Sunday, 4 November 2012

Pennard - Black Redstart

Saturday night was a booking with the Gwent OS doing the 'identity crisis' talk and local birder Rob Parsons put me up for the night (cheers Rob!) I stayed down there with hopes of something 'good' turning up before I popped over to Swansea to see Gemma - and no doubt buy her a Nandos??

I spent an hour or at Cosmeston with decent numbers of wildfowl on the west lake, a Bittern not showing before I checked the local Gwent bird sightings..... Hmm, a Black Redstart was showing 'well' at Pennard cemetary. Problem was, where's Pennard? never mind the cemetary!!

Satnav indicated it was on the Gower - blimey - only 5 miles or so from where Gemma lives - I was off.....

Pennard seemed to be a collection of houses but there was a church - which happened to have a small cemetary :-)



A quick recce in the 'old' graveyard section revealed just what I was looking for!  Problem was rain was starting to fall and even worse my battery gave up :-(




Sheltering from the rain and with it being Sunday,  - I discovered the power of the lord! :-) :-)




Then it was back to business -  this really was a showy bird!




Hunkered down in the strong breeze....



Using the gravestones as a launch pad for catchinhg flies with an audible 'snap'!



It really was close on occasions, amazingly flying down at me feet to catch some unfortunate bug!




More of the same.....




Excuse the indulgence, these moments don't happen very often....




... and not another birder in sight for the 90 mins I was there!






This rear/side view -  always a nice angle with the tail showing nicely....




Eventually, having passed on lunch (Rob's fry up kept me going all day!) the lure of Nando's was too great. mmmmm