Your Ancient Tree Forum Needs You!

Ancient Tree Forum Wales

Thursday 23rd April 2015

Dinefwr Park, Llandeilo

Natur Cymru had many articles and mentions of the Ancient Tree Forum in its pages. If trees are your thing, now there's a chance to get more involved.

 

Tracey Lovering is starting up a Welsh branch of the UK Ancient Tree Forum and is inviting all interested people along to the first meeting on 23rd April. If you are unable to make this date there will be other opportunities to meet this summer and autumn across Wales.To book a place, register an interest, or for further information, please email Tracey at t.lovering@btinternet.com 

 

The National Trust are generously hosting the first meeting at Dinefwr Park, Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire. Brian Muelaner, UK Chair of Ancient Tree Forum Wales, will be there to introduce everyone to the Ancient Tree Forum, and set the context for the day. Brian has visited Dinefwr Park previously, and suggested the site as ideal for the first meeting as it has a range of notable trees.

 

If you are a National Trust member please ensure you bring your card on the day, as all scanned memberships will help towards the cost of the room (which NT will meet). 

　

Agenda

　

10.00 Tea/coffee available (Newton House Dining Room - exhibition room)

10.30 Welcome - Tracey Lovering

10.40 Introduction to Ancient Tree Forum - Brian Muelaner

11.40 Tree walk around estate - Part 1

13.00 Lunch

13.45 Tree walk around estate - Part 2

15.15 Next steps (inside session); discussion on provisional programme for year

14.15 Close

The National Trust have been offered a synopsis of the day, and also any findings or records which the Trust can add to the knowledge already existing for the site. If you'd like to volunteer to help produce this synopsis　and/or collate records, please let Tracey know.

 

Here's hoping it's a good day and the weather is kind!

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:  

The Far End at Bodnant

Skunk Cabbage

Bodnant Garden seemed huge when I was dragged around as a child but it’s a lot bigger now and I no longer need any encouragement to explore. In recent years the gardeners have opened up new areas such as Old Park, Yew Dell and most recently The Far End, an extra 10 ½ acres. As its name suggests it’s about as far as you can get from the reception, a gentle downhill stroll, perfect for mobility scooters, buggies and wheelchairs.

The Far End is based around a series of ponds that ensured a steady supply of water to the mill. One of them is the Skating Pond, which is where the owners used to skate in the winter and go boating in the summer. Another is the Otter Pond, so named after an exhausted otter took refuge here and Lord Aberconwy ordered the Denbigh Hunt off his property. The ponds are connected by streams crossable by a perfect Billy Goats Gruff bridge and, for the more adventurous, a set of stepping stones complete with hand rail. 

In early April the camelias were still blooming (delayed by a winter cold snap), magnolias were stunning, daffodils had just passed their peak and skunk cabbages were looking brilliant. If you want to know why they get their name, just rub the flesh of the plant and take a whiff.

For many people the most iconic sight is the Laburnum Arch, with countless coachloads coming to see its blooms in late May to early June. But it was good to see it naked, after two gardeners had spent most of January and February pruning and tying it into place. It looked more like basket weaving than gardening. 

A new head gardener has been appointed, John Rippin, who follows in the footsteps of Troy Smith and before him the three generations of the Puddles.

The Laburnum Arch

Wilder Wales

£20 BUY NOW

An attractive book with photos by Drew Buckley and words from Julian Rollins, both of whom live in Pembrokeshire. There is a chapter for each month covering a geographic area and its most noteworthy species; January is Newborough Forest, with the spotlight on ravens and red squirrels.

The choice of the 12 areas is intentionally author-subjective - ‘a year’s worth of wildlife experiences each of which would make the average person say wow’. Keen naturalists will already know a good deal about what is being described but I am sure that even they will find something new to take away.

However, I suspect the target, or most receptive audience, will be the newcomer to natural history or to what Wales has to offer. A stunning photo to catch the attention, with some well-chosen words that tell a memorable story, and specifics of what to see, where and when. Any book which helps engage people with Welsh wildlife is to be applauded.

I particularly like the reality check; wildlife does not appear on demand. When Julian goes in search of bottlenose dolphins, there are none, until he starts to walk away from the harbour. As for the spectacle of lekking black grouse, the scene described was a bit like gorillas in the mist, without the gorillas, but with the ‘bubbling, warbling trill’ of the male grouse. Drew Buckley must have taken his camera on a different day.

