Nature Therapy

“He who fees a hungry animal feeds his own soul.” – Charlie Chaplin I’m not a fan of cities. I find the crowds, the noise and the fast pace of life here a rather overwhelming and unpleasant experience. Fortunately even in the heart of the concrete jungle there are still little pockets or nature to…

A very special encounter

I have encountered something rather special this week, a chance encounter a creature extinct in the UK for hundreds of years and only recently reintroduced to a few secluded waterways across the country. The eurasian beaver was once widespread in Britain until, in the 16th century intensive hunting for its fur, meat and oily secretions…

WWT Llanelli revisited

It has been several years since I first visited Llanelli Wildfowl and Wetland Trust and the world has changed rather a lot since then. The horror of the covid pandemic is largely forgotten, now just a distant memory but now the wetland centre here faces a brand new challenge, bird flu. As this infectious disease…

Tangarreg pools revisited

With a couple of days off work combined with gorgeous clear skies it felt like the perfect opportunity to revisit a local hide to get stuck in to some bird photography. The hides at Tangarreg pool allow you to observe a variety of garden and woodland birds and the opportunity to photograph them up close…

A charm of goldfinches

As work on transforming the bare garden into a wildlife friendly haven continues, the addition of a bird feeding station is the latest project which has been keeping me occupied in recent weeks. There was one bird in particular I was especially keen to entice, my favourite of all our british birds the stunning goldfinch….

Blackbird in the bathroom

There is a lot of bird life in our new neighbourhood and many homes which own several cats, ours included. I always find myself very torn by the debate about outdoor cats and their affect on wildlife, as cat owner and bird lovers it’s always a heartbreaking moment when one brings home the latest victim…

Growing pains

This summer I enjoyed one of the most rewarding encounters with some of my favourite birds, the often underappreciated mallard ducks. The journey began with a chance encounter with a newly hatched brood of eight mallard ducklings… I first encountered the ducklings at just a few hours old when they were tiny and extremely vulnerable….

Sighting: Otter

The otter has always been one of my favourite creatures, but being such an elusive animal and still relatively rare here in the UK, I never expected to see one in the wild. That was until reports began to surface on local wildlife groups of a new resident on the nearby waterways. As more and…

Winter waders

Winter is a great time to see migrant birds here on the coast of Aberystwyth. Birds such as turnstones who arrive here from their homes in the northern Canada and Greenland, to enjoy the relative warmth of our shores until spring returns to the Arctic Circle. A turnstone in winter/non-breeding plumage I don’t have to…

Sighting: Wren

The wren is the most common breeding bird in the UK with an estimated 8.5 million birds. Unsurprisingly then, you can find wrens just about anywhere from farms and woodlands to our gardens and urban spaces. I last saw a wren down in the harbour ‘gap’ a few years ago, but after several months this…

Deja vu

Bird photography often requires a lot of patience and many hours of sitting in silence, hardly moving, sometimes in the freezing cold or in some pretty uncomfortable situations and even then you are rewarded with nothing but a fleeting glimpse of your subject. Sometimes however you have a lucky break and the wildlife literally wanders…

World Kindness Day

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” ― Mahatma Gandhi As today is World Kindness Day what better way to spend the morning than to spread a little kindness myself by feeding the local bird population. I have a particular affection for the…