Natur Cymru is a quarterly magazine about the wildlife and environment of Wales. As of 1st April 2017 Natur Cymru has ceased publishing. We hope this is a temporary situation. Back copies are still available for sale, please see our website for full details and to find out more about Natur Cymru and its role in reporting on Welsh wildlife www.naturcymru.org.uk
Do you want to manage your land to encourage wildlife?
Are you unsure how to do it? Do you lack the livestock or equipment to help you?
Ivy Denham is a regular contributor to Natur Cymru, writing about the practicalities of habitat restoration, and has news of a the launch of a new Carmarthenshire Meadows Project.
Where: The National Botanic Garden of Wales, Llanarthne, SA32 8HN When: Saturday 28th March from 11am to 1pm.
Entry to the meeting is free if you give your contact details beforehand to Carmarthenshire’s Biodiversity Officer Isabel Macho at IMacho@carmarthenshire.gov.uk or ring 01558 825390 The project aims to inspire the creation of a county-wide community that supports each other to improve the diversity of plants, fungi and animals on meadows, large or small, across Carmarthenshire.
This has been inspired by the highly successful Monmouthshire Meadows Group, a collection of 80 field owners, who over the past 10 years have greatly improved the quality of over 500 acres of Monmouthshire grassland. They do this by sharing knowledge, farm equipment and livestock – have a look at their website www.monmouthshiremeadows.org.uk
One of the delights of Carmarthenshire is its rolling landscape of beautiful meadows. But look closely and you’ll struggle to find a field with a rich diversity of wildflowers. Like much of the UK where 98% of flower-rich meadows have been lost in the past century, Carmarthenshire’s farmers have had to intensify their farming methods to make a living, and consequently, our ‘traditional’ wildflower-rich meadows have been reduced to isolated islands amongst a sea of green grass dominated fields.
The Botanic Garden manages Waun Las National Nature Reserve on which a few meadows have been restored to much of their former splendour. Here, you can now find fields full of orchids, caraway, bees, butterflies and colourful fungi, the result of careful grazing and strategically timed hay cutting.
So it’s an appropriate place to come and find out what you might be able to do with your field. You won’t hear about any new funding at this meeting – there isn’t any! But you might be inspired to work with others across the county to help restore the floral and faunal splendour of your own patch of Welsh countryside.
There’ll be short talks about meadows and a Carmarthenshire perspective, a chance to ask questions and make suggestions plus an invitation to have a go at using a scythe and to meet Waun Las’ farmer and his Welsh black cattle.
We look forward to meeting you.
Members of the Carmarthenshire Biodiversity Partnership
Cover price £4.50, or quarterly by subscription £18 pa (individual) or £32 (group/organisation)
Dragonflies in Wales – from the records ● Brian Walker & Claire Install. Findings from the new Dragonfly Atlas.
Recording the water-bird splendour of the Dee Estuary • Neil Friswell & Colin Wells. Thirty years of the Wetland Bird Survey on the Dee Estuary.
Y Tywyddiadur – sychder eithriadol 1887 yng Nghymru a thu hwnt • Duncan Brown & Twm Elias. Cofnodi tywydd yng Nghymru (rhan 3).
Common terns at Shotton – a Welsh success story • Peter Coffey. Wales’ common tern breeding colony.
Teifi Marshes nature reserve – from water shrew to water buffalo • Nathan Walton. The wildlife of a much loved wetland reserve.
The Argent and Sable moth and its association with bog myrtle in Wales • Andrew Graham. Revealing an intimate association between an insect and its foodplant.
Tŷ Newydd – an environment to write about • Robert Minhinnink. The National Writers’ Centre of Wales and its sense of place.
60 Years Ago – the story of a National Nature Reserve • Peter Walters Davies & James Robertson.
The struggle to save Cors Fochno from agricultural reclamation.
NODWEDDION ARFEROL / REGULAR FEATURES
Green Bookshelf ● Kathryn Birch, Jim Latham
Discoveries in Science ● Kath Slade. 3D slide collection at Amgueddfa Cymru/Nat. Museum Wales
Nature at large ● Ceri Morris. A Pygmy sperm whale is stranded in Caernarfon Bay
From the garden ● Bruce Langridge. I name this field… Cae Tegeirianau
Tribute to Ziggy Otto • Charlotte Gjerlov. Natur Cymru author and inspirational conservation biologist
Islands round-up • Geoff Gibbs. News from Skomer and Skokholm
Life lines ● Anthony Barker. Offshore early warning network
In my front garden ● John Crellin. Life on the street
Buglife ● Craig Macadam. Riverflies and their importance to wetland ecosystems
Woods and forests ● Christopher Matts. Can Ancient Woodland benefit farmers?