My only criticism is the frequency of typos; gremlins seem to have sneaked in between the final proof and the printers. But this does not stop me enjoying the book and its beautiful images.

The book is priced at £20 but subscribers to Natur Cymru can receive a 25% discount. If subscribers wish to take advantage of this offer they should order through the Graffeg website and enter the coupon code Natur25 on the cart page. 

Return of the Magnificent Seven

When we first moved into our house in Snowdonia there was a gang of seven wild goats to welcome us; six adults and one kid. For the first few years the population was constant. Occasionally we’d lose one to old age, or a young male would go off in search of his own territory, but new ones would be born.

I'm the proud Dad!

We called them the Below the Railway Gang to differentiate between the ARGs, the Above the Railway Gang, which have a very distinctive colouring with a jet black head and shoulders and a white rear. I’m not sure how many ARGs we’ve got as they are much higher up the mountain but several years ago we counted twenty; that was the year they had four kids.

In recent years our gang of seven was depleted with successive years of no kids; was our impressive looking billy not up to the job? Inevitably the older ones would die of old age including the top billy. Months after he disappeared we found his skull and horns sticking through the snow, thirteen growth rings made him a teenager.

It was not until I discovered this skull that I understood goat horns. I knew they kept on growing each year, as opposed to being shed like a deer, but I hadn’t realised that they were connected to the skull with such a long piece of bone. The horn itself is a sheath, made of the same stuff as our fingernails, that slots over the bone. For a goat to lose a horn, which I’ve seen after the autumn rutting, it must be a serious and painful business.

Mum to four kids in thirteen months feeding at
bottom of cliff

Thirteen  months ago we were down to one elderly male and two middle aged females when out popped twin kids. We were delighted with the new arrivals and watched as they grew into sturdy youngsters. Curiously their colouring was more in keeping with the black and white ARGs than the mottled grey and white of our billy – had one of their billies crossed the line?

Over the last couple of months I have been watching the behaviour of our local gang and often found them taking afternoon siestas in the cosy bracken. Then one day I found just four of them, the billy, the twins and their auntie – where was mum? Sure enough a couple of weeks later, our good friend Sandra, a keen goat watcher who was looking after the place while we were away, saw the next generation, another pair of beautiful black and white twins.

One of the new twins - they don't stay still
long enough for a family pose.

For the time being they are resident on and around a steep sided cliff towards the bottom of our drive. She’s an attentive mother, quickly ushering the kids out of site whenever cars or people pass by. Yesterday I noticed the rest of the family had come down to the cliff and had just crossed the fence on their way back into the nature reserve. For the next week or so this fence is too much of an obstacle for the new kids but soon they’ll be tearing about with the rest of the family. I hope there is no jealousy on the part of last year’s twins.

So there we have it, the return of the magnificent seven – a lucky number and a modest one, which should not cause any conservation concern to the nature reserve. Back in the 1980s there were said to have been about sixty wild goats, that some were caught and transported to Scotland whilst others were shot. No need for drastic actions like that at the moment. Seven goats should be about right to keep down the ivy and brambles to make good space for the lichens and bryophytes.

One of last year's twins aged about 13 months.

Wales in Cape Verde

With a blog named Natur Cymru there’s a presumption that the subject will have something to do with Wales other than a Welshman such as me happening to visit. Well, São Vicente, or St Vincent, one of the Cape Verde islands, has a tenuous coal connection, enough to warrant a mention.

Mindelo - capital of Saint Vincent 

All of the islands are volcanic in origin and São Vicente has a huge natural harbour formed when the seaward wall of a volcanic crater collapsed into the sea. This, combined with its position as a natural stepping stone across the Atlantic, made it an ideal coal-bunkering station in the heyday of steamships.

At any one time there were 34,000 tonnes of coal from the Rhondda, shipped via Cardiff, ready to refuel coal-hungry ships on their way to or from Europe to South America or Cape Town. At its peak this was the 4^th major coal-bunkering station in the world, after Port Said, Singapore and Malta.

The many expats left behind a cricket team, a golf club and several words such as ‘ovatime’ which have crept into creole, the unofficial but spoken language. The official language remains Portuguese, as this was their colony for 500 years or so until 1975.

