The wildlife of Bluestone, Pembrokeshire - March 2016

From 21st March 2016 we stayed for a few days at Bluestone National Park Resort, Narberth, Pembrokeshire. It's a fantastic place to get away from it all and a great place to spot wildlife. It is surrounded by woodland and has it's own large lake. We were lucky enough to have a lakeside lodge and even from our window we were confronted by an abundance of wildlife.

Monday 21st March 2016
We arrived late afternoon, but already had a number of birds flying around our lodge...

Male blackbird singing a beautiful song in a nearby tree.

Moorhen foraging on the grass

We came prepared with some bird seed and mealworm and placed some on the balcony of our lodge. It wasn't long before we had visitors like this blue tit...

...and this male chaffinch.

Being nature lovers we were so excited to see birds so close, we couldn't wait to go to bed and wake up the next day to see what else would visit us :)

The sun setting over the lake (this was the view from our lodge) x

Tuesday 22nd March 2016
We woke up nice and early and looked out of our bedroom window to see what the weather was like. It was a bit overcast, but wasn't raining! There were already several birds on the picnic table outside...

Male sparrow waiting for his breakfast

We put some meal worm on the picnic table and it wasn't long before we had a crowd of them:
Blue tits, chaffinches & sparrows 

Then the big boys arrived, starlings...

...and jackdaws

But they seemed to feed nicely together, here they are looking at me
"Hey, we are running low here!"

We watched them for ages and a new face showed up...this adorable Great Tit

In the resort there are a few different walking routes, including a marked nature trail. So we managed to drag ourselves away from our feathered friends and went exploring.

The nature walk goes through deciduous woods, over streams and along boardwalks. There was lots of bird life, but the weather was a bit grey so we couldn't get many good photos. We continued following the numbered trail and saw two small birds flying in and out of trees. Upon closer inspection they were in fact a pair of Goldcrests. We couldn't believe it and they started doing a repetitive mating dance that lasted 10 minutes (you can see part of it in the video below).

A pair of Goldcrest perform a mating dance

Such beautiful birds and seeing them so close and doing such a wonderful display made our day. They eventually flew off and we continued our walk along the path which eventually reached one of Bluestone's eateries 'Camp Smokey'. We stopped for some refreshments and were greeted by a friendly robin. Dan was amused with the setting, this is where the zip wire activity takes place and he thought he was in Ewok territory 'Endor' (Star Wars fans will get this lol)

Camp Smokey

Friendly Robin

Endor?

We continued back on the trail, which lead us up higher into the woods - we reached a pathway with trees either side and remembered that last year in May they were full of bluebells, but we were here too soon this year. Once again we were greeted by an even friendlier robin and also a blackbird singing a lovely song.

The trees without bluebells March 2016

The trees with bluebells May 2015

Lovely, friendly robin

A singing blackbird

It was a lovely little nature trail and we made our way back to our lodge, as soon as we got there we already had a few birds waiting for us...

...including this Blue Tit...

...male Chaffinch...

...and this lovely Great Tit.

Wednesday 23rd March 2016
On our third day in Bluestone we had two new visitors outside our lodge: a pied wagtail and song thrush. We decided to walk a bit further out of the resort and into Canaston Woods, which is accessible from the resort.

Pied wagtail in a nearby tree

A Song Thrush looking for worms.

One of the ways out of the resort and into Canaston Woods.

It was a lovely walk around the woods and we saw a number of birds including a gorgeous buzzard sitting in a tree, we also saw numerous amounts of fungi and found these other interesting things...

Buzzard sitting in a tree

A big pellet full of bones near where the buzzard was hunting

A fox (?) skull

King Alfred's Cakes fungi

Some weird orange slime fungi

Lovely snowdrops in flower

The weather was grey and cold, so we finished our walk quite soon. We stopped to visit the castle on the way back - Castle Coch dates back to the 14th century and surrounded by trees from Canaston Woods. Again we could hear lots of bird life, but the bad lighting prevented any photos.

Castell Coch

Castell Coch

Thursday 24th March 2016
This day was a bit of a wash out, it rained almost all of the day. We did however see a few birds: a Cormorant on the lake, a Long Tailed Tit in the nearby bushes and a Carrion Crow in the grass.

Carrion Crow foraging in the grass

Cormorant on the lake

Long Tailed Tit in the bushes outside the lodge
(sorry about the photo, it was taken through a rather wet window)

A soaking bird on the balcony :(

In the evening the rain eventually eased off and we went for a bite to eat at the King's Tafarn, came second in the pub quiz then went looking for frogs, newts and toads. Armed with a torch, we couldn't believe the amount of toads next to the lodges - Bluestone is primarily a no car zone and people travel around in buggies - we lost count of how many times we stopped buggies and pointed out toads were crossing!

The toads were out in force and lots were mating, including a pair on our doorstep! We also saw lots of Palmate Newts, but no frogs.

Mating Common Toads on the path outside the lodge
(look at the size difference between male and female)

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More mating Common Toads - Two's company, three's a crowd!

A posing Common Toad giving the 'don't mess with me' look

Palmate newt crossing the road

Another Palmate newt

...and here's another pair :)

We were so happy we saw so many toads and newts, they seem to be thriving in Bluestone and hopefully we saved a few potential road kills.


