Red-billed chough. Source: RSPB website

Thanks so much to Geoff Tompkinson for letting me know that there are choughs nesting near Tonfanau.  When I wrote my usual post on the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch in 2020 I asked if anyone had information on the local choughs.

What, you may ask, is a chough (to rhyme with “rough”?  They are an endangered species in the same family as crows, and share the same black plumage, but are easily distinguished by their crimson beaks and red legs, and need cliff-top farmland for nesting and feeding sites.  There are only a few hundred pairs still remaining in Wales, and their nesting grounds at Bird Rock (Craig yr Aderyn) are protected.

The great news from Geoff is that there is a pair presently nesting in a hole in the cliffs north of the mouth of the Dysynni at Tonfanau, and that they were also there last year when they successfully raised young.  With any luck, they will bring another brood into the world and return in future years.