Recent Wildlife Sightings 10th - 18th August
Highlights: Kingfisher, Wood Sandpiper, Garganey, Great Crested Grebe
Regular showers throughout the week pushed most invertebrates into hiding, while new life is still emerging, and some familiar favourites have been performing for visitors to admire.
Highlights: Kingfisher, Wood Sandpiper, Garganey, Great Crested Grebe
We were pleased to welcome visitors over the new bridge to Millennium Wetlands last Saturday, which meant we were able to open the Peter Scott Hide for the first time in several months. The wildlife has been greeting visitors back, with frequent fishing displays from the two male Kingfisher that fledged this year – right in front of the windows! Make sure to enter slowly and quietly if you want to catch a glimpse of this iconic wetland species taking acrobatic dives to catch fish.
As well as being able to see the Kingfisher perform, we've spotted some less common visitors to Deep Water Lake in the past few days. Up to six Great White Egret have been feeding in the shallows, alongside three Green Sandpiper stopping off on their passage journey south. We were excited to see the Great Crested Grebe pair have produced a second brood, seemingly without anyone noticing they had nested again! We now have another chance to see the baby grebes riding on the backs of their parents, being served up fresh fish by their own personal waiter.
Unusually, the Wood Sandpiper that arrived last week has been sticking around Freshwater Lagoon, and also popping over to Dafen Scrapes occasionally when it can't satisfy its hunger enough there. Visits by this species to our site have generally been quite short, typically a few days, but this bird is sensibly fuelling up as much as it can before it continues its journey back to Africa for the winter.
With return passage well underway, it wasn’t too much of a surprise to see two female Garganey on Dafen Scrapes this weekend. This elusive duck can be hard to see at the best of times as it often skulks around the edge of water bodies and ducks into reeds for cover, but females are a lot less striking than males, so picking them out from a sea of brown ducks can’t have been easy!
In the invertebrate world, a voracious Great Diving Beetle was scooped out of the water during Pond Dipping this week. Even fish aren't safe from this predator, with Stickleback being one of their favourite meals. Several Red Underwing moth, a species not often recorded in this area, have been spotted around our site this week. These large night-flyers mostly display their striking colours in flight, with their hindwings sporting wavy red and black stripes.
Featured Photo Credit: Jay Thomas
This is the last blog post of my placement here at WWT Llanelli, so thank you to anyone that has followed along or learnt anything new about the wildlife on our reserve. I've certainly learnt a lot writing these, and have had a very enjoyable time here. Thank you to fellow Intern Charlie Corby for filling in when I've been away, and to all the regular visitors and members of staff for providing us with sightings to write about. Ed Hearn, Reserve Intern 2024
