Slow Worms and Wild Goats

It was a cold old day, the coldest for at least three weeks, and the central heating had been switched into hibernation over the Easter heatwave. Warm drinks, a down jacket fit for the Arctic and hot soup for lunch kept the chill away.

Dull skies didn’t make the idea of an afternoon walk any more appealing but Molly (dog) is a stickler for routine and her exercise. Within minutes of entering the reserve we were both as warm as toast; me with hat and gloves and Molly chasing the Frisbee.

Half way round I saw a slow worm’s nose retreat beneath a boulder. I couldn’t resist a peek and lifted it; I shouldn’t have done that. There was a family of at least five and my rude interruption caused them to slowly (it was cold!) retreat to the far edge of the boulder which was resting on the ground. I couldn’t just release the rock for fear of squashing them, so I wedged it up, placed some flat stones beneath and backfilled with dead bracken and leaves. Hopefully they will be alright but I feel bad that I disturbed them.

As you can see from the photo there were cobwebs beneath the boulder and some impressive looking spiders co-existing with the slow worms. I assume slow worms don't eat these spiders. Does anyone know what type of spider? 

A little further on and we bumped into the gang of goats with Supernanny; she’s given birth to twin kids twice in two years. There are now seven in the family with an auntie looking after last year’s kids and an impressive Billy always guarding the rear. This is what they looked like:  

Garden wildlife hotspot

Over the summer I’ve been cultivating parts of the veg patch where soil has not seen the light of day since probably WWII. Today I tackled a stony section leading up to the wall and next to one of several compost heaps. Molly, our inquisitive collie, was almost by my side all day, transfixed by something inside the dry stone walls; the sun was strong and she was panting but even when I went to the house and fetched her a bowl of water, she would not pause her gaze for fear she’d miss the moment.

I was glad she was preoccupied when the earth before me started to move; not an earthquake but a mole whose snout broke surface and quickly retreated. I watched its progress as it tunnelled the few feet to the compost heap. A few minutes later it returned going the other way and the dry crumbly soil above it subsided, briefly revealing the black moleskin boiler suit. I nipped up to the house to get a camera ready for any next appearance.

But alas the mole did not return and I worked my way up the garden removing chunks of a rotten tree stump. As I pulled away at a large bit of root a male slow worm fell onto the bare soil; just as well I had the camera – beautiful.

After lunch, Molly still staring into the wall, I was removing some weeds beside the old tree stump and noticed a lizard in the wall. The camera was recharging up at the house but my mobile phone recorded the moment. And shortly after that, there was another lizard, possibly called Swampy, which stared me down, intent on preserving its homelands.

Taking note of the protest I have decided that this little patch of garden does not need to be cultivated; it obviously has a more noble purpose than food or flower production.

St Francis and the strimmer

My powerful Stihl strimmer helps me keep on top of the garden, eliminating bracken from the steep hillside to the railway and keeping reeds at bay. A bank of green grazing in a sea of gorse and bracken is very welcome to the farmer’s sheep and for the moment there’s a brilliant display of violets.

Where the vegetation is thick, around the edges of the orchard, it’s hard to see what creatures might be lurking in the undergrowth. That’s why the motto in our garden is rake first, strim second; the St Francis approach. 

My reward on a cloudy morning was a slow worm, barely warm enough to move, and a moth perfectly matched to its background of dead bracken and leaves. Can anyone tell me what sort of moth it is?

My International Day for Biodiversity

Unknown Wales was the title of the conference hosted in Cardiff by the National Museum and organised together with the Wildlife Trusts of South and West Wales. My job, together with Geoff Gibbs, was to promote Natur Cymru at the event, which was on the nearest Saturday to the UN’s International Day for Biodiversity.

Over 1700 people walked through the museum doors and ten of them signed up to become subscribers; a good result for us and them we hope. Other participants provided all sorts of wonders. I enjoyed watching a man from the museum feeding tasty treats to a table full of carnivorous plants, carefully placing a woodlouse into the open mouth of a hungry plant. By the end of the afternoon the plants were well stuffed and fast asleep. On the next stand was a beautifully restored ichthyosaurus skull, discovered at Penarth, and recently acquired by the museum; the skull was good but it was the enthusiasm of the museum staff which brought it to life, highlighting amongst other things an ammonite in its eye. Stars of the show were the two slow worms on the Flat Holm stand – they seemed to relish the attention, gracefully moving around the keeper’s fingers and flicking out their tongues.

After lunch I took a break, while Geoff took charge of the stand, and enjoyed two of the day’s seven lectures. Paul Kay’s photographs of marine fishes from around the Welsh coast were spectacular; he was able to coherently explain the finer points of differentiating between seventeen different species of goby! Paul is an advocate of photography for identification purposes as opposed to killing fish for analysis. I enjoyed listening to Vaughn Matthews from the Wildlife Trusts reporting back on a project to monitor the degree to which Tir Gofal had benefitted brown hares and water voles. Unless I missed a slide it seems, depressingly so, that Tir Gofal measures resulted in no significant improvements.

I drove the 150 miles back to Snowdonia and, after a bite to eat, took our dog for a walk. There was a noisy commotion high up in a Scots pine as resident crows shoved a young tawny owl off a branch. It spiralled to the ground in front of our barn and the crows swooped down upon it. We ran to scare off the black devils but we too must have looked threatening and baby owl did a pathetic, downhill glide into some reeds. Once more the crows attacked and we had to chase them away.

It was lying flat, looking pathetic, struggling to keep its eyes half open ... what to do? I tried to get it into a cardboard box as a temporary safe haven but, once again, baby owl sparked into life and managed a fifty metre horizontal flight to beneath the low hanging branches of a willow.  I watched for a while to check the crows had not seen or had lost interest and that seemed to be the case.

After dark I followed my ears uphill to Campbell’s Platform, on the Ffestiniog Railway overlooking the Scots pine, and listened to the plaintive calls of two young tawny owls calling out for food. Hopefully one of them was my rescued owl, my real contribution of the day for international biodiversity.