I got up at 3.50am today and left Ellie in bed asleep. Why? I was going up to Gwent in Wales with three mates to twitch a mega rarity. We all met up and headed off at 4.50am and pegged it straight up to Blorenge, just south of Abergavenny, for our target bird. Within ten minutes of getting to the site we got some cracking views of a singing first-summer Marmora's Warbler. We watched this Mediterranean beauty on and off for about half an hour as he did a regular circuit around the area, a brilliant life tick for us all.
Whilst on the moor we also saw several Tree Pipits and some cracking Whinchats. A Cuckoo could be heard calling and a couple of Wheatears were also present. At just gone 7.00am we decided that we were not going to get any better views than those we had had, so we headed back towards home with a slight diversion to Wentwood Forest just to the north-west of the village of Llanvair Discoed.
We pulled in to the Cadira Beeches car park at about 8.00am, where we could hear a Wood Warbler singing, and walked some 150 metres south to an obvious clearing. As we were nearing the area I could hear the bird we were after singing. Before long we had located a male Iberian Chiffchaff, our second quality bird of the day. This was a life tick for the two Steve's and a UK tick for Andy...just a year tick for me though as I'd seen two previous Iberian Chiffchaffs in the UK. After ticking this off we headed back home with the job done, and it was only 11.00am when I got home!
UK year list for 2010 now at 198 species.
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