There is a moment in Wild America when James Fisher suddenly stops and notices what he has been missing: There are, he writes, no noisy colonial landbirds in America. And he was right;Europe enjoys nearly a surfeit of crows, a wide diversity of species exploiting virtually every habitat, and most of them so confident in their relationship to man as to be viewed generally with mistrust. For the birder, though, the rich corvid landscape is a highlight of any visit to western Europe.

Alison and I were especially eager to find Red-billed Chough, a rare and declining small crow that breeds on the cliffs of Pembrokeshire. And sure enough, a single individual dived over our heads at Trefin, giving that harsh sh’rring screech that gives these birds their (not entirely fitting) name. Common Ravens lived up to their epithet, too, on the coastal cliffs, honking and croaking as they played on the winds.

It was a very good corvid show all around, with Black-billed Magpies among the commonest of roadside birds

and Carrion Crows at every woodland edge. Western Jackdaws patrolled the lawns and churchyards,

and joined the mixed flocks of larids and Rooks on the fields.

Of all this corvid diversity, it was the Rooks that fascinated most with their odd, baggy-pants walk on the ground, their grating calls, and their occasional fits of acrobatic exuberance.

Alison and I were fortunate enough to spend the week after this year’s British Bird Fair in Pembrokeshire, right on the coast of the Irish Sea. We stayed in Penparc, halfway between Fishguard and St. David’s, and spent our time walking a tiny fraction of the 186 miles of coastal path, birding, and enjoying the sites on this my first visit to Wales.

Birding was relaxed, with less to be seen than hoped. But the landscapes and seascapes we enjoyed on our walks were nothing short of spectacular, incredibly green fields and hills dropping off as breath-taking cliffs. Some of the warning signs did little to soothe the worries of an acrophobe:

This one made me laugh each time I saw it–and step carefully back from the too-close edge….

If birds were sparse, the flowers and insects were dazzling. This one, David tells me, is called ragged robin, a wonderful name for a wonderful plant.

Heather was dense on the steeper hills.

The only purpler flower was this sturdy specimen, its name unknown to me so far:

All of this nectar was irresistible to the insects, even to insects in spe:

This 2-inch morsel was on–literally and dangerously on–the coastal path; I wonder what weird and wonderful moth eventually results.

We didn’t look much at butterflies, but some were hard to resist. This enchanting creature is named, somewhat disappointingly, the Wall Brown.

One of the most conspicuous leps in Europe is the Io Peacock, and it never fails to elicit gasps of admiration.

But what stopped us in our tracks every day were the bumblebees, beautiful, sluggish tigers drowsing in the flowers of a cold morning.