Puffin Island 2014

I really enjoyed my visit to Puffin Island with Steve Dodd (RSPB); he’s been ringing and monitoring birds here for over 30 years. It was a master class in how to catch a Shag with a shepherd’s crook and without being bitten. Also an impressive demonstration of plucking a Razorbill off a cliff with a noose on the end of a fishing pole. Essential requirements are a steady hand, a head for heights, balance and patience.

We were there to record a story for Country Focus to find out to what extent seabird populations have been reduced by the prolonged storms of last winter. You can hear the outcome in June, which is when the programme will be broadcast.

The island is owned by the Barron Hill Estate and I am grateful for their permission to visit. It’s fantastic that there is this beautiful sanctuary, close to but free from humans, with no foxes, stoats nor rats. The rats got their come uppance with two tonnes of Warfarin about thirteen years ago. They used to feast on eggs and chicks during the short breeding season then the next nine months of the year they’d turn vegetarian. This kept the vegetation down but these days it’s a struggle to get around; Steve had a machete with him to hack a path through to the Cormorant breeding cliffs.  

Despite being named Puffin Island there are not many Puffins, maybe thirty to forty pairs, but on our visit we saw just two and three more out to sea.  

It was a privilege to be in amongst so many seabirds, it was so perfect I expected to bump into David Attenborough. It was a still day, perfect for sound. If you watch the YouTube film below don’t forget to turn on the speakers or better still put on some headphones – the sounds are more impressive than the sights.

Hummingbird in the Herbs

At last, sunshine and warmth after lots of rain. Weeds putting on a spurt and seedlings impatient to be planted. It was a magical day to be in the vegetable garden. Last year’s kale and swede are now six feet tall sprays of yellow blooms and very popular with the bees.

Beneath a piece of wood a lizard but on reflection it must have been a newt – no scales and didn’t run away. We see lots of lizards but newts are not so common; nearest pond about 30 metres away.

Beneath a slab of slate busy black ants and pride of joy, in amongst the herbs, a hummingbird. Must report it to Cofnod, our Local Records Centre.

Baby Tawny by the Ffestiniog

It was the sort of day for hippos and ducks, but Molly doesn’t mind a bit of rain, so off we went, into the woods with wet bluebells all around.

At the base of an oak was a cute little Tawny owl and I think I caught a glimpse of its parent flying away from the scene. For a few minutes I watched from behind a tree, and then another, but all the while the baby was transfixed, not a move of the head, just the tiniest slit of a motionless eye and its claw set into the moss on the bark. I left it where it was and hope the parent will be back to protect and feed.  

Two summers ago I found a baby Tawny being attacked by crows which I shooed away. I approached that baby and off it flew, into the trees; with dusk approaching it would be safe. For a couple of weeks I followed the progress of that owl and its fellow nest mates as they moved from tree to tree calling out for food. 

As if finding a Tawny was not enough excitement for one day there was a grey coloured Fairlie on the Ffestiniog - Dafydd Lloyd George after a paint job! Is this just an undercoat or here to stay? Rainy days can be good.

Asian shore crab (Hemigrapsus sanguineus) in Barry!

On the 2nd May (2014) an Asian shore crab was seen on the shore in front of the power station near Barry, Vale of Glamorgan. This is the first sighting of this species in the UK. These crabs will outcompete our local crabs and are very partial to eating mussels, clams and oysters.

If you see one please take a photo and report it to the 'Non-native Species Secretariat' by email to: nnss@fera.gsi.gov.uk.

These crabs are native to the Western Pacific Ocean from Russia, along the Korean and Chinese coasts, to Hong Kong, and the Japanese archipelago. They inhabit shallow, hard-bottom intertidal or sometimes subtidal habitat and tend to aggregate at high densities under rocks where they overlap habitats with native crab species. They can tolerate wide ranges of salinity and temperature as well as damp conditions in the upper intertidal regions.

Populations have been established on the north-western and north-eastern shores of the Atlantic Ocean and there have been reports of their presence in the Black Sea and the northern Adriatic Sea.

If you would like to know more about this species here is a link to an ID sheet.

Crossing the Sound to Bardsey (Ynys Enlli)

If you have ever crossed the Sound, or are planning to do so, you’ll be delighted with ‘Across the Sound’. It is the Bardsey Island Trust’s first-ever Yearbook, covering events on Enlli in 2013. It is fully bilingual of course, with lots of excellent photographs including a centre-spread (pages 42-43) of all the islanders (numbering 15); these include the Observatory staff, the Porter family at Ty Pellaf, Christine and Ernest Evans (Rhedynog Goch), their son Colin (the boatman) and his daughter Gwen. There are also three dogs in the photo, but don’t delude yourself that you can take your dog with you if you visit – these dogs are resident!

Different chapters cover topics such as recollections of the years since the Trust’s creation in 1979 (Christine Evans), the farming year (Jo Porter), the Carreg Fawr Project (restoring the paintings which Brenda Chamberlain applied directly to the interior walls of this house), thoughts on Retreats and the spiritual life of the island (Rev’d Susan Blagden) and the work of the Bird and Field Observatory (by Steve Stansfield, in his 16th year as Observatory Warden!). Emyr Roberts, the Trust’s Warden on the island, retired at the end of the 2013 season and there is an appreciation of his work. If you wish to obtain a copy, go to http://www.bardsey.org/english/shop/shop.htm

If you do buy one, it will encourage the Trust to produce another next year. There is of course limited information about happenings each year from 1953 recorded in the Observatory Annual Reports, and in the newsletters and Reports of the Trust since 1979, but these Yearbooks (if continued) will build up into an impressive archive.