Friday 25th March 2016
So today was our last day staying at the resort, it was a completely different day than yesterday and the sun was finally shining. We had to check out quite early so we had one more walk around the lake before we made our way to Stackpole (this will be my next blog). This is what we saw on our last day...

The view from our window

One of the paths down to the lake

A Dunnock & Song Thrush seeking out juicy worms

The Toads were still at it! - Underwater, you can see the size difference!

A Mallard chilling out

A Herring Gull on top of our lodge bidding us goodbye.

Our stay at Bluestone was wonderful, we saw so much wildlife without even leaving the lodge. When we did leave the lodge we were treated to birds like buzzards and goldcrests. I would recommend Bluestone to anyone who loves nature and just wants to get away from the hustle and bustle of city life. We will definitely be back :)

Ponds at Night at Parc Slip

On 8th April 2015 we ventured to Parc Slip to do an evening pond watch. The walk was at 8.30pm and seeing as we got there an hour early we parked up and went for a stroll around the reserve. The sun was setting and it looked like it was going to be a lovely evening

Brian the badger with the sun setting behind him

We made our way to the north hide to see what bird activity was around, the beautiful sunset was turning the water a lovely pink colour and there were a number of moorhens and coots on the water. Two Canada geese were strolling on the grass to the left of the scrape and we could see another bird beyond them. With my binoculars I managed to make out that it was a lapwing - our first lapwing sighting of 2015! The lighting wasn't great, but Dan managed to get an awesome pic with his Canon SX50 at full zoom :)

Other creatures that weren't so hard to photograph were the beautiful Highland Cattle. They belong to a local farmer and are kept in this field to improve the habitat for the lapwing by grazing and keeping the turf short. The lapwings prefer the land like this for breeding and the bugs from the cattle manure will be a good source of food for the chicks.

The view from the North hide.

A solo lapwing at full zoom and a very long way away (photo by @danturner23)

One of the highland cattle (photo by @danturner23)

The time was getting on so we started making our way back to the visitor centre. On the way we passed a field full of sheep and lambs and were amused that the lambs were jumping on and off their mum. We also saw a number of small ponds and just happened to spot a great crested newt in one of them. This is the first time I had seen a newt in ages and I knew that the evening was going to be great.

Lambs and their poor mum

Great Crested Newt (photo by @danturner23)

Back at the visitor centre we met our Wildlife Trust guide - a lovely girl called Beth Hopkins and we were joined by another six people. After a quick introduction we were offered torches and we made our way to the first pond behind the visitor centre.

It wasn't long before we were seeing all sorts of pond life: newts, sticklebacks, giant diving beetles and caddisfly larvae - these were really cool. The caddisfly are like architects, using their own silk and whatever they can find to build ornate cases to protect the larvae.

Pond behind the visitor centre

Stickleback and newts

Caddisfly larva in it's DIY protective case

Happy with what we documented here we made our way to the next pond, passing Brian the badger on the way. We couldn't see much activity in the ponds near the front of the visitor centre but the deeper we went into the reserve the more we started to see. We had to be careful where we were stepping because there were newts and toads on the path.

There were alot of deep streams on the side of the paths which were full of activity, one of them had at least four palmate newts in it.

A male toad on the path

One of the streams near the path

Palmate newts in a stream

Close up of a palmate newt

We kept walking around the reserve at a slow pace with just our torches for light. We stopped at any body of water to see what we could find and there wasn't many that didn't have some kind of pond life in them.

I was getting some lovely photos too with newts resting on the surface of the water, including these photos below of a palmate and great crested newt where you are able to see the beautiful bright orange belly.

Palmate Newt

Great Crested Newt

I was extremely interested when I came across a sign containing information about the glow worm - Parc Slip have laid rocks and logs here so that the glow worm can hibernate over winter. It would be so lovely to see a glow worm - I have never seen one in South Wales before.

Not far from here we came across another small male toad with beautiful markings...but this was nothing compared to the beast we encountered a few metres away. It was one of the biggest toads I have ever seen and was a female too - she was awesome, even though she was extremely warty and not very colourful.

Glow worm information

Male toad with beautiful markings - you can tell a male from his 3 black toes

The beast of a female toad - females tend to be larger and more warty than the males

After walking around for over an hour we started to head back to the visitor centre. We were still seeing newts and toads all over the place, we even had to stop while Beth picked up a Great Crested Newt from the middle of the path and placed it back on the grass. She explained that she had a special licence that allowed her to handle these newts. Great Crested Newts are a protected species: the animals, eggs and breeding sites are protected by law and anyone found disturbing them or damaging their habitats would face imprisonment and a £5,000 fine.

The rescued newt in Beth's hand...

...and then safely released into the undergrowth

We had a fantastic time on this pond watch, it was so interesting to see and learn all about these fantastic amphibians. We didn't get to see any frogs unfortunately but seeing the newts made up for it. We have done other walks in Parc Slip including a bat walk and I highly recommend anyone taking part in one of these events. They are a great way to learn and witness nature and with a suggested donation of only £2 per person it's not expensive either. I can't wait to do another one very soon.

Great Crested Newt I spotted on the way back to the visitor centre

Click here for all of the cool events that the Wildlife Trust offers in South and West Wales

Directions to Parc Slip...