What To Look Out For…
Birds at Llys-y-Frân – All Year Round
Woodland: Nuthatch, blue tit, great tit, coal tit, long-tailed tit, goldcrest, treecreeper, wren, chaffinch, bullfinch, siskin, dunnock, robin, song thrush, mistle thrush, blackbird, great-spotted woodpecker, wood pigeon, sparrowhawk, buzzard, peregrine, red kite, raven, carrion crow, jay, rook and jackdaw. Tawny owl are seen around twilight.
Water: Great crested grebe, little grebe, cormorant, mallard, grey heron, coot. There is a large flock of feral Canada geese, usually accompanied by a few greylag geese.
Around the margins: Pied wagtail, grey wagtail, kingfisher and dipper may be seen along the streams that enter the lake. Reed bunting, goldfinch, linnet and meadow pipits in the surrounding rough grassland and hedges.
Birds at Llys-y-Frân – Spring / Summer
Chiffchaff, willow warbler, redstart, spotted flycatcher, swallows, house martin and sand martin.
Birds at Llys-y-Frân – Autumn / Winter
Redwings and fieldfares arrive in the colder months to feed on hawthorn and rowan berries on the hedges.
If water levels are low in autumn, common sandpipers and, sometimes, green sandpipers are seen around the reservoir edges and beneath the dam wall.
Dabbling ducks feed on aquatic vegetation in the shallow bays with small numbers of wigeon, teal and divers like goldeneye and tufted ducks. We occasionally welcome scarcer grebes, including Slavonian grebe and, rarely, great northern divers.
On winter evenings, gulls form a large roost of many thousands of birds, mostly lesser black-backed gulls and slightly fewer black-headed gulls. Don’t be surprised to see herring gulls, common gulls and great black-backed gulls. Yellow-legged gulls, Mediterranean gulls, Iceland gulls and glaucous gulls may also be present.