The wolf is free!

For four years the willow wolf in Coed y Bleiddiau has been imprisoned within a picket fence. It was for his own good really, to keep hungry goats away. But now he’s a fully grown, mature wolf, strong enough to withstand a bit of bark nibbling, so the wardens have removed part of the fence in order that children (adults too) can crawl into his stomach and exit through the oversized tail. 

Not everyone recognises our beautiful sculpture as a wolf, some just don’t get the howling jaws pointing up to the skies. But from today people with smartphones and a barcode scanner can find out all about it via a pair of QR codes. The top code gives a snippet of information direct from the code to the phone and the bottom code gives much more information via a link to the website historypoints.org  

Across from the wolf is the old Railway Inspector’s cottage which many people stop to admire but few know much about its colourful history. All can now be revealed on the QR code.

These are just two of the many ‘history points’ to be found along the edge of the Ffestiniog Railway and are part of the 750 history locations across Wales. I asked Rhodri Clark how he chose the name for the website and the project. ‘Everyone’s familiar with cash points, history points is the same but dispensing history.’

This is a really good and unobtrusive way to signpost the countryside in an unobtrusive way. You can get lots of information which is easy to update and translate into multiple languages; so much more flexible and enduring than an interpretation board, much cheaper too. Well done Rhodri and everyone who contributes to creating historypoints.org

Geology of Gelli Iago – Llyn Llagi

After a brief introduction to rocks we headed out of the quarry near Gelli Iago, on the short cut road from Llanfrothen to Nant Gwynant. Our guide Clive Hudson, with long wooden staff in hand, looked a bit like Gandalf but without the beard.

Measuring the dip

His staff was not for conjuring up spirits or smiting rocks – this staff would help indicate the angle at which rocks dipped into the earth and another gadget was used to measure the angle of dip. At the start of our walk they were all dipping towards the south east and later on to the north west which meant we were walking through a basin – strong forces had squidged the rocks into a U shaped fold.

We walked over slate, crossed a slither of sandstone (and a bit of yellow tuff / volcanic ash) and were introduced to a dolerite intrusion; magma at high temperature and under high pressure, which had been squeezed between sedimentary rock and solidified slowly, deep underground. This rock has no slaty cleavage, tends to be blocky (breaking up into blocks) and covered in vegetation such as lichens.

Clive explains the process of bedding in sandstone

Dolerite was butted up against sandstone and, whereas in the past I would have called them all rocks, I like to think that I could now tell the difference. Sandstone is built from layers of sediment accumulating underwater and this was obvious to see with larger granules in places, where stronger currents had carried heavier bits. On the face of some rocks we could see the ripple effect, with heavier granules on the ridges and finer sediments in the troughs.

This area is obviously a well used outdoor classroom; every now and again we would notice a chipped off piece of rock where budding geologists had taken a sample. Newly exposed rock is a very different colour to the weathered rock.

Not a contact lens but a fossil!

Along the way through the basin, Clive turned over a rock to illustrate some fossils. Nothing with great jaws, wings or long tails but a few tiny, finger nail shaped hollows formed by seashells. Upside down (round side on top) shells are less likely to be dislodged by moving water so we could assume which way up this boulder had been created. As we got closer to Llyn Llagi we found what we were looking for, the dolerite rocks coming up at the far side of the basin.

From the shores of Llyn Llagi we stood on a hollow-sounding structure of slate in the middle of a bog which we surmised to be a platform for drying peat. But who wanted the peat up here? It was handy to have Kathy Laws in our party, the archaeologist from the National Trust, to point out the site of an iron-age settlement just a hundred metres or so away – maybe they would have needed a supply of peat.

The buoys in Llyn Llagi are part of the monitoring of this and 20 other lakes in Britain to measure acidity. Since 1988 the acidity of Llyn Llagi has fallen with PH rising from about 5.3 to about 5.9 – the main factor being the reduction of acid rain caused by sulphur dioxide from coal-fired power stations. The other lake monitored in Snowdonia is Llyn Cwm Mynach.

From here we walked to the top of a microgranite sill to eat our lunch beside a dolerite erratic. I’m not sure I could identify microgranite – it’s like dolerite but formed with the addition of quartz. On a sunny day it made for a great picnic site.

Our last mission was to climb to the top of Castell, a rhyolite intrusion - a ‘volcanic plug’. Clive explained the different viscosity of lava (which is magma that has broken through the earth’s surface). Volcanoes erupting on, or close to the edges of continents have sticky lava whereas in the open seas they have thin, fast flowing lava, which is why Hawaii is the shape it is. When lava spewed out of Castell it was the sticky stuff that stayed upright and slowly moulded over time. The rhyolite was a light, whitish colour with lots of fragments solidified in wavy bands.

On top of the volcano

It was a wonderful day led by Clive and organised by the Snowdonia Society. I feel I know a lot more than when I started but the number of questions buzzing around my mind makes me realise the extent of my ignorance on this fascinating subject.

Clive Hudson is an enthusiast for local pre-history and maybe organising a day school to look into subjects such as: flint technology and lime bast string and other cordage. Another possibility is the extraction of birch bark tar which was the glue to stick flint onto shafts; Clive’s prototype involves a biscuit tin and a baked bean tin in a fire! If you would like to know more or take part in an interesting day please contact Clive at cliveshan2@gmail.com

How it all happened over millions of years