What’s New in the Forest of the Wolves?

Mother Nature does most of the work but CCW wardens do their bit. Just recently there has been lots going on, including sprucing up of the willow wolf. 10 months old and it had grown a bit straggly so 4 of us set to, weaving the pliable strands back into the structure – what a barbershop quartet we could have made. The chestnut paling fence around the outside will remain in place for the coming year to protect it from goats until it becomes more established.

Speaking of goats ... the snow was heavier and hung around for longer than usual, squashing the undergrowth of bracken. This left young saplings standing proud and with little else to eat, the goats had a nibble or two.

On the positive side the double height fence, enclosing a section of the reserve close to the railway line, has been removed. For over 20 years the area has been free from grazing and the inevitable consequence, a profusion of brambles and ivy, is what the goats are feasting on at the moment.

Stands of trees, generally square in shape, like military formations, were planted 20 years ago and enclosed with wire netting. The fencing has all been removed and so too the Y shape funnel. This funnel was designed as a means for catching goats in the days when the local population was an unsustainable 50+. The idea was to lure the goats into the narrow funnel, with tasty strands of ivy and other delicacies hanging from the fence, then quickly close the door and transport them to Scotland. It didn’t work and now it has gone for recycling.

The ability to exclude sheep is vital to regeneration of the woods and the old perimeter fence posts are being replaced. Instead of those rounded, chemically treated, poles we are being re-fenced with cleaved, sweet chestnut. 

In the really good old days dry stone walls would have been the stockproof barrier. Sustainable and enduring they will last indefinitely, provided there is some maintenance. Sadly one of the most impressive stretches of wall was breached by a fallen tree. My neighbour in the farm below says this stretch, which rises steeply from the mouth of the waterfall, was built by 2 brothers competing against each other.  Thanks to CCW the tree has been chopped and the wall rebuilt by a local master craftsman.

He’s not going to be so local in future, next month he goes West with a renewable 1 year visa to work on America’s stone walls as part of an initiative to re-introduce the craft. He’ll start in Kentucky before moving to Dallas and will employ a US citizen to work with him.

Finally for those who don’t enjoy the indignity of stiles the good news is that kissing gates have been installed on the top path heading out of Coed y Bleiddiau towards Dduallt and below by the waterfall at the hairpin bend.

To see a short film of what's been going on, click here.

Huw

January 2011

Winter Spruce for Willow Wolf

‘Wolf!’ he cried. ‘Wolf!’ and there it was, a huge wolf in Coed y Bleiddiau, the ‘forest of the wolves’. Full of life and vigour, with its jaws open, howling up at the sky. Nothing but a skimpy picket fence to hold it back and 400 sets of roots. This was a willow wolf in the Vale of Ffestiniog. 

Local legend says here was home to the last wolf in Wales, hence the name of this oak woodland is Coed y Bleiddiau. On the other side of the valley is Cae’r Blaidd or ‘field of the wolf’. Just across the mountains is Beddgelert, the ‘grave of Gelert’, the dog that saved the son of Llewelyn the Great from a wolf attack (or so they say).

Wolves became extinct in England in the early 1600s but lived on in the wilds of Wales for much longer. They were probably still around during the Civil War and there is talk of a Knight’s Grave nearby, maybe he slew the last wolf? Or was he a victim?

This wolf has every chance of living forever, a vigorous type of willow (salix viminalis) planted in March 2010. It’s been sited by the path that runs parallel with the Ffestiniog Railway, in a small clearing, away from overhanging trees which would block the sun and inhibit growth.

10 months on and our wolf was looking a bit shaggy. Instead of taking pruners or shears to it we twisted the new growth back into the framework. We had meant to do this in December but feared the willow would have been frozen brittle and snapped. Click here to see the willow wolf having its winter spruce.

Previous residents of note at the derelict cottage, the other side of the railway track, include St John Philby, father of Kim Philby, the infamous spy. His house guest at the outbreak of WWII was William Joyce who travelled from here via London to Berlin where he became known as Lord Haw-Haw, the propaganda broadcaster, subsequently executed for treason.

The wolf was funded by the Countryside Council for Wales (CCW), designed and built by Beryl Smith of Llanidloes (www.craftsmidwales.co.uk) with a little help from CCW wardens and volunteers. 

South Stack – tradition, technology and winter coffee

In the good old days, when land was common, farmers would move with their livestock, protecting them from wolves, and guide them to better grazing.  The same process of close shepherding is happening each autumn on the RSPB reserve at South Stack. It’s a practical approach to control the sheep without fencing in 500 acres of land. 

