Llanelli wildfowl in January

Argentine red shoveler (Anas platalea) with an itch

I didn’t have many days off over Christmas and New Year and the weather was mostly wet and windy, but we did manage to visit the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust’s Llanelli Wetland Centre this week, on a day that was quite dry but with a cold wind.

We have been there many times before, as we are WWT members, so many of the birds seem like old friends…

Ne-ne or Hawaiian goose (Branta sandvicensis)

The ne-ne was once common, with around 25,000 living in Hawaii when Captain James Cook arrived in 1778. But hunting and introduced predators, such as Asian mongooses, pigs, and cats, cut the population to just 30 birds by 1952. WWT founder Peter Scott brought the geese back from the edge of extinction with a captive breeding programme at his wetland centres and now the birds are reintroduced back in Hawaii.

But they do love it here in the wetland centres. They are so tame that they almost can’t be bothered to eat grain from the ground, but prefer to be fed by hand. They are always the first birds to come running when you step out into the grounds at Llanelli.

Moorhen (Gallinula chloropus)

A closer look at its red eye

Male Eider duck (Somateria mollissima) on mud…

…and on the water

Common mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)

I couldn’t work out this one, which looked like a young male bird on its way to having a green head – and it looked a lot like a mallard, apart from the chestnut body – so thanks to Annie for identifying it as what some people call a ‘manky mallard’, a cross-breed between a domestic duck and a wild mallard – she says they come in a variety of colours and there are several at Cardiff’s Roath Park Lake

Chiloe wigeon (Anas penelope)

Puna teal (Anas versicolor puna)

Common male shelduck (Tadorna tadorna) – so is that a sheldrake?

Red-crested pochard (Netta rufina)

Splendid Mandarin duck (Aix galericulata) seen through a fence

Female smew (Mergus albellus)…

…and male smew, one of my favourite ducks

Then there are the bigger swans and geese…

Black-necked swan (Cygnus melanocoryphus)

Bewick’s swan (Cygnus columbianus)

Coscoroba swans (Coscoroba coscoroba) standing on one leg

Swan goose (Anser cygnoides)

Red-breasted goose (Branta ruficollis)

Emperor goose (Anser canagicus)

One bird is in a class of its own…

Caribbean flamingos (Phoenicopterus ruber)

There were a couple of birds I don’t think I had spotted before – or at least I hadn’t “ticked them off” my list…

Male white-headed duck (Oxyura leucocephala) – looks like it has a blocked nose!

Red-billed pintail (Anas erythrorhyncha)

The brown plumage is rather pretty

Then there are the plants…

Red-stemmed dogwood (Cornus)

Pine tree…

…with cones

Rotting apples on a tree

Wind in the treetops

Yellow cap fungi

Pussy willow buds coming through (Salix)

The tree

Last year’s fallen leaves

Fresh yew twigs (Taxus baccata)

Snowberries (Symphoricarpos) hanging on to bare branches

Impressive buds on curved branches – but I don’t know the species

Not sure about this either, unless it is a spindle bush (Euonymus europaea)

Bright gorse in bloom (Ulex europaeus)

Ivy in fruit (Hedera helix)

More reddish treetops

Tree covered in moss, ivy and lichen…

…a closer look

Red berries of a Sorbus, perhaps whitebeam, Sorbus aria? I didn’t think to look at the back of the leaves to see if they were pale…

And finally…

A mosaic of a cormorant on the wall of the WWT building at Llanelli

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