Mipit

This morning I packed up and left Monk Haven Manor, and with a little time in hand before I needed to be in Cardiff to collect the Boy Wonder, I thought I'd go and take a look at Marloes Sands. I'd been heading towards this National Trust site yesterday while still intending to duck out of my second Skomer trip, before suddenly deciding to woman up, ignore the monsoon, and go to the island after all. Having explored a little, I now know that even though I'd doubtless still have got very wet at Marloes, there would have been definite advantages to being there: between the car park and the sea there are two bird hides (shelter) and a café (shelter, coffee, and cake), and even more importantly, there's no rule saying that once you're there you have to stay for the next five hours.

By this morning, wearing dry clothes and with the sun shining brightly again, I wasn't regretting Skomer nearly as much as I had been at, say, 2pm yesterday, but I'm pleased to have established that on another occasion when the Skomer boat can't run, or I don't want to be on it, Marloes Sands has reasonable birding potential. This Meadow Pipit (Mipit to its birding friends) was the most cooperative of the birds I saw along the lane between Runwayskiln and the hides, but there were plenty of others around too. The Meadow Pipit is commonly referred to as "small and streaky", "undistinguished", or "inconspicuous", and in the middle of the breeding season, with its feathers abraded and tatty, it's hard to disagree. It looks a little like a Skylark, or maybe a mini-Songthrush, but it's only about the size of a House Sparrow, and considerably lighter in build. It also looks a lot like a Tree Pipit (Tripit), and I'd probably have been hedging and equivocating around the identity of this individual if I hadn't heard it sing just before it popped up onto the top of the hedge. The two songs are quite different, as you can hear at these links:

Meadow Pipit

Tree Pipit

The Meadow Pipit is a very common bird of heath, moor, and dry grassland, and the RSPB estimates that there are around two million breeding pairs in the UK. Sadly it's been in moderate decline across Europe for a number of years now, most probably because of changes in farming practices, and it's now Amber-listed. It's one of the most common nest hosts of the cuckoo.

When I arrived in Cardiff early this afternoon the Boy was waiting outside the house for me, very excited to be going away for the weekend. "Am I doing two sleepovers this time?" he asked, and when I confirmed that he was, he said, "Good! Two sleepovers is better than one." "Why's that?" I asked, and he replied, "Because I get to spend more time at your house. One sleepover means two days, and two sleepovers means four days." I tried - gently - to correct his maths, but he was having none of it: twice as many nights obviously leads to twice as many days. 

Within five minutes of us setting off in heavy Friday afternoon traffic, he asked if we were nearly there yet - and I realised with a slight sinking feeling that it was going to be a loooooong two hours. By the time we came off the motorway I'd lost count of the number of times I'd been asked, and the Boy had begun to treat my responses as though they were specifically designed to be annoying, so for the rest of the journey I resorted to telling him everything I knew about every village we passed through, reading every signpost and street name aloud, and explaining the meaning and purpose of every road sign. By the time we pulled into the yard I was almost hoarse, but the Boy was happy, and skipped off with R to water the patio plants, talking nineteen to the dozen, while I silently and mindfully cooked dinner.