Each morning the shepherd collects the mixed flock of Hebridean, Welsh mountain and badger face sheep from an enclosure. By the time he arrives they are waiting at the gate, keen to be out for breakfast.

Before setting off a small GPS system is fixed with sticky tape round the horn of a large ewe. At the end of the day the device is removed and the data downloaded to a PC for analysis and creation of a map showing the grazing route of the flock.

It’s all part of the work that goes into maintaining and enhancing the heathland for the benefit of the heath and all it supports including choughs and silver studded blues.  A great sight to see, this tradition re-introduced. Thanks to, amongst others, Hilary Kehoe of the Anglesey Grazing Animals Partnership.

What’s more the RSPB have acquired the café and are keeping it open during the winter. On a blustery day a warming cup of coffee is very welcome. 

For more information about South Stacks click here

For more information about conservation grazing on Anglesey click here

Adopt a Really Welsh Dolphin

The ongoing census of Cardigan Bay’s bottlenose dolphins has so far recorded 270 unique individuals. Some are frequently seen, others on just one occasion. Identification is based on a close-up photo of the dorsal fin and, on the day I visited, one of the volunteers was trying to match a recent photo on the screen of his PC while flicking through the A4 file of likely suspects. It looked a close fit with 007, but not quite. Maybe it was another dolphin or maybe the markings on its fin had changed?

I asked Steve Hartley, manager of the Cardigan Bay Marine Wildlife Centre, whether things were improving for the dolphins? ‘We knew we had a lot but not as many as we now know. As for whether the population is growing, we need another 5 years of research before we can make that sort of conclusion.’

Most of the photos are taken from the survey boat which Steve captains, following a consistent set of survey routes. Passengers pay for the boat trips according to the length of the trip, generally 2 hours or 4 hours, sometimes longer. Along the way Steve and his research assistant point out other wildlife such as the harbour porpoise, grey seals, occasional sunfish and sea birds. The most bizarre thing he ever saw was a massive leatherback turtle ‘It must have been the size of a pool table and gave me a backward glance over its shoulder. By the time I’d reached for my camera it had disappeared amongst the waves.’ Trips are run to a strict code of conduct, the main principle of which is to leave the creatures in peace, and all local operators are supposed to abide by this code.  

The boat pays its way as a commercial venture with the spin off being a valuable set of research information for analysis by a team of volunteers back in the wildlife centre. The ground floor of this grade II listed building, just up from New Quay’s lifeboat station, is a free of charge visitor centre with displays, an aquarium, and a volunteer run shop. Steve was quick to point out that the creatures in the aquarium were only being borrowed. At the end of the summer they would be returned, well fed and in good health, to the sea they came from. 

No matter how worthy your cause you still have to pay the bills and the centre is about to launch an Adopt a Dolphin campaign. What a fantastic Christmas present. The idea of adopting a dolphin is not new so I asked Steve what would be different about theirs? ‘Firstly it’s not any old dolphin but a really Welsh, Cardigan Bay dolphin. Secondly you don’t have to drive to the other end of Britain, you can pop over to New Quay and go out to see your dolphin.’ 

If you’d like to know more about the Cardigan Bay Marine Wildlife Centre call them on 01545 560 032 or visit the website (not yet updated to include the adoptions).

Click here for a short YouTube of Steve Hartley explaining the adoption scheme.

NB in case of any confusion the centre is NOT involved in tagging dolphins. They only take photos.

Pingos, fritillaries and cranberries

I thought it was just another boggy marsh but these were collapsed pingos. A couple of miles from the livestock market at Bryncir (Gwynedd), in open access land at Bwlch Derwin, the marsh is a series of circles. One time domes of ice formed in a period of permafrost and still growing in colder climes such as the Northwest Territories (Canada). There they have a Pingo National Landmark, home to a quarter of the world’s pingos. The largest is 49m tall and rising at the rate of 2cm a year.

Our melted domes are now a quivering bog of sphagnum and other plants. My mission was to find the autumn flowering Devil’s-bit Scabious, and fortunately most of them were at the edge and not the centre of the pingos. I looked for the blue pom-pom flowers, poking above the grass, and then scanned down to the base to see if there was a caterpillar web, a communal sun lounger for basking caterpillars of the Marsh Fritillary.