The power of flight is one of the greatest miracles of Nature. Over one hundred billion creatures soar through the air today – from nectar-drinking hummingbirds to armoured airborne beetles, from bats hunting in the black of night to bizarre winged lizards.
In Conquest of the Skies, David Attenborough travels back in time to unravel the astonishing 300-million-year story of how these animals first appeared and explores the huge variety of aeronauts that fill our skies today. Using the latest scientific analysis, he can now reveal the hidden mechanics behind their gravity-defying skills.
The 208 minute DVD or 3D version will be released on 9th March 2015 and can be ordered through Amazon. Just click here.
Seeing is believing .... take a look at this amazing preview:
Mighty
castles and stately homes present just one side of the National Trust in Wales
but there is so much more that often goes unreported. The vast tracts of land and
farms, in the uplands and along the coast, don’t just look after themselves;
they need to be managed to bring out their best. They are managed for the preservation
of rare plants or creatures, for sheer beauty of the landscape or to provide
access so that people can get out and experience it first hand.
Glory be to the National Trust and also to Natural Resources Wales for their support in making this happen.
In the past
year I have been lucky to see this other side through the lens of a camera and to re-live
the moments as I edited the footage into films.
Tom Jones
My first
assignment was at Penarfynydd Farm where I met Tom Jones the farmer. Penarfynydd
is a National Trust tenanted farm 3 miles west of Aberdaron near the village of
Rhiw on the Llŷn Peninsula. Twenty years ago the heathland was in poor shape
with intensive sheep grazing but today it is looking good with a mixed regime
which includes cattle, ponies and a specialist breed of sheep. This is a
success story in which both the farm’s economy and a broad range of scarce
wildlife have benefitted through multiple partners including Natural Resources Wales, working as an effective
team. Penarfynydd is living proof that farming and nature conservation does not
need to be a compromise. This is what Tom had to say about it:
My next
assignment was to do with species rich grasslands. Since I was born 60 years
ago 99% of species rich grassland in Wales has disappeared; victim of modern
farming and gardening practice. But great things are happening at a dozen
National Trust properties to champion these grasslands, to restore hay meadows brimming
with wild flowers and to inspire people to have a go with their own pockets of
land. The result is beautiful and
creates a paradise for bees, butterflies and other insects.
Dave Swanton
To raise
awareness of this project, which is supported by Natural Resources Wales, I was asked to make films at three of the properties;
Powis Castle, Erddig and Bodnant. It was a privilege to meet the gardeners, to
see and hear how they manage their grasslands.
Steep
terraces rise up from the Great Lawn to the red Powis Castle on the skyline.
Giant topiaries and manicured lawns at the top, then lush herbaceous borders
and, on the lowest slopes, trees and shrubs in a sea of tall grass packed full
of ox-eye daisies. The wild, natural flora complements the formality and
landscaping. Dave Swanton explains:
We managed
to attract the attention of Country Life and had a small news item about Powis
Castle and its grasslands published in a summer edition of the magazine.
I’d not been
to Erddig before, really impressive but a different look and feel to Powis.
Over 2,000 orchid spikes were in bloom on the canal banks near the great
house – up until the 1980s these would
have been mown down the moment they lifted their heads out of the ground. Glyn
Smith explains:
At Bodnant
we did not go to the usual places but started in Old Park Meadow which was only
recently opened to the public. Here, as at the other properties, I was
introduced to the wonders of yellow rattle, a magic ingredient which reduces
the vigour of the grass, creating pockets for wild flowers to colonise. Bill
Warrell explains:
Suitably
inspired I bought a 500g bag of yellow rattle seed and sowed it in different
parts of my lawns and grass banks last autumn. It needs to be done at that time
of year so that the seeds are exposed to winter chills, a prerequisite for
germinating in the spring. Would putting them in the deep freeze achieve the
same purpose?
Orchids at Erddig
If my lawn
does indeed take off into a hay meadow it’ll need mowing in August so I joined
in a scything workshop that was organised at Bodnant and learnt about snath and
peen. A snath is the wooden handle of a scythe onto the end of which is fixed
the razor sharp blade of a scythe, in our case an Austrian scythe. Keeping it
sharp is of the essence; rubbing a wetstone repeatedly over the top of the
blade, then removing the burr on the underside, every two to three minutes.
