Spotted Flycatcher - St Fagan's

The first sojourn of the Bevmeisters brief visit to South Wales was to Saint Fagan’s Welsh Folk Museum. One of the joys of having people to come and stay is you can take them to local tourist attractions you never go to, simply because they are on your doorstep. I haven’t been to St Fagan’s for at least a 12 month.

It was a glorious day, and the museum was absolutely mobbed. I have never parked in the big overflow car park before. It did worry me how busy it was going to be walking around, but we chose to avoid the usual busy bits by the Gwalia Stores, and wandered around the outsides of the complex. This turned out to be inspired as we stumbled upon a small family of Spotted Flycatchers. I take no credit; it was Bev who first spotted them around the back of Saint Teilo’s church. She wasn’t sure what they were to at first, but it soon became apparent what species we were dealing with when the adult birds were doing their trademark “fishing” from a perch high up on a tree. There were about half a dozen birds in all, with two parents feeding a few youngsters with the tasty morsels they had hawked from the sky.

I had only put my 300mm lens in as an afterthought, I am so glad I did or else I would have missed out on this shot, which is only the second one I have got of this lovely sleek bird.

We had an absolute cracking day wandering around St Fagan’s, and we topped off the day with an excellent Indian meal next door in Mouchak.

Another day, another museum tomorrow, I have to go into Cardiff to pick up some T Shirts and Fleeces from the RSPB, so we are going to have a wander around Cardiff Museum, somewhere else I have not been for ages.