Sight to behold

In the June Issue of Bird Watching, one of your five to find was the Spoonbill, rated very scarce or rare, mostly seen in East Anglia, northwest and south-west England. This got me thinking.

I knew I had visited WWT Llanelli in September 2019 for a ‘High tide Event’; a quick search of my pictures and, yes, Spoonbills! They were a sight to behold and lovely to watch, the weather though was not: the event was an evening event and the weather was heavy, overcast and poor, regardless, we all enjoyed it.

Spoonbills seem to have moved more westerly than people may have thought. I attach some pictures I took that night, apologies for the quality; it was getting very dark and the light was very poor.

Ieuan Williams, Pembrokeshire

Vulture surprise

Wow! After reading the article about the Bearded Vulture in July’s issue, i never would have thought in a million years one would turn up in my hometown. I had seen a news report of a Bearded Vulture flying across the West Midlands and thought to myself, this can’t be true. One evening, I set off to Howden Moors ,where I met my other half, Mike, to start our eight mile hike where we came across a gentleman called Pete, who was a little bit lost, so we decided to stick together to find the vulture. After three hours of

Ed Hutchings asks if anyone else has noticed strange behaviour by their Blackbirds ( BW August issue). Our resident male now goes fishing regularly in our pond (if we don’t spot him), catching half-grown newts which he swallows with relish. I saw him take an adult newt which fought back, but I didn’t see the outcome of the battle because he took his prey into the bushes. I thought this was because he couldn’t get worms and other invertebrates as a result of the dry weather, but he is still fishing after we have had plenty of rain.

Sue Harris