Dinefwr Park Iolo's Great Welsh Parks

Wales has many wonderful estates created with the wealth

from landowning and industrial families.

Once privately owned,

most of these beautiful parklands are now open for all of us to enjoy.

In this series, I'm uncovering another side to four of these parks,

a side that often goes unnoticed by those that visit.

I'm meeting people with inside knowledge to share,

exploring less visited corners, and finding night time creatures.

I'm discovering just how great these parks are for wildlife.

Today, I'm in the glorious countryside of Carmarthenshire,

just outside the town of Llandeilo.

Dinefwr Park is an 800-acre estate cared for by the National Trust,

CADW and the local Wildlife Trust.

If you head to the top of the 12th-century castle

you get fabulous views over Newton House and the landscape designed by George Rice and his wife Cecil

during the later half of the 18th century.

They tore up the formal gardens in favour of the picturesque, a new fashion that embraced nature.

The instant you walk into the park here, you know where you are,

you can only be in Dinefwr,

and especially when you come up this little rise.

Look at that view, there is the big house over there and it's

framed by the trees, it couldn't be anywhere else in the world, really.

And this is exactly what George Rice wanted to create.

He would have kept the best of the trees,

the biggest and the oldest ones,

and he would have added to them, in his mind to make it look even better

and he wanted these meadows here because of the magnificent view.

There's an animal here that's a key part of this landscape and the

history of the park.

Today, the white park cattle are being rounded up by

head warden Wyn Davies and I've been roped in to help.

It's certainly not easy.

After 20 minutes chasing them around the field, we give up.

Well, that didn't go according to plan.

Well, no Iolo, unfortunately not.

With these cattle, they've always got that primitive instinct

and there's always a lead cow.

Now, she could see us all coming, so she thought to herself,

"I'm not going to play ball this morning, am I?"

So off she goes, and then I'm back to plan B now,

with electric fences.

It'll work, you think?

I don't know.

They're an icon of the property. This is their ancestral home.

They were recorded here in the year 920.

That far back, were they?

Yes, yes.

So way back then, a lot more people would have had white cattle?

Yes. Well, in Wales at that time,

you had all manner of coloured cattle, didn't you?

You had red cattle, blue cattle, black cattle of course,

white cattle.

But the black became very, very popular.

Farmers reckoned that they were perhaps a better animal than

these for meat production and milk.

So these then became creatures of fancy.

Now then, Iolo, come inside here, it's a bit noisy in here, mind you.

This is our cattle-handling facility.

These must be an important management tool

for you at Dinefwr as well.

Well, you see, Iolo, we've got the perfect tool for the job.

It's the only parkland in Wales to be a national nature reserve,

and obviously that needs conservation grazing.

You've got to have animals to graze it.

They've actually been doing that job for us for centuries.

And it's wonderful that they're still here.

I refer to them as a living link with our distant past.

To me, they're as important as the actual house itself.

Hopefully, they'll be here for a long time to come.

Let's hope so, let's hope so.

-Hey, let's get some more in.

-We'll get the bull in now, shall we? Let's get the bull in.

-Here we go.

I have to say, it's been a privilege to be able to watch you at work

and get so close to these wonderful animals.

Now I'm going to go out and see what I can find around Dinefwr,

but I don't suppose the wild animals will be as easy to get close to as these ones.

Well, I don't think so, you can't really miss these, can you?

I'm starting my exploration during spring,

a particularly beautiful time in Dinefwr.

If you time your visit so you come here in early May, you get

one of the best bluebell displays anywhere in the whole of Wales.

This is one of the most interesting habitats, I think,

in the whole of Dinefwr here, this small woodland,

It's not very big, it's quite long.

It's called bog woodland and it's very, very wet,

and it's full of all kinds of interesting insects and plants,

but I'm looking mainly for birds.

'When I'm searching a woodland for birds, I listen.'

Wren calling.

'I watch for the slightest movement,

'I look in the obvious and not so obvious places.'

Right at the top of this really thin-looking tree here,

a pair of long tailed tits are building a nest.

They're back and forth like mad with feathers

and it's quite unusual to have it that high, because usually they nest

low down in a real dense mass of dog rose and brambles somewhere safe.

That, pardon me saying this, but it's quite an idiotic place,

because it's right out in the open there, cos a passing squirrel

or a magpie or a crow is probably going to spot that a mile off.

And I've found evidence of another predator

they'll certainly need to watch out for.

