It’s a great moment when you hear that first cuckoo of Spring, and we heard our first way back on the 17th April. Of course while the first is a joy and a promise of better weather and new growth, it is now mid May and the pleasure has long since dissolved in the endless repetition. Our boredom with the cuckoo’s stupid song has a lot to do with knowing the unpleasant way it tricks other birds into bringing up its young. Its not a bird you can feel much empathy with. It seems that the cuckoo is becoming rarer and it’s a fact that last year we could hear three in the valley, whereas this year we have only been able to hear one until yesterday when we heard a second one for the first time this year.
Living right next to an RSPB reserve we do incredibly well for bird life in our garden and in the area. A pair of blackbirds have honoured us by nesting in the car port. I have to go in to get wood for the fire each morning and occasionally to start the car and drive it in or out. The hen and the cock appear to be taking it in turns to sit on the nest, with each doing a two day stint before handing over to the other. They have been sitting for about ten days, we’ll have to be very careful when the chicks are ready to leave the nest, and probably have to park the car on the drive for a while.
We often have a pied woodpecker on the bird feeders, like the raiding squirrels it often does some damage to the feeders, hammering the wire mesh in the process of getting peanuts, but somehow we don’t mind it as much as we do the grey squirrels! It is spending more time around the garden, it was drilling the telegraph pole at the corner of the garden this morning, when not near the garden it is machine gunning in the oak woods.
We were watching a raven’s nest a week or so ago, near to the Claerwen dam. We were hoping that the raven would return to it, when I realised that a cock peregrine was standing close to the nest. It flew lazily round the crags for a few minutes then we heard the hen calling. The peregrine flew off high into the sky then turned and came hurtling back towards the crags in a practice attack flight. Incredible speed, had there been a passing pigeon there would have been a feather explosion! I believe that they can hit 70mph in these attack dives.
Last year we followed the progress of a specific Osprey that was being tracked as part of a radio four series. We were delighted to hear that it was flying over our valley in its progress to its nesting site in Scotland. At the Visitor Centre the Elan Valley Wardens display a list of the birds that have been sighted in the valley, and this year the Osprey appears to have followed exactly the same route, appearing in the list this year again, this year on the 13th April. Other birds sighted this year include: great crested grebe, dippers, wheatears, Canada and greylag geese, redstarts, crossbills, Mandarin duck, ring ousel, and grasshopper warbler. The first chiffchaff noted was 22nd March, pied flycatcher and house martins – 8th April.
