Spotted Redshank - spring

 Tringa erythropus

Spring passage, between April and the 25th May, has been small and amounted to 2.9 % of the county total record. Migrants were reported from Skokholm, Skomer, Dale airfield, the Gann and Sandy Haven Pill.

There were only two spring records in the 1960’s and none in the 1970’s. The 1980’s were notable for the bulk of the spring records, which included five at Skokholm on the 15th and 16th April 1983.

Graham Rees

(Covers records up to and including 2006).

Spotted Redshank - winter

Tringa erythropus

There were two winter records in the 1960’s and just one winter record during the 1970’s.  It was in January 1983 that over wintering was first detected, ten birds feeding around the upper Cleddau Estuary between Landshipping / Sprinkle Pill and Hook, including Millin Pill, staying until the 17th April. These birds habitually kept together feeding communally, usually in deeper water than used by Redshanks and Greenshanks, sometimes upending like dabbling ducks. Variously five to 16 over wintered in that area each year up to 1991, departing in March. During this 10 year period there were winter records of one or two birds in four years from other parts of the Cleddau Estuary, most of them at Carew / Cresswell.

Post March 1992 fewer wintered on the upper Cleddau Estuary than previously but one to five did so elsewhere in the estuary system, principally at Carew / Cresswell and Sandy Haven Pill but they were also noted at Cosheston Pill, Castle Pill, Pembroke River and the Gann.

WINTER DISTRIBUTION IN CLEDDAU ESTUARY, blue = lower estuary, red = upper estuary.

During the period 1983 – 1992 just 11 % of winter records were away from the upper Cleddau Estuary but between 1993 and 2006 this had risen to 46 % and the total over wintering in the estuary as whole had decreased by 40 %. Reasons for the decline in winter numbers and local dispersal are speculative, the front runners being the cessation of raw sewage discharge into the Cleddau Estuary and a build up of wintering birds at Penclacwydd, Carmarthenshire, resulting in fewer travelling further west to Pembrokeshire. The latter is credible, for if the numbers wintering at Penclacwydd (provided by Wendell Thomas pers com) post 1992 are combined with those on the Cleddau Estuary for the same years, an average of nine birds per annum overwintered. The average overwintering on the Cleddau prior to the creation of the Penclacwydd wetland was 10.6.

All winter records were confined to the Cleddau Estuary and constituted 55.6 % of the county total.

 Graham Rees

(Covers records up to and including 2006).

Spotted Redshank - status

Tringa erythropus

Passage migrant and winter visitor.

The Spotted Redshank breeds across the Arctic area of the Old World, the nearest to Britain being in Fenno - Scandia and western Russia. Birds from this area winter south as far as the Afrotropics.

Mathew (1894) classified the Spotted Redshank as a rare autumn visitor to Pembrokeshire, noting that several had passed through the hands of Mr Tracy the bird-stuffer of Pembroke. All were birds of the year and obtained in the autumn. Additionally three received by the Cardiff Museum in 1896 were from Tenby. Subsequently Lockley et al (1949) noted three more occurrences involving four birds.

BWP states that Spotted Redshanks increased in the UK from the 1950’s, Lovegrove et al (1994) tracing the increase in Wales from the 1960’s. In Pembrokeshire there were records in six years, involving eight birds, during the 1950’s but they were annual from 1960 onwards involving an increased number of birds.

Cumulative monthly totals countywide, 1960 – 2006.

Graham Rees

(Covers records up to and including 2006).

References

CRAMP. S. (Editor), 1977 – 1994. Handbook of the Birds of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa : the birds of the Western Palearctic, Oxford University Press, 9 Vols. (BWP)

MATHEW. M. 1894. The birds of Pembrokeshire and its islands, R. H. Porter.

LOCKLEY. R. M, INGRAM. C. S. and SALMON. H. M.1949. The birds of Pembrokeshire, West Wales Field Society.

LOVEGROVE. R, WILLIAMS . G. & WILLIAMS. I. 1994. Birds in Wales, T & A. D. Poyser Ltd, London.

Grey Phalarope - pattern of occurrence

Phalaropus fulicarius

Most Grey Phalaropes have been seen on or over the sea but they have been found occasionally on estuarine waters, coastal pools and floodwater, at the Gann, Bosherston, Newgale, Carew Mill Pond and Orielton, with inland occurrences at Letterston, Loveston, Narberth,  Haverfordwest  and Pembroke.

Cumulative total birds by month,1904 – 2006.

 

Mostly single birds were seen but occasionally up to 10 in a day, however, there have been large scale incursions, or “wrecks”, into the South West Approaches which reached Pembrokeshire. During a “wreck” in 1891 Mathew noted they were “numerous”, particularly around Caldey. During a similar but better documented event in 1960, there were up to 35 at Skokholm during the 18th to 27th September and 227 around The Smalls on the 29th September. An incursion in 2001 resulted in a total of 39 being recorded around the Pembrokeshire coast between the 6th and 9th October.

