Yesterday's upland birding session with Craig Constance brought about some nice migrants passing thru, starting off the day with a Juvi Merlin hunting over the moorland above the British, later picked up again as it flew over our parked car and flushed a flock of starlings off the road side! It continued to mob a Red Kite while heading south to the next mountain. Nothing great to show you photograph wise, only this very distance shot of it heading off in the distance. We also noted 2 Spotted Flycatcher, 1 Yellow Wagtail, 2 Redstart, 2 Wheatear and plenty of resident birds like Green Woodpecker, Buzzard, Kestrel (3), Raven and plenty of Stonechat fledglings. It's starting to get a little colder on the mountain now but still plenty of insect life and this Devils Coach Horse Beetle put on a good show walking across our path.

I visited Cefn Ila today also in search the Wasp Spider, previously introduced by local spider expert Mike Kilner. I was shocked however upon visiting to find that most of the pristine Wasp Spider habitat has since been lost and overshadowed by newly planted Trees and shrub. The site is run by the Woodland trust who've done a marvellous Job at planting a great variety of broad-leaf trees. No-doubt a wonderful woodland to come! But a shame to lose a fantastic spot for such an iconic species of Spider. I did however find plenty of the Spiders food with lots of Grasshoppers and Roesel's Bush Crickets (My favourite british cricket). Also at Cefn Ila were lots of Spotted Flycatchers near the Bee Hives / Orchard.

We've had some bad weather the last couple of days and with it, perhaps some chicks getting a little frightened by the wind and rain causing them to fledge early. As a result, I was tagged in a post on Facebook relating to a House Sparrow Chick that had fallen down their chimney.

Firstly they tried putting it back in the nest but it ended up falling down the chimney again so I stepped in and took on responsibility of the bird.

Ideally, I would have loved to have been able to just release the bird there and then to it's parents that were most likely in a hedgerow near by but, the bird wasn't quite ready to fledge and only just starting to flap its wings. With bad weather, I didn't want to expose it to the elements so I fed it myself for 2 days straight. It ate over 50 wax worms (Caterpillars) and lots of other supplements which really helped it grow and pushed it to the stage where it could fly from one side of the room to the other. During this time, I had been exposing the bird in a cage to my local House Sparrows to see what their reaction would be and it looked very positive with both male and female adult House Sparrows coming over to try and feed it. As soon as there was a break in the weather, I released the bird in my neighbours garden which has plenty of exotic plants and hedges for it to take refuge in while the house sparrow colony can get used to its call and hopefully take it on as one of their own. Having checked the next day, it looked like the chick had been taken to a new location as it was nowhere to be found. I'll be keeping an eye out for it in my local house sparrow colony and can only hope that it survives. There wasn't much else I could really do.

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Pontypool Uplands and Cefn Ila

House Sparrow Update