White sand from the Sahara

A popular place for the British expats to live was Mato Inglese on the slopes of Monte Verde, the ironically named Green Mountain, which it is anything but. The island is desperately short of water and these days Mato Inglese is more or less deserted as its water supply has dried up. The island has a few boreholes yielding water but apart from that the 80,000 residents are dependent upon a desalination plant and supplies from the neighbouring island of Santo Antão. 

In recent years there has been a construction boom fuelled by tourism developments and by emigrés returning to their homeland – emigrés are said to account for 20% of GDP. A sad consequence of the construction boom is the illegal taking of sand from the beaches compromising the breeding efforts of several species of turtle including leatherbacks and loggerheads. Most of the sand is volcanic black but the windward side of the island also has dunes of white sand blown in from the Sahara.

The reason for so many emigrés is the sporadic rain, leading to crop failure, many deaths and tens of thousands of Cape Verdeans escaping to survive; the current population of the 9 islands is half a million. When it’s a matter of killing to eat and survive it’s no surprise that the local wildlife is an obvious target and one of the easiest targets was the baby Cape Verde Shearwater, on the neighbouring uninhabited island of Raso, with each chick yielding an ounce of flesh. According to the 2014 edition of Bradt’s travel guide this starvation time necessity became part of a modern day annual ritual to celebrate the end of famine, with thousands of chicks being slaughtered each October. Fortunately this practice has been outlawed and suitably policed since the last cull in 2008. There is an exceedingly gruesome YouTube film of the 2008 cull which was used as part of the pressure to encourage the government into action.

The islands are 300 to 500 miles to the west of Senegal in the middle of a vast expanse of prime fishing territory and a target for the world’s fishing fleet. The Chinese are said to be there, removing the fins of sharks, but I saw no evidence of this. However, my local guide said that of the 80 corner shops in Mindelo, the capital of São Vicente, 78 were owned by Chinese whom you never see. Maybe because they’re always out fishing? 

For several years the EU has had an agreement to fish these waters and is currently paying Cape Verde €500,000 a year for the rights to catch up to a certain quota; but policing must be impractical over such an expanse with just two(?) patrol boats to cover it. While I was there I saw a ship carrying the Spanish flag offload at least two containers of frozen tuna and marlin.

Second hand information says the local fishermen are suffering from the arrival of factory scale fishing with fish prices rising due to less volume. The story also goes that the presence of the sharks frightens smaller fish to stay closer to the islands for protection – but with their removal, the fish are now much further out to sea, beyond the easy reach of the locals’ small boats.

I can’t verify any of this from what I saw but the sight of fish being landed, prepared on the beach and sold in the market was a colourful spectacle.

On a drive round the island I saw a group of fishermen struggling to haul their boat up onto the sand so I gave a hand. Our taxi driver felt honour bound to help as well and after about ten minutes the job was done. Getting me to pull or push at the same time as the rest was difficult – there was no ‘1-2-3 heave’ but more of a ‘grunt-grunt-grunt’.

When the boat was safe one of the fishermen, with dreadlocks, came across and shook my hand African style. He said thank you and for a moment I thought he was going to give me a fish, but instead he asked for 5 Euros. I am sure he had an opinion about the presence of foreign fishing boats.  

LIFE publications - Freshwater Fish and more

Natur Cymru has frequently featured the LIFE project in its pages, and you can read more in the pages of its own LIFE Nature Focus publications.

The latest takes a close look at the work LIFE projects have done to protect threatened freshwater fish species and improve their habitats. The 64-page brochure, LIFE AND FRESHWATER FISH, highlights the status of key species and the threats they face, as well as providing an overview of LIFE's efforts to improve their conservation status, help in the management of the Natura 2000 network, and meet the targets set by the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020.

Since 1992, more than 135 LIFE projects have directly targeted over 50 threatened freshwater fish species listed in the annexes of the EU Habitats Directive or in the IUCN European Red List. Hundreds more projects have indirectly benefitted fish populations through restoration of river, lake and other habitats vital to the lifecycle of freshwater and migratory fish populations.

The publication features a plethora of best practice examples from such LIFE projects across the EU, including in-depth profiles of projects in Denmark, Estonia, France, Italy and Spain. In addition to chapters on habitat restoration, reintroduction and restocking work, actions to overcome river barriers and stakeholder engagement and awareness-raising measures, LIFE AND FRESHWATER FISH concludes with a set of lessons from LIFE for all those involved in fish species conservation.

Other publications are also available, why not check them out on the publications link here