See this?

This is a kill and it's a very, very fresh kill.

I mean, literally within the last hour.

It's a dead wood pigeon and the reason I know it's a dead wood pigeon

is because I can show you some of the breast feathers, see those?

Very orange-y pink edge to that and it's a young wood pigeon.

The reason I know it's a young wood pigeon is

because the feathers are still what they call in pin, in a sheath there.

If it was an adult you wouldn't have those on there and it's fresh,

very fresh, you can see the blood on the end of that and this

woodpigeon has just been killed probably here by a sparrowhawk.

'It's a bit gory but a good way of finding information

'about which birds are here.

'I'm pretty pleased with the variety of species I've found,

'but one last sighting is the icing on the cake.'

Well, I always thought Dinefwr was special,

but this really is something else.

There is a pair of lesser-spotted woodpeckers here.

Now that in itself is rare, but there is another male here as well,

so the two males are now battling for the female.

You know I said that there were two males,

well, there's not two males, there's two pairs

cos the two females have been having a go as well.

The one that obviously belongs in this territory here

flew on to this ash and worked her way up and that's where the nest is.

There are two holes. The upper one is an old great spotted

woodpecker hole and below it is a really clean, nice, small hole,

so that's where they are going to nest.

It's the first lesser-spotted woodpecker nest

I've seen for 20 years, I think.

Superb, absolutely superb, and what a wood, what a woodland!

What's really special about Dinefwr are the magnificent veteran trees,

trees that have become gnarled and full of holes over many centuries.

It's no wonder, really, that Dinefwr is known as one of

the best places, well, in the whole of Europe for its old,

for its ancient trees.

There are reckoned to be almost 300 trees here that date back to before 1600 AD.

And this one - this is known as Castle Oak and this is thought

to be the oldest one of all here, and this one dates back to 1170.

Now think about that for a minute -

this was a seedling only 100 years after the Norman invasion.

I find that quite remarkable.

And, invariably, veteran trees are very interesting for botanists

because they are covered with mosses and ferns and liverworts

and lichens.

Now, I've got to be honest, I'm not an expert on these but,

if you want someone with the knowledge on lower plants in Wales,

there is only one man you go to.

'Ray Woods has spent his life studying these often overlooked plants,

'so I'm looking forward to getting a low-down on what's here.'

-Look at that, it's just gorgeous.

-Oh, that's a good one.

Wow, look at this tree!

It doesn't look very healthy to me, Ray, with this big hole in it!

Well, this is what life does to trees eventually.

All the wood in here's dead anyway and the fungi hollow them out,

and hollowing them out actually helps preserve them,

so they live much longer.

An oak tree, we say, grows for 300 years, stands for 300 years

and gently dies for 300 years.

It wouldn't stand for that length of time if it was solid,

it would just fall apart under its own weight.

The cylinder is a really strong shape.

See, I didn't know that, I thought this was a sign of a dying tree.

And then the lichens, Ray - I couldn't name a single one of these.

Is this a good place for them?

It's a wonderful place because there are very few places

now left in Western Europe where there are ancient trees.

We've practiced euthanasia on trees for the last 2,000 years

to the extent where you can hardly find an ancient tree.

If we look, covering the bark here

are these funny little black speckles.

This is a lichen called cresponea premnea

that specialises on living on ancient oak trees.

This would have been the common lichen on every ancient oak

tree from here to the Alps.

Go about 20 miles down the road here,

and it becomes listed as near extinct throughout all of Western Europe now

because we've just chopped down the old trees.

Whereas in this country, at the end of the 1700's,

this landscape movement which developed along the Welsh borders,

this picturesque movement, it was called, and they valued

these ancient trees and incorporated them into the landscape,

and, as a result, in this park here,

we've recorded about 55-60 different species of lichens on the oaks.

And around this side, if we have a look around here...

Here we are, look at this one,

just cowering in the crevice because it hates direct rainfall.

Now, there's nowhere on a young oak tree that's out of direct

rainfall but here, it's leaning,

it's got these big bosses above us to protect it from direct rain.

I'm sure one or two people will look at it and think,

"Oh, it's only a lichen" but, of course,

over the years, they've been really important things, haven't they?

I mean, only recently, this tree lung wort,

we've got one tree left here in the park with it on,

it's got a chemical in it which protected mice from getting

-this prion protein disease and BSE that we're all worried about.

-Yeah.

