Days lengthen incrementally and as the new year dawns, nature contemplates the next generation. The shoots of garden daffodils are already emerging and Rooks in the village hang around the remains of last year’s nests, guarding them from other pairs, if not from winter gales yet to blow. Above the Dysynni, the expressive “kronk” of Ravens rings across the valley as a pair fly in close formation, mimicking each other’s moves before one drops away and barrel-rolls above an oakwood whose lichen-crusted limbs twist skyward but canopy twigs never touch. Ravens will lay eggs in the second half of February, so now they reinforce the pair-bond and find broken branches to build up a nest that may have been decades in use, by multiple generations. When their chicks fledge, the oaks will be clothed in green from which Pied Flycatchers and Redstarts sing.

Remarkably, several Pied Flycatchers have been reported in the southern half of Wales in December, including one in Gwent that had been ringed in Meirionnydd’s Artro Valley in spring 2024. A male Ring Ouzel, another summer visitor, fed along a track in the Carneddau on Boxing Day, while a Common Sandpiper on the Clwyd estuary is less surprising: around 20 winter on Welsh coasts.

Arctic air brought geese from the east. European White-fronted Geese were recorded more widely than usual, including a handful in North Wales: one at RSPB Conwy and two each at RSPB Cors Ddyga and on the Clwyd estuary, where 600 Pink-footed Geese feed.
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Surf Scoters remain off Old Colwyn and Black Rock Sands, two Snow Buntings and a Water Pipit at Gronant, and the Great Orme’s Shorelark was refound. A Long-tailed Duck is on the Inland Sea and a Twite was at the entrance to nearby Penrhos Coastal Park, while Scaup were in Foryd Bay and on Shotwick Lake. Black Redstarts were at Kinmel Bay and Tywyn.

Finding a calm and dry weather window to make the December visit to my BTO Winter Bird Survey above Conwy has been a challenge, but it was wonderful to hear the chatty, bubbling subsong of Redwings when I did. You may be familiar with the high-pitched “tseep” calls made by these thrushes as they migrate at night, but fewer hear the song associated with their taiga breeding habitat in the Arctic. Friday’s sunshine prompted some enthusiasm for next spring. Afterwards, a scan of Conwy Bay revealed almost 250 Red-throated Divers, also seeking refuge from northern ice, and many dozens of Razorbills, unusual here in midwinter.

Other winter refugees included seven Slavonian Grebes and six Great Northern Divers in Beddmanarch Bay and Inland Sea, a Long-tailed Duck at Llyn Penrhyn, at least one Surf Scoter off Old Colwyn and several Velvet Scoters off Pensarn. A Black Redstart is at Point Lynas and a Scaup in Foryd Bay, while a Firecrest foraged at RSPB Conwy and a Red-necked Grebe in Holyhead harbour at the weekend.

Meanwhile, Swifts that scream over our villages in ever-diminishing numbers feed somewhere high over central African rainforests. Swift supporters in Wales reacted angrily to Welsh Government’s rejection of a proposal to require new buildings to incorporate hollow “Swift brick” nest sites, backed by North Wales Wildlife Trust and RSPB Cymru among others. Senedd members pushed again for action during the Committee stage of new Welsh environmental legislation last week, as MSPs voted in favour of mandatory legislation in Scotland.
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To celebrate the first anniversary of Cudyll Cymru, BTO Cymru’s raptor monitoring initiative is inviting people to its inaugural Wales Raptor Convention at Aberystwyth on 31 January. Topics include plans for the reintroduction of White -tailed Eagle, raptor monitoring in the uplands, a workshop on identification of birds of prey and a talk by the National Wildlife Crime Unit. Tickets are just £10, available from the BTO website.

As the Daily Post is not published on Christmas Day, this is the last BirdNotes until the New Year, so my opportunity to thank readers for their comments, and especially the photographers who have kindly let me use their images during 2025. I wish you all a peaceful and enjoyable break if you have one, and good birding in 2026.

A colour-ringed Purple Sandpiper at Cemlyn on Sunday is the same one seen in the Anglesey bay last winter, having been ringed in June 2024 at Nidingens bird observatory, an island off southwest Sweden. Only a handful of ringed Purple Sandpipers have moved between Sweden and Britain, and this is the first to Wales. It almost certainly spent the intervening summers in Svalbard, the Norwegian island archipelago north of the Arctic Circle, since that is where most Purple Sandpipers ringed at Nidingens go to breed.

Ringing provides valuable information on breeding success, survival rates and other data to inform conservation, but movements are the most immediately fascinating. The latest Ringing Report from the British Trust for Ornithology, to be published in the forthcoming 2024 Welsh Bird Report, includes a Dunlin that winters in the Menai Strait which was recaught by a ringer in Estonia in August; a Sandwich Tern chick ringed at Cemlyn that was found sick at a Congolese wetland later that autumn; and a Pied Flycatcher ringed as a chick in Denbighshire’s Ceiriog Valley in 2015 that was bred in a wood south of Welshpool in 2024, making it one of the oldest British Pied Flycatchers on record. The report’s most bizarre record is a Red Kite from Ceredigion, ringed as a chick in 1998, whose legs were displayed in a Sussex antique shop last year labelled as a racing pigeon… What story lies behind this?

Ringers train for years to ensure the birds’ welfare is paramount, but we can all contribute to the collected knowledge by reporting colour-ringed birds and checking dead birds for leg rings, mindful of current advice to avoid handling birds with bare skin.