Birds of Cors Dyfi, Montgomeryshire: The remote sanctuary for over 100 types of birds

Cors Dyfi, the nature reserve run by the Montgomery Wildlife Trust, near Machynlleth, Powys.

(Image credit: Alamy Stock Photo)

published 19 February 2021

A new wildlife centre at Cors Dyfi nature reserve, aided by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, was set to open last year; there are now fresh plans for an opening in the Spring of 2021.

This wonderful spot is home to 112 species of birds, including red kites, barnacle geese, hen harriers, warblers, bitterns and lovely yellow-eyed ospreys, which have been the focus of a breeding project at Cors Dyfi for the past 12 years.

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You might also spot a water buffalo, an otter or even a dormouse flitting around the swamp, woodland and scrub, which are brightened by tall yellow flag irises from May to August.

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Annunciata grew up in the wilds of Lancashire and now lives in Hampshire with a husband, two daughters and an awful pug called Parsley. She’s been floating round the Country Life office for more than a decade, her work winning the Property Magazine of the Year Award in 2022 (Property Press Awards). Before that, she had a two-year stint writing ‘all kinds of fiction’ for The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, worked in internal comms for Country Life’s publisher (which has had many names in recent years but was then called IPC Media), and spent another year researching for a historical biographer, whose then primary focus was Graham Greene and John Henry Newman and whose filing system was a collection of wardrobes and chests of drawers filled with torn scraps of paper. During this time, she regularly gave tours of 17th-century Milton Manor, Oxfordshire, which may or may not have been designed by Inigo Jones, and co-founded a literary, art and music festival, at which Johnny Flynn headlined. When not writing and editing for Country Life, Annunciata is also a director of TIN MAN ART, a contemporary art gallery founded in 2021 by her husband, James Elwes.