This lichen has a chemical that breaks those proteins down,

so we now might, for the first time, have a potential cure for these.

Every time I bump into you, Ray, I always leave thinking,

"I really like lichens again now! I really like them."

Well done, Ray.

'It's great to be reminded about the importance of the little things.

'I'm spurred on to see what else I can find living in these trees.

'A tip-off by the park staff

'leads me to a familiar bird, in an unfamiliar location.'

I tell you something I have never seen before - behind this

oak tree here is a hole about 25 foot up, quite a big hole

and in there, is a greylag goose.

Yeah, it's a goose,

and I have been thinking about this, why's that greylag goose in there?

Well, just behind me down here, you've got the river Tywi and there

are a couple of really nice ox-bow lakes there where I'd expect

the goose to nest, but there is a pair of swans nesting down there

and swans are very territorial, and they will see off and even kill

other swans, geese, other waterfowl as well.

But, luckily, for this goose in Dinefwr,

there's a plan B, and plan B for her is to nest 25 foot up a tree.

And it's not just holes in standing trees that can turn up

a surprise find.

In Dinefwr, the decision has been made to try

and leave any branch or tree where it falls.

Here's one of these fantastic dead old trees,

and look at the size of this one.

When it was alive, it must have been I don't know about 500, 600, 700 years old

and it looks like its been dead for decades but what I like about this

one is in it is something I haven't seen probably since my late teens.

I was always looking into holes and I used to find honey bees

nesting in the wild. Now, they have become so rare you don't see

that often at all these days, but there is a hole in here.

If you look carefully you can actually see some of the comb

hanging down, and I imagine then it must be a pretty big chamber,

and you'll have combs and by the end of July, August, those combs will be

full of honey and you will be able to smell the honey out here, too.

And you see the workers going in and out, when they come in,

the back legs have got these sacs on them and those sacs are full of pollen.

You might think, "Oh, well, why's he making such a fuss about bees? They're only bees,"

but bees are having a hard time with Veroa mites, cold springs, cold summer.

They've become pretty scarce now and to see them in the wild again,

something I didn't think I'd see, and it reminds me of my childhood.

'As evening falls over the park, I'm going to turn my attention

'to some of the nocturnal creatures.

'With all the buildings, old trees and meadows here,

'it should be a great place for bats to roost and hunt.

'Richard Crompton is a trained and licensed bat worker.

'He's been putting up nets as part of a survey to see which species are found here.'

-Hello, Rich, how are you, boy? Good to see you.

-Hello, Iolo.

'I'm in time to help him with the last net.'

-So the plan for the evening - catch some bats.

-Yeah.

We've got a few different trapping techniques we're going to try tonight.

Harp trap, standard mist net you'll be familiar with from birds.

-Yeah, yeah.

-And this one you might not have met before,

-it's a variation on the mist net, called a canopy net.

-Right.

And we're going to try to suspend it from that branch just there.

You're not expecting me to climb up there, are you?

No, no climbing involved.

We're going to throw it up with a throw line.

Oh, that's too low. I'll get it through now.

-Has it got stuck?

-Oh, dear.

I'll get it now. Oh, that's messed up that plan.

'It turns out to be a little bit trickier than I thought.'

No, not strong enough, not quite.

'After several attempts, I eventually get it in the right position.'

That's the one, gotcha!

Hallelujah!

'We can finally assemble and hoist the canopy net into place.'

-Now we've just got to hope for some bats.

-Yeah.

'Unfortunately for us,

'the temperature drops to two degrees which is too cold for bats.

'After all the effort of putting up the nets,

'we only catch one lonely bat.'

We've got a little pipistrelle.

'We quickly get him weighed...'

Five grams. Oh, that's light!

'..measured and released.

'When working with wildlife, things don't always go to plan,

'but we're not going to give up on the bats.

'We'll try again on a warmer night.'

'The park attracts around 70,000 visitors a year.

'The gothic-influenced architecture of Newton House,

'the ancient castle with panoramic views,

'and the beautiful parkland, make it a wonderful place to spend the day.'

It gets very, very busy here sometimes. You can see the car

park is full and I have watched dozens of cars arrive,

and the people leave and they either go up for the big house

or they go down for the ponds or the castle, which is a shame cos

I haven't seen a single person spend any time looking at these big trees.

And had they done that, then this old lime, they'd have seen a pair of

treecreepers feeding their young and the nest is where the bark has come

away from the trunk, just a little bit, and there's a split in there.

