weekly round out

With the weather alternating between dry cold spells with a little snow and wet warm spells, I felt I was becoming a bit of a couch potato, So I managed to get out this week a few times.

The sewage works held all the usual species with nothing notable. The Pied Wagtail roost held 110 birds and the Corvid gathering numbered 50+ Carrion Crow and 70+ Jackdaw. The only noticeable interest was the large number of Long-tailed Tits in flocks of 15-20 and numbering 100+ birds overall, supported by good numbers of 25 Goldcrest.
My. Ty-Talwyn held 130 Fieldfare, 10 Redwing, while the Lapwing flock at the bike track fields on My. Baeden numbered 46.Other birds seen in the area included a single Red Kite, 8 Buzzard, 6 Raven, 15 Chaffinch, 8 Reed Bunting and little else.
Finally at the Waun-y-Gilfach feeding station there were 2 jay and unusually 3 House Sparrow [not seen them here before].

Mystery solved

Last year at the sewage works I photographed this rusty cog. I was intrigued what it could be. It was buried deep in a pebble bank in the river. I tried to move it but it was well and truly buried and attached to perhaps something bigger and bulkier. So all I could do was to muse about what it might be. Was it part of and old mine workings tram, washing machine drive or something else.

One year on and after many floods and storms had eroded the pebble bank more of the mystery item was showing, and it is clearly a wheel. It was quite easy to pull it out and I give it a quick clean to reveal the image below.

To my disappointment it turned out to be a rusty wheel and cog from a modern off-road "Trail" motor bike. It was quite heavy but very distinct with its over-lapping spokes. I checked the web for images to see if I could get a match and it wasn't to long before I found the image below.

Not an exact match, but the over-lapping spokes are exact and with a bit of imagination the heavy cog is a close match too [after rusting]. So it is just a recently discarded motorbike wheel and not something of note from the heritage of the valley like a coal/iron mine tram. Just goes to show that all that rusts is not historical gold 🚲