But after a
day of scything, sharpening alone will not be enough, and it will be time to
peen your blade. This is a cold forging of the steel; using a hammer to strike
onto a peening rig, the final 4 mm of the blade is beaten outwards to give a
thin profile which is then ready for sharpening.
Why does it
need to be a wetstone? In sharpening, the stone is taking off dirt and metal
which would gunge up the stone unless it is kept and washed in a pouch of
water.
In summer 2015
I will publish an article about the Bodnant hay meadows in The Countryman magazine.
You can see the art of scything at our workshop in this short film, Tai Chi
with a Blade:
In late
summer (2014) I started another series of films covering five very different sites
and types of work. The first was Gupton Farm at Freshwater West; best known as
Wales’s premier surfing beach and to some people as the film set for Harry
Potter or Robin Hood. Many others know it as a beautiful beach for holidays or
a great space to walk the dog. What’s not so well known is that it’s home to
Gupton Farm, a 400 acre farm that’s at the forefront of pioneering work to
accommodate rising sea levels and climate change.
Freshwater West
Through
appropriate grazing in different seasons the National Trust’s tenant farmer,
Chris James, is working in partnership with Natural Resources Wales, to help the landscape respond in a natural way. As sea levels
rise and squeeze the narrow coastal strip, once arable fields are being
encouraged to revert to dunes, thereby providing effective defences against
flooding and extending scarce habitat.
Beyond the
dunes is a rare fen meadow, a haven for all sorts of flora and fauna and a
vital feeding ground for overwintering birds. Through anticipating change, this
habitat will be saved and migrated inland; and it’s being done without
compromising the financial viability of the farm. Jonathan Hughes, General
Manager for the National Trust in Pembrokeshire, explains how it all works:
I went back
again in the winter when the land was thoroughly waterlogged and amongst other
things we saw large numbers of lapwings and other species feasting on the
grains from the silage and the many insects and invertebrates. Birds and
cattle, farmers and ornithologists - all in harmony; perfect!
Jonathan
Hughes, General Manager for the National Trust in Pembrokeshire, describes and
shows what it looks like in winter:
In the Gower
I made a film about Cwm Ivy. For hundreds of years there has been a sea wall at
Cwm Ivy but climate change and rising sea levels mean that it is no longer a
defendable position. The wall has been breached and on a regular basis salt
water flows into what used to be a SSSI freshwater marsh. Whilst we have lost
the freshwater marsh, we have gained valuable new saltmarsh.
The
outstanding issue is that the sea wall forms part of the Wales coastal path and
at present walkers are needing to take a diversionary route.
Alan
Kearsley Evans explains the situation in this short film and the plans for a
bridge over the breach as well as aspirations for this becoming a site for
ospreys.
Wetting the
Migneint. The Migneint,
a vast, upland bog, between Ffestiniog and Ysbyty Ifan, is much wetter than it
used to be. Over a series of years the National Trust has been working with
Natural Resources Wales and several
other partners to block drainage ditches; the oldest were put in to ‘improve’
the grouse shooting for the Victorians and the more recent ones to ‘improve’
grazing and productivity.
Pete the Peat - extracting a core
Anyone who
has walked in the Migneint will know the tug and squelch of the peat bogs but
it’s been unnaturally dry for many years. What might at first have seemed an
improvement has been an environmental ‘own goal’ resulting in the loss of
thousands of tonnes of peat which is a great store for carbon. Without water,
new peat can’t form and dry peat oxidises, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere.
Another
consequence of ditches is that rainwater rushes off the uplands contributing to
floods downstream in the Conwy valley.
Andrew
Roberts from the National Trust explains the finer points of building 30,000
dams and Pete Jones, the Peatland Ecologist from Natural Resources Wales, extracts 500 years of history
from a core of peat.
Dolmelynllyn
is for lovers of the lower plants. The ancient woodlands around Dolmelynllyn
are a Mecca for lichens, liverworts and mosses; the so-called ‘lower plants’.
Students travel hundreds of miles to see the rare specimens, just a few miles
north of Dolgellau, many of which have disappeared elsewhere a long time ago.
Red-eyed shingle lichen
The magic
formula is an abundance of rain, the temperate Celtic rainforest, fresh air and
sensible management by the National Trust with help from Plantlife and Natural
Resources Wales.
Rhodri
Wigley, the lead ranger for the National Trust at Dolmelynllyn, and Dave
Lamacraft, from Plantlife Cymru, explain what’s so special and how they care
for it.
