A Visit to Cors Dyfi

My nature notes piece for the coming month, as published in a trio of local magazines . . .

Last Saturday we decided to call in at the Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust’s reserve at Cors Dyfi, just along the road from Machynlleth.  Although there’s a county boundary between the two, Cors Dyfi isn’t far from the RSPB reserve at Ynys Hir, from which this and last years’ SpringWatch programmes were broadcast.  Ynys Hir’s wildlife potential is huge, and there many interesting birds on which the SpringWatch presenters could focus - but there’s one species that is a Cors Dyfi speciality - it’s one of the two places in Wales where ospreys presently nest.

The terrible weather we had in late spring and early summer has meant that many birds have failed to produce young, or haven’t produced the broods one might have normally expected.  That’s been true of the ospreys too, in their second year of breeding at Cors Dyfi.  Only one chick survived out of the three eggs laid, and then only because Wildlife Trust staff intervened at a crucial moment when the parents birds had ceased to feed their hungry but unresponsive chick.  Birds like ospreys feed in response to stimulus, and this chick had grown too weak to ask for food.

Monty, the father, may have been a chick from the successful osprey nest near Welshpool a few years ago.  He is unringed, and the chicks in that nest couldn’t be reached for ringing - and ospreys will often return to the area where they were raised.  They spend winter in West Africa, which seems eminently sensible, and Nora, the mother bird, had already left on her migration when we were there, leaving Monty to provide for the needs of the chick, named Ceulan.  Ceulan is fully fledged, but has not so far begun to hunt for himself.  When we were there, Monty had caught a fish, brought it to Ceulan, then taken it away again to eat himself.  Was this a tactic designed to encourage Ceulan to have his own try at fishing, I wondered?  We were told that the parent ospreys do not actively teach their offspring to fish, and sometimes the chicks will start their migration south having to learn that skill as they go - quite a risky endeavour. 

After a while, we were pleased and relieved to see Monty bring the uneaten half of his fish (a mullet, probably, caught in the estuary), and present it to the very hungry Ceulan.  We could see the actual birds from the hide, but the CCTV images in the visitor centre were excellent.  Cors Dyfi is exactly what it says on the tin - marshy bogland by the River Dyfi (and kept marshy by the water buffalo the Trust use).  So there is no great show of birds other than the ospreys - but we were also delighted by the tits, siskins and lesser redpolls using the feeders by the hide.