August records fell between the 12th and 31st, apart from three sightings on the 2nd, at Little Haven in 1985 and at Strumble Head in 1986 and 2000. August birds exhibited varying traces of summer plumage, so were adults and probably females, as they take no part in incubation or rearing young and depart the breeding grounds much earlier than the males which are then still involved in the breeding process.

The early year records suggest that a few spend the winter at the same latitude as Pembrokeshire. These were: singles at The Smalls on the 2nd January 1985, Dale and Freshwater West on the 13th February 1971 and Pembroke on the 17th March 1928.

Although there are no ring recoveries to prove it, those occurring in British and Irish waters probably come from Iceland, Bear Island and Svalbard, possibly also from east Greenland and Noveya Zemla. However the number involved in years when “wrecks” occurred may mean that birds from Canada and west Greenland were involved.

Graham Rees

(Covers records up to and including 2006)

Grey Phalarope - 2006 status

Phalaropus fulicarius

Passage migrant.

The Grey Phalarope has a circumpolar Arctic breeding distribution, the closest to the UK being in Iceland. Wholly pelagic outside the breeding season, they are sometimes displaced inshore by turbulent weather. In the Atlantic they winter as far south as western and southern Africa.

Mathew (1894) considered the Grey Phalarope to be an almost annual storm driven autumn visitor to Pembrokeshire. Lockley et al (1949) added a further six occurrences. There followed records in four years in the 1950’s, in six years in the 1960’s, three years in the 1970’s and in every year bar one from 1981 to 2006. The increase in frequency of sightings was more likely to be the result of increased observer activity, rather than more birds occurring. A summary of this latter period could be just as written by Mathew.

Graham Rees

(Covers records up to and including 2006)

Avocet

Recurvirostra avosetta

Rare visitor.

The breeding range of the Avocet is from Africa to the south west of Asia and Europe north to Holland, with an increasing population in eastern England.

The Avocet was first put on record for Pembrokeshire by Mathew (1894), who noted one taken near Tenby about 1883 and mentioned two specimens from near Pembroke but gave no further information. A total of 28 birds have been recorded in the county since then, with occurrences in four springs, three autumns and 10 winters.

Spring records were: four at the Nevern Estuary from the 10th to the 12th May 1993, one there on the 10th and 11th May 1996, singles at the Gann on the 26 April 1999 and the 4th to the 14th May 2004.

Autumn records were: two at the Nevern Estuary on the 17th to the 19th September 1976, singles at Picton Point on the 21st September 1999 and Nevern Estuary on the 13th October 2005.

Winter records were: two near Pembroke in the winter of 1900, Three “off Milford Haven in winter” 1927, one Carew on the 1st to the 3rd February 1923, two Little Milford on the 29th January 1954 and four there on the 29th January 1955, one Hook Reach from the 10th November to the 15th December 1974, one Angle Bay on the 15th November 1992, another there on the 15th January 2000, one at the Nevern Estuary on the 22nd December 2000 and one at Little Milford from the 12th January to the 4th March 2002.

The record so far suggests that the tidal Western Cleddau has been the only place that Avocets have favoured for any length of time. It seems worth noting that in this context, the dates published for Little Milford in 1954 and 1955 were arrival dates, contemporary verbal communication was that the birds concerned were in that area through the winter.   

Graham Rees.

(Covers records up to and including 2008).

Black-winged Stilt

Himantopus himantopus

Vagrant.

The Black-winged Stilt is a breeding summer visitor to mainland Europe from wintering grounds in Africa.

The Black-winged Stilt was first recorded in Pembrokeshire on the 24th July 1967, when G. T. McTaggart , a postman delivering mail, came across one on a small pond near Narberth.

The second was at West Dale, also visiting the Gann, between the 3rd and 6th April 1987.

On the 19th March 1990 a Black-winged Stilt was noticed wading in flood water at Penally by an alert observer travelling on a passing train, it remained until the 30th March.

Another was at Skokholm on the 7th and 8th May 1990, where it was frequently harassed by breeding Lapwings.

Graham Rees.

(Covers records up to and including 2008).

Redshank - 1980s winter atlas

Tringa totanus

The BTO winter atlas showed that redshanks were present in several coastal and estuarine 10km squares during the winters of 1981-82, 1982-82 and 1983-84.

The darker the colour, the higher the relative total count for each 10km square.  The darkest blue represents over 121 birds, with the highest count being 165 in SN01.

The distribution is consistent with the Birds of the Estuary Enquiry (BoEE, now WeBS) at that time, with the majority of birds in the inland parts of the Cleddau Estuary complex.  However, the maximum counted by BoEE in winter 1982-83 was 1048 throughout the whole estuary.

The Nevern and Teifi estuaries provided the main wintering grounds in the north of the county.

LACK, P.C. (1986) The atlas of wintering birds in Britain and Ireland. T. & A.D. Poyser