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Seaside

Fossils, Fish & Fisherman

As you can tell, Ogmore-by-sea is swiftly becoming a trend this winter for me. That coastline is something special and just 30 minutes down the motorway in good traffic. I hoped to catch up with the Purple Sandpipers again but I only located one. Turns out there were quite a number of Fisherman setup along the coastline so I wonder if they had flown further up the coast to avoid so much human activity. Upon reaching the setup of Fisherman, I scanned the rocks to see if there were any birds amongst them, which didn’t go down well apparently as staring back at me once I put the bins down was a stern middle finger from a young Fisherman.. How polite..

The morning picked up however after stumbling across a mystery fossil. I’m not up on my fossils to be honest so I had to get help with this one and it turned out to be a 350 Million year old Rugose Coral! Big thanks to Chris Partridge for finding this link . I had no idea they were there, so it was a discovery for myself.

‘Fossilised colony of the rugose coral Solenodendron horsfieldi on a beach near Ogmore-by-Sea in Wales. This coral is in carbonate rocks of the Gully Oolite Formation, which is of early Carboniferous (Mississippian) age, about 350 million years old.’

Rugose Coral Fossil


I also found quite a few Mermaids Purses which seem standard on every beach tour these days but I believe these to be Lesser-spotted Dogfish Egg Sacks. Other than that, fairly quiet with two Med Gulls and the usual Turnstones.

Sea Air

There’s nothing like a bit of sea air to freshen up the day. The rain almost ruined it for me, with several trips back to the car, ready to pack it in, but I hung in there as I had a mission. I’ve had Turnstone on my photography list for quite some time, not just because they look great, but because they are often quite approachable when feeding. These birds can be found all over the British coastline, and they are becoming quite confiding in areas where their desired habitat comes into contact with regular human activity. England generally has better examples of this, but Barry and Porthcawl are becoming great places to observe this behaviour. They’re starting to feed amongst the Pigeons and Starlings, sometimes really close to people, even feeding between peoples feet as they sit on coastal benches. One thing they do not like though, and that’s Dogs, so timing my arrival early, I hoped to be there before the early Dog Walkers. That plan didn’t work as well as I thought, as by the time I located them feeding, there were lots of people around. I got in the car ready to go home quite a few times but glad I got back out for more, as my last sitting with them, laying on my belly, they came really close - Sometimes too close for the camera to even focus! Not much else going on the sea, besides some very distant ducks that I couldn’t even work out with the scope. Probably Scoter. Plenty of Rock Pipits though.

Before heading home, I thought i’d stop off at Margam Country Park. I’ve only been once before, having been introduced to the site by Mike Warburton. It was getting late in the day so only a few Fallow up on the peak, with most of the Reds tucked up in the lower levels.