Welsh Journals

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Bird days in Brecon itisafarcry from Bedford to Builth, but that is the way I went just 33 years ago on my first motor-bike to discover the heart of Wales. A book in the school library started it. As I began to read Walpole- Bond's Bird-Life in Wild Wales, I became more and more entranced by his descriptions of his daily wanderings among the wild birds and wilder streams and hills of that seemingly quite remote country. I could hardly wait till I got hold of a map, and after much searching began to identify his 'L' town, 'A' village, '1' river, 'E' valley, and so on. Today there is no need for such caution. The public outlook has changed, and bird-watching has taken the place of bird-nesting and the collection of eggs, and is growing in popularity. In the war even the CIGS Viscount Alanbrooke kept a copy of The Cuckoo's Secret among other Top Secret papers in his drawer to relieve the tenser moments! And since then, the quest for birds is helping numbers of people to find for the first time the beauties of the countryside, but the Irfon valley with its many dashing feeder streams is so far removed from the madding throng that it can never become a trippers' paradise. Besides, it has its own methods of protection, and you will find that everyone will soon know where you go, and what you are doing. Even before I had time to set out to find the birds on the day after my first arrival, I had a very friendly visit from the very polite police sergeant, who chatted mostly about the weather, but who had a very roving eye! I was standing once in a quiet marshy field, watching distant curlew, when a figure strolled slowly up, and the pleasant conversation which followed turned somehow to the subject of egg-collecting-the stranger was none other than Dr Fenn, that keen Llanwrtyd Wells ornithologist, on his rounds! One day I was on a narrow, precipitous track in the far, far hills, gazing at a hen pied flycatcher examining a hole in an oak, when an old Fiat rattled up from nowhere, and a keen- eyed, suspicious old man emerged, saying 'Any luck?' Accusingly he eyed my innocent binocular case-so often used by thieves to carry Opposite: The Black Mountains, Breconshire MORAY TULLOCH