Life is precarious for this butterfly, declining and confined to just a few places, mainly in the north and west, its prospects for expanding are bleak. The caterpillars, extremely fussy eaters, will only dine on Devil’s-bit Scabious and, with changes in the way we farm, there are less sites these days. In continental Europe they eat honeysuckle but Welsh Marsh Fritillaries won’t touch the stuff, they’d rather starve to death.

This problem is compounded by the mother butterfly, carrying a heavy load of eggs, only able to fly a hundred metres – long haul migration is not an option. Some summers, when the weather is just right, she can have a second clutch and, with a strong tail wind, might manage a thousand metres. Apart from being fussy eaters and poor fliers they are the unique host to a particular type of parasitic wasp. The odds seem stacked against them.

We scoured several acres of the site and counted 11 webs, each with about 20 caterpillars. Some were resting, while others wriggled in the sun, maybe weaving more onto their web. All seems well in this colony, at least for the time being.

The marsh is home to bulbous spiders, big hairy caterpillars, bright stripey ones, crickets, voles galore and by extrapolation, to shrews. There were masses of cranberries, their name in Welsh ‘llyg aeron’, which translates to shrew berries. 

Beacons of red, resting on mounds of moss, with leaves like thyme, easy to see, easy to pick. I picked a pocketful, boiled with sugar and a bit of water and my sauce is in the freezer. As I eat my turkey on Christmas Day I’ll think back to the pingo and everything that grows there.

YouTube of the caterpillars and the cranberries

A Plea to the Marsh Fritillaries of Wales

Life is precarious. Starting as a clutch of a few hundred eggs, mother marsh fritillary has laid you down on devil’s-bit scabious. When you hatch you are going to love this plant. In fact it’s the only thing you can eat, you are a very fussy eater. Your relatives in Europe eat honeysuckle but you won’t touch the stuff.

By late August, with the help of your surviving caterpillar brothers and sisters, you will have built a web low down in the base of the plant. On a sunny day, this makes a great bed to lounge on and admire the tall purple pom-poms and visiting bees while your plant is in flower.  In cold spells it’s best to climb down and huddle together beneath the tussocks.

With luck the marshy ground you live in will be grazed by cattle or ponies and not by sheep – they too are fussy with their food and will eat you out of house and home.

A large gang of caterpillars can soon demolish the leaves of a single plant and need to move on to the next one, preferably not too far away. Sometimes caterpillars are so prolific they eat the whole colony into extinction.

If you make it through winter into spring you will metamorphose into a pupa and emerge as a butterfly in early summer. Females are jumped on and mated immediately.

Your mother was not a strong flier to begin with and, laden down with so many eggs, her maximum range would be a hundred metres. This is why it is so difficult for marsh fritillaries to emigrate, you can only go in short hops, no question of a long haul to a landing field full of devil’s-bit scabious.

If weather conditions permit, your mother might have a second clutch of eggs – being a bit lighter, and with a tail wind, maybe she could manage a thousand metres?

You marsh fritillaries are a bit of a specialist that thrived on the back of a way of farming that is no longer in vogue. I’ll do what I can to help, by finding and protecting new sites, but the prospects are not good unless you can stop being so fussy with your food.

One theory is that you don’t eat honeysuckle because it’s too cold. Maybe you will be a winner from climate change.

Huw

1^st October 2010 

The Smoke that Thunders

Sunday morning, chucking it down, squelching in the mud to dig potatoes for roasting. Definitely not a day for tops of mountains, so off we went, water-proofed through the still forest to the gorge at Coed Cymerau.

Carrying cotton bags in case of edible fungi and as per norm, we found lots of tasteless and poisonous ones. But there, in the middle of the dark path, with a flared trunk, seemingly growing out of stone, was a big penny bun. The fungi book said that in terms of taste, this was second only to the truffle. As I write this I’m 30 minutes into a small slice and still alive, so it looks like a gourmet starter to our Sunday roast.

A bit further along were chanterelles, with their forked gills and apricot scent, nudging through the moss, so easy to miss or trample. Next were the hedgehog mushrooms, with unmistakeable undersides, resembling a close cropped, albino hedgehog. And then an enormous cauliflower fungus, enough to feed a family. Bags weighed down, this has to be our most fruitful fungi walk.

Food apart our spirits were raised with the sparkly, shiny greens of mosses, ferns and lichens as we dropped down into the humid gorge. The roar of the water, crashing through the rocks, sending spray high into the canopy. The footbridge over the Goedol, like a mini crossing between Zambia and Zimbabwe, but without the crocodiles below.  Wet Sundays in gorges are great.

See 'the smoke that thunders'.

Huw (with photo by Haydn)

19^th September, 2010