Reading the pavements

You can gain a pretty good picture of a Saturday night out in Newport by reading the debris on the Riverfront walk the morning after. Vomit, trails of blood and drugs paraphernalia could be easily detected. On a positive note I struck lucky with a find of a twenty pence coin that was  accompanied by the first flowering common whitlow grass nestled amongst some weathered fag ends.

There were more gulls on the River Usk tide line than of late. Around 150 black-headed gull complete with varying degrees of summer hoods were watched over by good numbers of herring and lesser black backed gull. The overwhelming majority of these larger gulls were immature/sub adult birds suggesting those breeding adults are already on or close to their breeding grounds. However one bird was conspicuous by its crisp plumage. A yellow legged gull was sartorial elegant set against the dark chocolate merk that is the River Usk water. A couple of great black backed gull alighted with characteristic deep throat vocalisations.

I moved on to Tredegar House Lake where the assemblage of water wildfowl was unremarkable in its composition. The leuistic coot stood out along with five little grebe. A colour ringed black -headed gull carrying white AF460 looked familar. Seems I recorded this bird on the 31st January 2016 and was orginally ringed at Heligoland, Germany.