Fungi and misty eyes

By the Thursday of our week in Wales, grey skies had finally given way to blue.

And not only meteorologically... as it was also St Valentine's Day.

Our Lass played an ace of a card, a wonderful mixture of wildlife and punning.
What's not to love?

We ventured north from the Gower Peninsula to Llandeilo in the Tywi valley. On the outskirts of the town lies Dinefwr Park, a National Trust property consisting of Newton House, a ruined castle, parkland and a Wildlife Trust woodland reserve.

In the damp woodlands, there was a plethora of mosses, lichens and fungi. All mysteriously unknown to us except for this Scarlet Elf Cup.

Walking through some of the parkland, I had a moment of perfect syzygy with history and some White Park cattle.

camera - cow - castle

We clambered up to the castle and stood on the battlements looking out over the valley of the River Tywi.

Did I mention it had been raining?

The next day we reluctantly left the lovely cottage where we had been staying (Many Thanks to Phillipa and David) and headed over towards the border with England. We stopped off for lunch at Dyffryn Gardens, another NT property, and spent a pleasant afternoon wandering around the many garden 'rooms'. Whilst there were few plants in flower at this time of year, the layout of the garden was interesting, with something new to see around every corner. I was particularly taken by these reflected ripples...

though I couldn't decide whether it was a deliberate effect or a fortuitous accident.

For the next two nights we were staying at a B+B near Chepstow. On opening the curtains on the first morning, we discovered a covering of frost and thick fog. As the sun rose, these melted away leaving an ethereal scene in the valley below.

After a leisurely stroll around the area, we drove across to Newport Wetlands, an RSPB reserve on the edge of the Severn estuary, which we had visited for the first time last October. Here, too, the mist and fog rolled in and out all afternoon, lending much to the magical atmosphere and creating different vistas through the channels and reedbeds. Even the neighbouring power station wasn't immune to the landscape drama.

Positive and negative voltages

That evening we dined at the Piercefield Inn, a pub/restaurant just across the road from Chepstow race course. Coincidentally, there was a large chalkboard detailing the provenance of all their local produce - definitely no horse burgers!

The trip home at the end of the holiday was punctuated with a visit to Slimbridge, the WWT reserve on the banks of the River Severn. For a predominantly wet week in February, this pushed our final bird species total up to 89, though of course the primary reason for the visit was a roast lunch.

Actually, no, at that point the total was 88. It wasn't until we were firmly back in England, and most of the way home, before we saw our one and only Red Kite of the holiday.

Long time, no see

For the budding odonatologist, no visit to the Gower Peninsula would be complete without a visit to the Broad Pool area to search for damsels and dragons. And so it was that, on Sunday morning, we ventured out of Swansea in appreciably sunnier weather, to try our luck in this sweet spot.

A brisk north easterly breeze was still much in evidence, as was a distinct lack of water bodies. Only Broad Pool itself was holding water, suggesting that there's been precious little rain in these parts or some of the previously-visited ponds were rather ephemeral.

As you can probably guess, these two facts added together meant that we didn't even see a single damsel. Oh dear.

Plan B was the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust reserve at Llanelli, with plenty of photo opportunities and a guaranteed tea shop, it was almost a Plan A+. I must admit to being a bit of a grouch about the "zoo" parts of some of the WWT sites, though they do bring people and wildlife into close proximity. I guess this is a good thing if it inspires the next generation of natural historians. And anyway, I still couldn't resist a pic of one of the recently-fledged Shelducklings. What a hypocrite!

However, even in the "zoo", there's proper wild wildlife. Which bit of Nature could resist suitable habitat when it's served up on a plate? Mind you, it isn't as easy to photograph, as this tiny Goldcrest  proved.

 

Moving on to the Millennium Wetlands, we were delighted to see a large flock of Black-tailed Godwits, with several Dunlin in attendance. We would have missed the male Garganey hunkered down on an island, if a kindly birder hadn't pointed him out. By now it was rather warm, and out of the wind there were little sun traps that had us switching on our odo radar. I spotted a damselfly fluttering overhead and we followed it to a grassy bank with nettles and other suitable cover. Our lass pointed out a group of 4 mature Large Red Damsels and as we got our eye in, we found a few immature Azure Damsels too. This was more like it. Still smarting from my previous blank year, I commented that what I really needed my eagle-eyed companion to find was a big yellow one. This a reference to my missing out on Broad-bodied Chaser for the whole of 2009. The words were barely out of my mouth, when she indicated the bramble thicket to my left and said, "What? Like that one?"

Cue much hugging and kissing, before I regained my composure and remembered to take a photograph. We also found a few Blue-tailed Damselflies and two Hairy Dragonflies on our wander around the lakes and ponds. In a month or so, it really will be a cracking site for Odonata and certainly justifies being added to our list of "When in South Wales...".