Supreme Welsh Birds

Today I took 4 English friends out birding on my home patch which includes parts of Ceredigion and Montgomeryshire and we saw an excellent variety of Welsh birds ranging from Ospreys (4 birds), buzzard, kite, goshawk, hen harrier (male & female), red grouse. Amongst the warbler species we had wood, willow, garden, reed, sedge, grasshopper, chiffchaff, blackcap. Woodland birds were pied flycatcher, redstart, treecreeper, nuthatch, gt.spotted woodpecker. On the upland 'Ffridds' we had yellowhammer, tree and meadow pipits, skylark and cuckoos. Off Aberystwyth this morning we watched 3 bottlenose dolphin for a good hour foraging just offshore. If we were 'twitchers' we could possibly have added long-billed dowticher, ring ouzel and perhaps even bee-eaters to our list but we were content with the simpler things. This is Welsh birding 'par excellence' and we should celebrate the fact that we have such a fantastic diversity of habitats in Wales which support such an extraordinary range of species.