What’s that bird?
Jun
Summer is the perfect season to watch birds in all their glory. Here’s how to identify our local visitors during the summer months
Red Kite
The red kite is one of Britain’s most spectacular raptors, a master of effortless flight, its distinctive forked tail and rich chestnut plumage making it instantly recognisable.
Once hunted to the brink of extinction, with only a handful of breeding pairs clinging on in the remote valleys of mid-Wales, the red kite has staged one of conservation’s great comebacks. Today it soars confidently above the Brecon Beacons, the valleys north of Cardiff, and much of rural Wales.
Buzzard
The buzzard is now Britain’s most common large bird of prey, a remarkable recovery from decades of persecution that had pushed it to western refuges like Wales.
Broad-winged and heavy-set, it rides thermals with relaxed mastery, its mewing call often heard before the bird is seen. Plumage varies considerably between individuals, from pale cream to dark chocolate brown, but the rounded tail and distinctive silhouette are consistent.
In the hills and wooded valleys north of Cardiff, buzzards are a near-constant presence throughout summer, perching on fence posts and telegraph poles as readily as they soar. Patient and opportunistic, they will circle the same hillside for hours, watching for rabbits, earthworms, or carrion below. Commonplace, perhaps, but never less than magnificent.
Peregrine
The peregrine is nature’s ultimate speed machine, the fastest creature on earth, capable of reaching 240mph in a hunting stoop.
Slate-grey above with a finely barred chest and distinctive black hood, it commands the skies above Welsh quarries and river gorges with cold authority. Spotting one from the hills above Cardiff remains a genuinely thrilling experience.
Dipper
The dipper is one of Britain’s most charming river birds. It’s a plump, wren-like creature with a brilliant white bib, found bobbing compulsively on mid-stream boulders. Uniquely, it walks underwater to feed. The fast-flowing rivers above Cardiff are perfect dipper country.
Grey Wagtail
Despite its name, the grey wagtail is anything but drab. The male sports a brilliant sulphur-yellow underside that flashes vividly against the grey rocks and rushing water it calls home.
Slender and long-tailed, it moves with restless, bobbing energy along fast-flowing streams and rivers, perpetually wagging its tail as if unable to keep still. Often found alongside the dipper on the same upland watercourses above Cardiff, it favours weirs, mill races and rocky river margins.
A year-round resident in Wales, it is nonetheless most conspicuous and vocal during the summer breeding season.
Pied Flycatcher
Few birds are so intimately associated with a single habitat. Where ancient oak woodland survives on the Welsh valley slopes, the pied flycatcher almost invariably follows.
The male a striking study in black and white, arriving from West Africa each April to claim a nest hole. Listen for its bright, varied song cascading through the sessile oak woodland on the valley sides.
Redstart
The redstart is a summer visitor of exceptional beauty. The male’s smouldering orange-red tail, jet black face and steel-blue back making it one of the most striking birds in the Welsh woodland calendar. Like the pied flycatcher, it arrives from sub-Saharan Africa in late April, favouring the same sessile oak valleys north of Cardiff. It is restless and quick, forever quivering that luminous tail, as if perpetually on the verge of something.
Skylark
The skylark is the voice of open Wales, a small, streaky brown bird that transforms itself through song into something transcendent.
Rising almost vertically from moorland grass, it hovers at seemingly impossible height, pouring out an unbroken torrent of liquid, cascading notes for minutes at a time. On the ridges and upland plateaus above Cardiff – Caerphilly Mountain, the Garth, the moorland heading north towards Merthyr – skylarks still perform this ancient ritual each summer morning.
