Despite it now being light enough for me to get out before work and for a little time after, my garden has been the focus of most of my attention day to day in the natural history department. It’s probably the novelty, mixed with being busy and a dash of laziness. But my garden has…
Having spent too much time in from of a laptop crunching incubation data this weekend, I decided it was time to finally plant the crocuses my girlfriend bought about two weeks ago; since that time they have languished in the shade of the kitchen, next to the pot they were destined for. Apart from the…
Last Sunday morning I sat with a runny nose and a wheezy chest, watching a blackbird and a robin searching for fat-ball scraps on the lawn. Yes, I joined in with the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch. Tallying up the visitors to the garden while with a cup of tea, and preferably a bacon sandwich, is…
Well I’m off the starting blocks with two visits to my patch for Patchwork Challenge (PWC) 2015. On the first visit I bagged 33 species which is not bad for a visit to this site! This weekend I ventured out, feeling a little under the weather, and notched up a further three. These 36 give me…
The earth has passed an arbitrary point on its orbit around our sun – it must be the New Year! For birders, with the dawning of a new year comes the resetting of the year list. Your local birding patch becomes invigorated as all species once again become firsts – at least for given value…
This week I completed a task I’ve been putting off for a while – totalling up the results for the 2014 swallow season at Cardiff Riding School. This season will go down in personal history for two reasons. Firstly, although it was my 9th season studying this population it was my first as an MPhil…
As we made our way to our ringing site, walking over dried, cracked earth, it was hard to believe that one of our target species made its living here. For a couple of weeks for the last few winters I have been part of a small research team led by, James Vafidis and Rob Thomas,…
I like exploring islands and during a week’s holiday to Guernsey with my girlfriend I had the opportunity to explore more! On our first day we found ourselves overlooking a small island off Guernsey’s west coast. As I constantly repeated how much I’d like to go to this little rock, like a petulant child, Alex…
Recently I found myself once again speeding towards Flat Holm Island for a weekend of bird ringing. Unlike the last visits, we were not after gull chicks but targeting the islands smaller birds. Landing on the island late afternoon, the first thing that struck me was the noise, or more precisely the lack of it.…
At this time of year, birds that have made the UK their home during the summer are packing their proverbial bags for the journey south. Over at Cardiff Riding School the “resident” swallows are joined by others of their kind but at this time of year it is the species visiting the paddocks that begin to interest…
The garden snail Cornu aspersum is a well known member of our wildlife. It was with some surprise that I read a tweet by the South East Wales Biodiversity Records Centre (SEWBReC for short). They are featuring the common garden snail as their August #Speciesofthemonth, as they hold fewer than 500 records for this ubiquitous muncher of…
Lying a mere 8km south of Cardiff, more or less in the middle of the Severn Estuary, Flat Holm just doesn’t receive the attention of other Welsh islands such as Skomer, Skokoholm, and Bardsey. This is a shame as its more urban setting gives it a uniqueness compared to the others. Despite being close to the Capital, the 32ha island…
There are few species that can polarise people in the way urban gulls can. Noisy, messy and a nuisance are the norm for most when asked about these colonisers of conurbations. Although I appreciate that they do cause people problems, as someone who’s research interests include urban bird ecology I find it difficult not to…
I’ve wanted to use Raspberry Pi in my MPhil research for a while. So, being a new comer to it all, I’ve decided to keep it simple and try to use the R-Pi NOIR camera module to examine nest attendance; both during the incubation and chick rearing stages. Before deploying it properly a test run at a swallow nest in which the young haven’t long…
With a busy indoor day ahead of me, there was nothing for it but to slip out early for a short stroll . My destination was the short stretch of the old Glamorganshire Canal as it runs through the grounds of Cardiff Castle. In its hey day the Glamorganshire Canal was a busy and important piece of…
Rich Facey 