Place: River Taff at Radyr Weir, Forest Farm, Cardiff
Date: 19 November 2017.
Place: River Taff at Radyr Weir, Forest Farm, Cardiff
Date: 26 November 2017.
Place: River Taff, Forest Farm, Cardiff
Date: 20 February 2018.
Place: The Bitches off Ramsey Island
Date: 19 July 2018.
Place: River Taff, Forest Farm, Cardiff
Date: 27 January 2019.
Place: Glamorganshire Canal, Forest Farm, Cardiff
Date: 6 February 2019.
Place: River Taff at Radyr Weir, Forest Farm, Cardiff
Date: 29 April 2019.
Place: Henllwyn, Bardsey Island, Gwynedd
Date: 24 May 2019.
[Phalacrocorax carbo, Family Phalacrocoracidae, Order Suliformes, Wikipedia Entry: Great cormorant]
The sound of the great cormorant (borrowed from the Xeno-Canto website, recordist Marco Dragonetti)
Distribution and sightings of the cormorant across the British Isles (borrowed and modified from the Bird Atlas Mapstore).
Marnix's Bird Gallery 
It was during Wales’s boiling hot first lockdown when I first spotted a Cormorant in the flesh, sitting in a secluded spot just chilling peacefully having a smoke on the
Taff bank close to home
in Aberfan, few miles of Merthyr Tydfil. I weren’t even sure what I’d actually seen? A huge, stocky, jet black bird, larger than the ravens, buzzards, seagulls I commonly see and it looked impressive, didn’t see it’s front or head.
It was weeks until the next sighting when I actually saw a full view of the giant black duck, it seems stockier than the river’s largest bird the Grey Heron, it could well be the heaviest of the two? What a bad ass looking river bird, didn’t realise a duck could outshine the Peregrines, SparrowHawks, Buzzards, Goldfinches, Woodpeckers, Bullfinches, Ravens, Kingfishers, Dippers, Red Wings and Wagtails that I’m lucky enough to see.
First lockdown was also the very first time I’d seen a Red Kite flying in my village skies, the rare sightings id previously had was in Snowdonia and Berwyn Mt. Range / Brecon Beacons. Today the stunning raptors are regularly seen in the Merthyr Valley.
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This seems rather purple prose about what is after all a pretty common water bird in South Wales. And btw, a cormorant isn’t a duck.
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