A walk yesterday morning between Strumble Head and Pwll Deri produced quite impressive numbers of swallows.  During a c.3 hr period there must have been at least a thousand or more, mostly heading west but many also feeding over coastal fields or else perched on wires etc. This was the largest spring swallow passage we can recall seeing for several years. Smaller numbers of house and sand martins were also passing through, again mostly in a westerly direction. 

A reasonably pure-looking hooded crow was seen perched on a fence post between Pen Brush and Porth Maenmelyn. Each spring we seem to see one in the general area. This one did not appear to be paired up with any of the numerous carrion crows, so was probably a non-breeding immature. 

A distant view of the hooded crow, taken with a quite short zoom (landscape) lens

Chris Orsman from Lamphey emailed to say that a red-throated diver was still in the bay at Freshwater East  yesterday morning. He also recorded two singing yellowhammers off Chapel Lane (a good spot for them where they have been known in the past). During the last several days males have also been seen at a different location. With luck there could be at least four and hopefully more territorial males in the Freshwater East area.