The coastal
heathland of North Pembrokeshire is hardly prime agricultural land and without
grazing, it would soon become overgrown; bad news for walkers, also for birds
such as chough and for several rare plants.
Andrew Tuddenham
For many
years the National Trust has made use of wild ponies to keep the heaths under
control but now the focus has switched to grazing by Welsh Blacks. Not only do
they do a better job, they also provide valuable food helping to offset the
costs of conservation.
Until
recently the cattle were overwintered in a number of small barns scattered
across the area. But now all over-wintering has been brought under one roof at
Southwood Farm; much more efficient and making it feasible to breed and build
up the herd.
Traditional
field walls ripped up in the drive for greater productivity are being replaced
to allow greater management of grazing land, moving cattle in time to avoid
turning fields into mud baths. New footpaths are being introduced connecting
with the nearby coast path and there are plans to create a bunkhouse. And for
bedding the cattle are enjoying the local heather and gorse harvested with a
Ryetec Flail Collector to create fire breaks on the heath.
Everyone’s a
winner it seems! Here’s Andrew Tuddenham explaining the background and the
plans for the future:
In the
Autumn I enjoyed the two day Heathlands for
the Future seminar organised by the HLF Llŷn Landscape Partnership
(Partneriaeth Tirlun Llŷn). There is so much being done - I wrote
up the event as a series of 5 x blogposts:
There is so
much material from all these stories that I am converting it into a presentation
about the NTs conservation work in Wales; the first booking is with the
Flintshire U3A.
Ospreys started nesting in Wales in 2004, with pairs in two locations, close to the Severn near Welshpool and in the Glaslyn valley near Porthmadog. The Severn pair raised one young but have not returned to breed there; the Glaslyn nest tipped in a gale and the young died. The Glaslyn pair – the same two birds – did not give up but have returned each year since and always reared young.
Thousands of people have been to this site to view the nest and watch close-up pictures on screen. Emyr Evans was the project manager for the RSPB on the Glaslyn for the first few years, and then moved to the Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust reserve on the Dyfi when Ospreys started prospecting there. After great dramas with flooding, torrential rain and interference by visiting ospreys, this pair has also become established and is well seen from a new HLF-funded observation tower reached by a boardwalk across the Cors Dyfi marshes.
Emyr has now written and published the story of the first 10 years, as a handsome coffee-table book with superb illustrations and the complete history of the sites, the people who made it all possible, the individual ospreys, young reared, their migration to West Africa in the autumn as shown by satellite-tagged birds from the Dyfi, and really everything you might want to know about this really exciting story. Just the book to cheer you up during a wet, windy, Welsh winter.
It costs £25 if ordered direct from Emyr; post-free if you place your order by Jan 18th 2015, otherwise a small charge. Full details and how to order: www.ospreysinwales.com
We visited Gupton Farm at Freshwater West in September 2014 when it was as dry as a bone and learnt how farming and conservation are working together. We returned in January when the land was thoroughly waterlogged and amongst other things we saw large numbers of lapwings and other species feasting on the grains from the silage and the many insects and invertebrates. Birds and cattle, farmers and ornithologists - all in harmony; perfect!
Jonathan Hughes, General Manager for the National Trust in Pembrokeshire, describes and shows what it looks like in winter:
And in case you did not see the summer version this is what it looked like then:
The coastal heathland
of North Pembrokeshire is hardly prime agricultural land and without grazing,
it would soon become overgrown; bad news for walkers, also for birds such as
chough and for several rare plants.
For many
years the National Trust has made use of wild ponies to keep the heaths under
control but now the focus has switched to grazing by Welsh Blacks. Not only do
they do a better job, they also provide valuable food helping to offset the
costs of conservation.
Until
recently the cattle were overwintered in a number of small barns scattered
across the area. But now all over-wintering has been brought under one roof at
Southwood Farm; much more efficient and making it feasible to breed and build
up the herd.
Traditional
field walls ripped up in the drive for greater productivity are being replaced
to allow greater management of grazing land, moving cattle in time to avoid
turning fields into mud baths. New footpaths are being introduced connecting
with the nearby coast path and there are plans to create a bunkhouse. And for bedding
the cattle are enjoying the local heather and gorse harvested with a Ryetec
Flail Collector to create fire breaks on the heath.
Everyone’s a
winner it seems! Here’s Andrew Tuddenham explaining the background and the
plans for the future:
Ivy Denham is a regular contributor to Natur Cymru, writing about the practicalities of habitat restoration, and has news of a the launch of a new Carmarthenshire Meadows Project.
