sorry it's been a while...

....the weather's been poor and we haven't done much in the way of wildlife watching.

However, yesterday my husband and I went to our local sea front haunt of Porthcawl, here in South Wales. We did some sea watching for about 45 minutes. All was quiet, tide was out and the sea was choppy in the wind. It was very overcast. Then through the telescope we spotted a Manx Shearwater ! Very distant. We took turns looking through the telescope and each time we both found more and more Manx Shearwaters passing through. Eventually one came quite close, enough for me to get record shots of it....

It was great to observe these birds, especially when not seen very often or when one hasn't seen any for a long time. They have a distanict flight pattern over the surface of the sea, almost like they are creating a wavy line. Manxies plumage is black above and white underparts.

After the sea watch we visited a local inland pool. Here we saw a family of Mute Swans with 6 Cygnets,  and another family with 7 Cygnets were on another nearby pool too.

On return to the car to come home, we walked through a play area where the grass surrounding it had recently been cut. There were several Barn Swallows and House Martins zooming around feeding on insects above the grass. Then our attention was taken to five Barn Swallows resting on a type of zip wire play equipment. They were a family of 5 ; 2 adults and 3 newly fledged young. The young are much paler in colour and they had the obvious gape - part of the bill. And of course were waiting to be fed. Here's some of that action !