Hedgehogs and docks

Helping a friend reclaim an overgrown garden in Blaenau Ffestiniog, uprooting nettles, reeds and various self seeding shrubs. Stick in the fork, press down, push forward, wiggle it about and out they pop.

I pressed the fork towards some reeds with leaves piled around and prodded a sleeping hedgehog. The spiky ball seemed OK .... no blood, no damage hopefully. As I put it back into the pile of leaves I could see there was another one. I haven’t seen a live hedgehog for years. This was a real treat.

As if that wasn’t enough excitement for one day I dug out the largest dock roots you can imagine  - the full length of my garden fork. Shame there isn’t a competition for the largest dock.  

I logged on to COFNOD, the north Wales record centre, and recorded my hedgehog sightings under the hedgehog survey section. There did not seem to be anywhere to record my amazing dock roots.

Bumblebees

Bumblebees have undeniable appeal. They look like tiny flying teddy bears, and their ability to take off is aeronautically implausible. This popularity has stimulated the formation of an energetic Bumblebee Conservation Trust. It has also encouraged a number of excellent publications.

Twenty years ago the first edition of Bumblebees was published. One of a series of ecology and identification handbooks for naturalists, it has been substantially revised for this latest, third edition. It is much more than an identification guide, dealing extensively with the natural history of bumblebees.  This is based around the original research of one of the authors, and the final chapter contains useful information to help anyone interested in doing their own research to get started.

Several questions buzzed around my brain as I read this splendid handbook. I remembered that Alan Morley had written about unseasonal winter activity from buff-tailed bumblebee queens in Natur Cymru edition 10. It turns out that this species is regularly found starting a winter nesting cycle. A couple of bumblebee species that I see fairly regularly are not included as recent records on the map for my County, but the text makes clear that some areas are not well recorded, and the onus is on me to pass my records on!

As well as maps at the end of the book showing the distribution of species, there are many line drawings and superb plates contributed by Tony Hopkins. They add detail and delight to a wonderfully informative text about a fascinating group of insects.

James Robertson

Editor of Natur Cymru

This review was first published in the summer edition of Natur Cymru, June 2012  

Heritage Trees Wales

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76 trombones in the big parade but only 74 trees in Wales make it into Heritage Trees. A handsome book to dip into and delve around. Nothing too weighty or pompous; good stories well told, leaving you wanting more as opposed to yawning.   

Garthmyl, a small village between Welshpool and Newtown, is not a well known place but important in our family as where my mother grew up. I never thought it would also be home to two (or 3%!) of these nationally famous trees.  The Garthmyl Oak being one and the Garthmyl  Cedar of Lebanon the other. The latter has a chandelier dangling from a lower bough so that the caretakers-come-owners can enjoy it by night!

The book begins with a serious foreword from Pauline at the Tree Council stressing that UK governments, including Wales, do little or nothing to protect these trees.  ...’many could be felled tomorrow without penalty. The value of these trees, these Green Monuments, is already formalised in other countries.’

I just spent £350 having tree surgeons dangle on ropes cutting out the dead and removing 10% of the canopy so that our Scots Pine will keep on growing – maybe the 30^th reprint of Heritage Trees Wales in 2212 will include it if we’ve done the work well and we’re lucky. 

The Scots Pine we care for

The Economics of Happiness at Caffi Gwynant

EcoBro presents dinner and The Economics of Happiness at Caffi Gwynant on Friday 9^th November, 7 pm. On the menu there are the following local delights:

Mains

Anglesey bacon chop topped with Welsh rarebit served with roasted baby potatoes and steamed greens

Glaslyn salmon and dill fishcakes on leek tagliatelle served with roasted baby potatoes

Homemade autumn vegetable crumble: parsnips, sweet potato, carrots, butternut squash and swede in a cider cream sauce topped with a Dragon cheddar and oat crumble served with roasted baby potatoes

Desserts

Homemade treacle and stem ginger tart served with custard

Homemade pumpkin cheesecake served with Welsh Maid vanilla ice cream

All places must be booked and all meals pre-ordered by 4^th November. Please contact Paula on williamspaula1@talk21.com or 01766 890855

Dolmelynllyn

AGMs can be stuffy formalities but I really enjoyed the Snowdonia Society’s. Eighteen of us met at the Ganllwyd village hall for a pre-meeting walk led by Rhodri Wigley, the National Trust’s ‘ranger’ for Meirionnydd. Autumn colours, warm sun and blue sky brought out the best in the woodlands above Dolmelynllyn.

