Sightings

Main sighting: Goshawk

Goshawk flying over grass verge/pathway about 20’ up and towards our car as we rounded a bend in wooded area between Usk and Llangybi.

Main sighting: Black Redstart

The male Black Redstart has returned to the Duckpool Road/Dean Street area of Newport for the third year in a row, though is a month earlier this year.

Main sighting: Barn owl

The 3 dead mute swans I reported over a week ago on the NRW line are still there with wildfowl amongst them, corvids feeding on them. En-route to hides – crows, 1 rook, blackbirds, song thrush, woodpigeons, house sparrows, gt spotted woodpecker, chaffinch, and a buzzard and heron in the first field. Hide 1 – plenty of activity with a pair of marsh harriers (females) hunting, 192 teal, 27 shoveler, 3 snipe, 115 wigeon, 52 lapwing, Canada geese, skylarks and 3 dunlin. Hide 2 – male kestrel calling, approx 500 starlings in the wet field amongst the sheep, magpies, moorhens, herring and black headed gulls, 2 common gulls over, raven, and a barn owl at 1050hrs hunting along the fence from hide 1 right up to the top corner, caught a rodent then flew in a straight line back beyond hide 1 and out of sight.

Main sighting: Marsh Harrier

Highlights of a morning visit to a very windy Goldcliff was 2-Marsh Harriers together and one of them later being mobbed by a Peregrine.Also a large flock of Starlings,400+,good numbers of Wigeon and Lapwings.

Main sighting: Seabirds

Watched for a couple of hours yesterday and today.
Yesterday the highlight was a distant Red Throated Diver down channel, this morning 9-11:30; 3 single Juv Kittiwake DC (1 close), an adult Little Gull dip feeding amongst Black Headed Gull and 2 Whooper Swan some way offshore heading DC. A 4th Juv Kittiwake came off the coarse fishing lake and headed across fields in the direction of Peterstone.

Main sighting: Rooks

Several pairs

Main sighting: Kingfisher

Two Kingfishers this morning – one on the top lake and one on the school pond. A Dipper on the top lake, displaced from its usual home by high water levels and another on the channel below the Whistle Inn bridge. Just two Goosanders. Flock of five Bullfinches at Whistle Road car park. Flock of some fifty Woodpigeons over.

Main sighting: Marsh Harriers

Good views of Male & Female @ 1600 hrs from the Red Barn hide, both settling to roost in thick scrub near the embankment.

Main sighting: Little Egret

Single egret on bank of Monnow @ 2 miles south of Pontrilas

Main sighting: Little Grebe

There was a Little Grebe diving amongst the bank vegetation just above the old Monnow Bridge this morning, about 1100, amongst the Mallard. Male Tufted Duck still there too.

Main sighting: Red Kite

Two Red Kites over Devauden at 1400 hrs heading east over woods.

Main sighting: Garganey

Probable female Garganey seen from the hide at Uskmouth.Photograph on gwent birders facebook.