Lately, we’ve had an unexpected visitor on the Teifi river – an Osprey! For the last few weeks, a juvenile female Osprey has been practising her fishing and landing skills along the river between Teifi Marshes nature reserve, and Cardigan Bay. Approximately 50 miles to the north of our reserve is the Dyfi Osprey project which is the semi-residence of 2 out of 5 breeding pairs of Osprey in Wales. However, interestingly, the Osprey which we have been seeing here in West Wales is not one from the Dyfi Osprey project. We know this because all the Ospreys at The Dyfi Osprey Project are ringed and ours isn’t… this begs the question, where did our Teifi Osprey come from?
Next, the focus returned to Iolo’s favourite character – the male bat in the maternity roost! This bat’s persistence appeared to have come to fruition, and he spent 30 minutes upside down with a female bat. Iolo Williams said, “Pepe Le Pew, the amorous male bat, who has been sneaking into the maternity roost attempting to mate with the females, finally got lucky this evening!”. However, viewers all over the UK will be devasted to hear that a specialist bat expert says that this mating was unsuccessful.
Finally, Gillian shares her trip to New Quay and our Living Seas team. She speaks with Dr Sarah Perry, Living Seas manager, and Laura Palmer, PHD student, to learn about their research into Dolphin’s signatures whistles. Laura explains that this is the way in which dolphins communicate, and the team use recordings of theses ‘whistles’ to make estimates about population size, where the dolphins forage, and the impact that humans have on them. Dolphins are some of the most communicative animals but human activities, such as boating and water skiing, are putting them at risk by masking the sound of the dolphins’ whistles.
Dr Sarah Perry said “Thanks to funding from the Welsh Governments Nature Networks fund, we have been able to conduct our invaluable and unique bottlenose dolphin research in Cardigan Bay. To be able to highlight our research to Gillian and the Autumnwatch team and to bring bottlenose dolphin communication to a wider audience has been fantastic. It’s important from a conservation perspective that people are aware of the more enigmatic aspects of these iconic species lives.
Matt Andrews, BBC Autumnwatch Producer said “We couldn’t believe our luck with the bottlenose dolphins filmed at New Quay Harbour. Getting an insight into their communication and signature whistles from Sarah Perry and Laura Palmer was fascinating and we can’t thank them enough for their involvement and sharing their research with us.”
If you’ve been inspired, and fallen in love with our Teifi Marshes nature reserve, please consider becoming a member to help us protect wild places like this for future generations to experience.
