Cwmbran Boating Lake and its wider green space environment of sport pitches and kiddies play areas is an urban park and as such attracts a multitude of users. Fisherman, dog walkers, runners, model boat enthusiasts and swan protectors, they all jostle for a slice of this watery cake. Because of this I've not spent much time at this site over recent years, preferring to avoid crowds in favour of less populated locations and the solitude this brings. Nonetheless, a brief taster visit for work was just enough motivation for a Sunday sunrise visit.
Its unlikely Cwmbran Boating Lake will ever become a regular venue for die hard birders, but for local patchers such as myself its always worthy of a visit, albeit at a time that avoids the crowds. On this visit there was the usually crop of urban type water birds. The four grey lag goose were new site records for me merging with the every present growing number of Canada goose. The weather battered floating island supported up to four cormorant, some resplendent in breeding season regalia. A pair of little grebe and mute swan were also keeping close to this island. Around four goosander moved freely around the lake, among the growing number of coot, mallard and moorhen.
Shortly after sunrise the gulls started to arrive with up to 100 black-headed gull along with single figure counts of lesser black-backed and herring gull. The black-headed gull are very approachable due to the availability for free food hand outs provided by the frequency of duck feeders. So this provides the ideal setting for ring reading. In amongst the gulls were three birds carrying single metal rings and one carrying a dutch colour ring. This bird was previously noted by Craig Constance earlier this winter. I will report the record in due course.
An hour or so after sunrise, the park was starting to get busy. With dogs often flushing the gatherings of birds, I left satisfied that I'd seen enough.
