Quick Visit to NW Wales

 Just home from a week with daughter Kim and others in the family to her home at the tip of the Lleyn Peninsula in NW Wales.This is the peninsula in North Wales running SW into Cardigan Bay.

This is the Lleyn Peninsula. Kim lives on the coast below the 'A' of Aberdaron.

 

Trwyn Bychestyn is the name of the cliff at the top of their field.

 

Kim's house, Ty'n Gamdda, peering out from the foliage.

 

Looking SE from Kim's field. Snowdon and Cadair Idris are obscured by haze. These are Kim's sheep.                                                                                                                                The field is  three and a half acres and runs from the track to the house, up to the fenced-off coastal heath of Bychestyn which is National Trust land.

 

Our first leg-stretch on our arrival is always to go up their field to look across the Sound towards  our old home on Bardsey Island. (Ynys Enlli) There was a brisk NW wind making the Sound quite dirty on the flood tide.

Looking north, down their field. The house is now well hidden by the surrounding planting of trees and hedges.It was built in the 1700's and crouches down out of the worst of the gales.The hill beyond is Anelog.

There is always something developing at Ty'n Gamdda. At present Kim is making a pond in the corner of the lowest part of their field. She actually had a swim in it and it isn't yet full! A pipe runs rainwater to it from their tractor shed roof. The  local Swallows were dipping into it as we stood there.

This lower part of the field is left for flowers and insects and part will be cut for hay soon. Small Coppers, Common Blues and many other butterflies, grasshoppers and other insects use the meadow. A Dark Green Fritillary appeared a little while ago.

The field is divided into fenced-off areas so the sheep are grazed rotationally and some sections are cut early, some later.

Earlier in the summer, white male Ghost Moths were lekking over this meadow at twilight, looking for the orange-brown females waiting for them in the grass below.  Their swaying flight low over the grass is quite ghostly. Kim stopped counting at sixty.

 

First Scything lesson. The hay is usually cut, turned and baled mechanically but a scythe is useful for small areas.

 

Leisure time in the sun, watching leaf-cutter bees taking pieces of nearby Aquilegia leaf to their holes in a block of wood. The holes  were drilled for nesting solitary bees to use.This is a Willughby's Leaf-cutter Bee. It cut a piece of Aquilegia leaf  from a nearby plant very quickly and returned to the wood block. It folded the piece of leaf and pulled it into the hole, re-emerging a little later.                                    Last year, sitting on this same seat we watched a family of young lizards basking on the nearby warm stone wall.

 

 

 

Willughby's Leaf-cutter bee. Note the diagnostic tuft of orange hairs on the abdomen. (Photo from. 'A Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain & Ireland' by Steven Falk & Richard Lewington.)

We went for our usual cliff walk on Bychestyn, this time to get blackberries. The dry hot spell in July has parched the grass and there was no sign of the usual crop of big Parasol Mushrooms which Tony usually picks for an evening feast.

 The fine cliff grasses are dry and the marshy flushes are dry and cracked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 At this time of the year the cliff is usually a patchwork of purple and gold of heathers and the late summer-flowering Western Gorse. This year the low mounds of gorse are covered with new young prickly growth but very little flower. It looks as if cold winds in the winter seered off the growth which usually flowers now, and is being replaced with new young growth which won't flower till next year (if it doesn't get blasted again.) 

 

 

 The Ling (Calluna vulgaris) flowers a bit later than the Bell Heather (Erica cinerea) which is beginning to turn from rich purple to russet brown.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The gorse is home to various spiders including this Funnel-web species.
 

 

 

 

 

 

Grayling Butterfly an upland and coastal butterfly. We seldom see it these days in  our part of Cornwall. We saw several on the cliff and one in Kim's hay field.

They always rest with wings closed and leaning over a little. Good camouflage.

 

 

 

 

This inlet just to the south of Bychestyn has a very steep unclimbeable rock face at the head, known as The Parwyd. Most years Peregrines nest on this cliff but only a single bird appeared this year.

 

The other end of Bychestyn. Grey seals watching us watching them.

After a few evenings, the wind dropped enough to encourage us to put the moth traps out. Kim put her Heath trap up in her top potato patch and I put the Skinner with its green Synergetic light down in the corner of the bottom field. Opening the traps the next morning we were quite pleased with our total catch. Coastal species are always a pleasure for me, so too was the Scarce Footman which I don't see in Cornwall (but do in Brittany)

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the time to see the Perseids, the meteor shower which can make a spectacle if the sky is clear. On the second night of our visit it was pretty windy but clear and our grandson met up with his old school pals on the cliff and they had good views. Kim went out to look on a few evenings and saw odd ones.

Already our visit was passing all too quickly and our planned exploration of a mountain area to the north east was put in doubt by bands of drizzle and extensive low cloud. However we set off with a visit first of all to an old gunpowder works, now a  nature reserve on the Dwyryd estuary just beyond Penrhyndeudraeth. Kim had never been there either.

Gwaith Powdwr, The Gunpowder Works which ran here from 1865 to 1995 when ICI gave the area to the North Wales Naturalists Trust who run it as a nature reserve. This powder works, which was partially destroyed by explosions on several occasions during its lifetime, was a major part of the local economy and one of the most important producers of explosives in Britain. They produced vast numbers of hand grenades in the second World War

 

 

 

Looking down the Dywryd estuary. There are extensive sand and mud flats exposed at low water. Harlech Castle is nearer the estuary entrance on the left, Portmerion village on the right-hand point and Penrhryndeudraeth is round to the right.

Portmerion is the eccentric Italianate village constructed about a hundred years ago by the architect Clough Williams-Ellis.A local fisherman told us that Ospreys hunt for fish in the estuary here when the tide comes in, and Cormorants roost on the pylon in the salt marsh on the right of the picture.

Looking up the estuary. The meat from the sheep which graze the salt marshes and grassland in the estuary fetches a premium price due to this sweet feeding ground.

 

Birch and heathers are invading the old powder works.

It's a particularly good year for Rowan berries. We noticed huge crops in all the rowans as we traveled up through the Welsh mountains to get to Kim's place.

The gunpowder works made a dam near the top of the hill. It is now a good habitat for dragonflies and other aquatic insects.

 

Heathland with Ling and Western Gorse on the top of the hill, looking north. One of the main features of the reserve are the Nightjars which can be seen and heard at dusk in July.

By mid-day the low cloud over the mountains seemed to be lifting and so we decided to go on north east., through the slate country of Blaenau Ffestiniog to an upland area neither Kim nor we know at all.

The road skirts round a huge area of wet upland moor and mire known as Migneint. At around 200 square kilometres this is one of the most extensive areas of blanket bog in Britain.

The River Conwy rises in this country

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 The uplands have a rather specialized flora and this boulder was covered with all sorts of mosses and lichens.

 

 

 

 

 

Pont ar Gonwy where the road crosses the river Conwy  over this uncompromising little slate bridge.

Migneint plunges down steep valleys on the north side. Some coniferous plantation still standing, some  clear-felled and some apparently  naturally regenerating.

There are old stone-walled sheepfolds in the bottom of this valley, Cwm Hafodrhydin.

Numerous little streams tumble down high waterfalls into this valley. Lemon-scented and Beech Ferns grow in the shady gullies and  the insectivorous plant Butterwort (right) grows on the wet rock faces.

The valleys from Migneint run north to the Penmachno valley which goes north towards Bettws -y- Coed.

We had strayed far enough from home by now and headed back west in still very unsettled weather.

 

 

 

Heading back west. The humps and bumps of the Lleyn Peninsula, are ahead. They are the remains of ancient volcanoes.

 Another day's exploration was nearer home, to the marshy valley of one of the two rivers which join and run to the sea at Abersoch, the well-known sailing and holiday little town along the coast from Kim's nearest village of Aberdaron.

The wet heathland looking towards Abersoch.

Hemp Agrimony (Eupatorum cannabinum) at the side of the track. This was attracting speckled Wood butterflies and several hoverflies.

The track running down one side of this area of common land. Butterflies and dragonflies patrolled in the sun.

Darter Dragonfly....the photographer photographed!

Just before we left to come home, we were joined by son Angus and his younger son, so we overlapped for a day. They set up a saltwater aquarium so after the hens, sheep, new pond, the cliff and the garden had all been toured, we spent some hours on the coast a couple of miles to the north.

There are a couple of little islands, Dinas Fach and Dinas Fawr, along this stretch of coast. They are cut off at high tide. Carrying net and bucket, Angus and Brennie went down to investigate the rock pools while the rest of us walked along the top of the cliff to a little valley with a rather foetid pool. We had seen big Horse Leeches here in the past, but no luck this time.

Looking for leeches?

But we did find a Water Scorpion in the mud at the side of the pool.

I find this insect belongs to the group of 'true Bugs which include Shield Bugs and Froghoppers (which make cuckoo-spit.)

Prawn in the saltwater tank. This set-up works well for a few days provided the water is well aerated. Brennie caught several prawns of various sizes and fed them on the mozzie larvae he caught in Kim's new pond. All is returned to the sea before they leave for home.

Just testing the new pond! Brennie dived in.

It was a good visit, as varied as ever, from the wide horizons of  the Irish Sea to the west and the undulating moorland of Migneint stretching into the distance, to the close-up views of the leaf-cutter bees and the livestock in the aquarium.

WATCHING HENS

The heat wave of late July already seems a while ago. Knocked out by temperatures in the upper 20s when we weren’t used to it made for somnolent afternoons spent in the shade of our sturdy Magnolia stellata tree in the upper part of the garden. For some reason which I may come to regret, I let the hens out of their perfectly adequate, spacious and shady orchard, into the wider garden. I reckoned that as there is so much growth in the borders at this time of the year, they couldn’t do any damage and might in fact earn their keep by eating the odd slug or snail. The badly-chewed Hostas certainly needed it!

The hens were delighted to be let out and, clustering around my feet, they went up into the shade with me. They were feeling the heat, gaping and hanging their wings out from their bodies. They spent the whole afternoon keeping to the shade, sipping from the water dish I had given them, and always on the go, poking and pecking at miniscule particles and raking vigorously. From time to time they stopped, straining upwards with one brown reptilian eye on the sky, alert to some strange sound or perceived danger, their usual soft murmurs a little louder, more abrupt and urgent.

 

 The comings and goings of  families of tits and siskins, between the feeders and the branches above them didn’t alarm them, but the sudden appearance and call of one of the jackdaws who nests in the shed chimney close by, alarmed them considerably.

The three of them stayed close together almost all the time and took it in turns to hop up onto our laps or into the wheelbarrow where I had been sorting dried tulip bulbs out of the pots of soil they’d grown in during the spring. The soil was dry and dust bathing or raking for tasty morsels was popular. They spent a languorous half hour or more crowded into the dust bath, lying on their sides, eyes shut and flicking the soil under their wings, over each other and overboard.They were a bit hesitant when hopping down, with a flutter of wings and a rather unsteady landing.

As the heat abated they ventured out of the shade and explored the highways and byways of the nearer parts of the garden. The adventure was such a success for them that we repeated it for the four or five days the heat persisted, and now if we are around, we let them out on other days too. Perversely, although originally quite satisfied with the orchard, they now show a strong preference for the main garden! Have I made a rod for my own back? I am astonished at their avid curiosity and persistent investigations all the time, interrupted only by pauses to dust-bathe or preen. This is also a joint activity. If one fluffs up and start to attend to her feathers, they all do.

 

Looking for Tony.

We are always a little uneasy about them straying into the neighbours' gardens or a daylight visit from Reynard when our backs are turned. We hope our boundaries are hen-proof though we are doubtful about the fox if he's really determined. At least they put themselves to bed at twilight, creeping through the pophole into their pen and going up onto the perch in their house.