Rhodri at Rhaedr Ddu

Much work has been done in recent years leading up to last year’s 75^th anniversary of the property being in National Trust ownership. Among the many buildings on the estate is Nant Las, a romantic one bedroom self-catering cottage which used to be the observatory. Below it, the pond has been renovated with a new concrete outflow to channel stormwater onwards to the river below. I’d noted the work when driving past on the main road and had wondered what was the point of the boulders in the otherwise smooth outflow. They are intended to provide breaks in the current for exhausted salmon making their way upstream; until now the bottom of the outflow was the highest point they have reached.

The restoration of the bee bole wall posed some discussion. Could there really have been 46 skeps (wicker basket type hives) in this many alcoves? Air traffic control would have been a bit like Heathrow. Here’s some footage of the stonemason at work re-building the wall in 2011.

Sadly the restoration of an old tree we passed is beyond the miracles of the National Trust and the colony of tree lungwort will perish when it eventually falls. 

Tree lungwort

I had looked at the front of Dolmelynllyn Hall many times and admired the elaborate first floor bay window but never realised until Rhodri explained that is was built with the uprights of a four poster bed, its headboard and footboard.  

After lunch in the village hall we held our AGM with the only sticky point being an exchange of views on developments at the Llanbedr airfield. More tea and cakes were followed by an enjoyable talk from John Lloyd Jones titled ‘A farmer’s view of Snowdonia’.

Who's been sitting on my bench?

Power of the Plas

It was one of the first houses in Wales to have electricity with a Gilkes turbine installed in 1905. This was used until 1928; presumably made redundant by the opening of the much larger Maentwrog hydro scheme which was big enough to power all of north Wales. Since then nuclear has been and (almost) gone from Trawsfynydd and in a few months The Plas will be back to having its own hydro power generated by yet another Gilkes turbine.

Construction is fraught with conservation complication. Work on the turbine end, alongside the main road, can only be done in the summer months so as not to disturb bats. Trench work at the top end has to wait until the ecologist confirms ground nesting birds have fledged. The section through the orchard to the road has to avoid anthills. And then there are trenches beneath highly prized trees, such as the huge limes and the ‘Tree of Heaven’, which have to be hand dug to preserve the roots.

The scheme will cost £420K and, at current electricity prices, is expected to have a ten year payback. Generating 100,000 Kw a year that’s enough for about fourteen normal households.

Mandy McMath

We were all gathered at the beautiful little church at Aberffraw for a very sad reason, the funeral of a much loved and admired friend and colleague, Mandy McMath. The church was packed, and I’m sure many of us reflected that our passing would be unlikely to draw such a crowd. People had travelled a long way to pay their last respects, and it was telling to appreciate how much Mandy had meant to several different circles of people – family, colleagues, the wider world of marine biology, and, significantly, the local community of Aberffraw. Those of us who knew of her passion for marine mammals learnt about her passion for gardening; this was well known to people in Aberffraw, but they may not have known how much she had achieved in her professional life.

Such occasions can be morbid, but despite the suddenness of her death at the very early age of 57, which was shocking, Mandy’s own attitude to life and to her illness, the way the service was conducted and the warmth of the tributes made, buoyed us all up. This was a gathering which we would not forget easily. I took away the thought that we should value each other more.

James Robertson

You can read about Mandy McMath’s life and achievements by clicking here 

Here is some recent footage of Mandy introducing Iolo to the seals around Bardsey: