubble last month. The crows were coming in faster than the pigeons and being shot in larger numbers than Woodies (only 105 of them) but were still flooding in when the shooters packed up

My feeding station is alive with birds from dawn to dusk each day and it being around 6 feet from my office window in the van means I get some superb views of birds all day long whilst working. Badgers have moved into a sett near the van so sadly all the hedgehogs we had coming to the garden have either been scoffed by the badgers of left for safer pastures. Bertie the buzzard still pops down periodically to see if I have chucked out any chicken carcasses for him but he or she tends to spend the whole day around the feeding station I set up for buzzards in the winter months when I usually have a ready supply of game carcasses and dead crows and magpies for the feeding station.

Just off for a couple of hours break from work and will work my way down the coast to Morfa Nefyn and the golf course to see what birds are around and if any dolphins or porpoises are showing off shore this fine sunny morning. I shall round the walk off in a local cafe with a bacon buttie and glean all the local gossip from Albi & Val the owners before coming back home to some more work....its hard life here on the Llyn but you have to push yourself to keep going :-)