Wales: Llangloffan Fen

To my disappointment, we didn’t find Saunders’s new Where to Watch Birds: Wales all that useful. For our purposes–not at all very hard-core this time around–the best approach was simply to go outside, walk to the coastal path, and wander up and down with our eyes open. It worked.

On one lovely afternoon we were, exceptionally, driving back to Penparc and decided to take a detour; the road led us just south of Castle Morris, where there suddenly appeared on the roadside a sign and a nice little parking pulloff.

Why not? Llangloffan turned out to be a lovely little area of marsh and riverine woods, entirely deserted and one of the birdiest spots we ran across in Wales. It has the further distinction of being wheelchair-accessible, most unlike our usual routes along the coast path. The boardwalk is wide and level, with a traction grid laid down to keep the planks from getting too slick.

We spent a couple of hours on the boardwalk loop, admiring the landscape and the plants, and growing more certain by the minute that this must, in the right season and at the right time of day, be outstanding birding.

The soggy trees had Marsh Tit and a noisy gang of Long-tailed Bushtits,

while the brushy edge between trees and phragmites produced the only Common Whitethroat of our trip.

We looked in vain for thrushes among the abundant guelder rose, but I’d bet that the first cold snap brings them in in numbers.

My favorite sighting of all was of an abundant and familiar bird, Dunnock. Normally shy when it isn’t singing, a juvenile of this somber accentor was out feeding on a mat of dried pond scum (for want of the correct terminus technicus), shuffling along like a drugged Song Sparrow.

No photo–least of all this one–does any bird justice, but you’ll have to believe me: this is a sweet creature, and I miss the days when they sang from the tips of our spruce trees in Germany.