Oh, one's just landed on the tree!

See it go up the bark? That's what they do every time -

they land about half a metre below the nest, work their way up,

slink in, quietly, and then fly out.

It'll be in there just for a few seconds feeding the chicks.

There he goes, out again, and off he goes.

'This treecreeper may be nesting in plain sight,

'but there are other birds that are extremely difficult to find.

'Dinefwr is the one park that I really thought we'd find a tawny owl.

'It's the perfect habitat for them.

'My good friend and bird finder Steve Roberts has been out tracking them down,

'and thankfully we're in luck.

'He's located an adult perched at the top of a big old sycamore.'

-It isn't often you see a tawny owl in daylight, is it?

-No.

It's a lovely bird.

Now the winds blowing you can pick him up.

Yeah.

There must be chicks there, somewhere, see.

Probably right in front of our faces somewhere.

But the thing is with them, they leave the nest,

don't they, tawny owl chicks, before they can fly.

They sort of climb up and they stay on a branch

and they won't move unless they're mobbed by something.

Well, their wing feathers are developed properly,

-but their bodies are still covered in down.

-Yeah.

But I could hear him hooting.

I bet those chicks are somewhere in there...

I bet they are.

'That's a great discovery,

'because trying to find a tawny owl amongst all these trees

'is like searching for a needle in a haystack.

'Sometimes, a better tactic is to find a place to hide and let the wildlife come to you.'

I've come out this evening with Mike Williams,

'or Mike 'The Badger' Williams as he's known.

Mike's putting peanuts down around the sett over there now,

and he's been coming here, watching the badgers

and feeding the badgers for about 20 years,

so he will have seen some big changes,

he's probably got a better insight into the wildlife here

more than anyone else, so it will be interesting to have a chat with him.

(Well done, Mike.

(I tell you what, you've only just walked back

(from there to here and we've got a squirrel stealing nuts down there.)

(I know.)

(Nuthatches, at least three of them come in.

(I tell you the other thing -

(there's a wren, a beak full of insects.)

(Yeah, nesting in the bark of the oak tree on the left here,

(made a little hole and they're nesting behind it.)

(Fantastic!

(Oh, oh! Is that a badger sticking his head up?

(Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.)

(That's the main sett.)

(That's the main sett, there's a head just poking out.

(On the whole area, there must be several setts in here.)

There's a sett up here on the left here.

There's about six major setts within the deer park,

not counting what there is outside and there's - what? - untold setts.

(Oh, there's another one, look, just about sticking its head out.

(It's got to be one of the nicest places you could possibly get

(to sit and watch badgers.)

This is it, yes.

Amazing place!

(Keep an eye on the far hole, Mike.

(I think I saw another snout start to come out.

-(It's a nervous one, isn't it, that last one?)

-(Yeah.)

(Oh, there's a rabbit, look!

(There's that much wildlife here, Mike, it's like a safari park!

(It is, isn't it?! There's a lot going on.

(A fallow deer coming in from the left.)

(Now you'll see the badgers disappear.)

(Is it? Oh, yeah, they have, they've gone straight down.)

(Straight down.)

(Why's that, then?)

(They just don't like it.

(They must meet them when they're out in the dark at night,

(but they don't like the deer around the sett.)

(Of course, the badgers will be keeping this whole area clear of

(bracken and it's good for the grass so the deer's coming down to graze.)

(And pinch some of their nuts.)

(Oh, the deer will be pinching the nuts as well!)

'All we can do is wait to see if the badgers come back out.

'Luckily, there are a few other distractions.'

(There's a little wood mouse coming out of the trunk here

(to come and get some seeds, and it's got a badly damaged eye,

(probably from fighting or something, by the looks of him.

(You're feeding half the woodland here with your peanuts!)

'When the badgers do come back out,

'one wanders so close to the hide, we have to keep very quiet.'

(Oh, that's a nice view, isn't it? Look at that.)

'It's time Richard and I tried once more to catch some bats.

'Luckily, it's a warmer night and we've moved to a different location

'amongst the trees. I join Richard as he's checking the harp trap.'

So it's the same basic technique - the rows of wires.

They go in between the two rows of strings, just come

flutter down effectively with their wings open, almost parachuting down.

Onto the soft plastic, into the canvas bag

and then the bats just go between the two.

This one's actually using the acoustic sound lure

and basically that's just playing back social calls.

-Oh, right, so it's going to pull the bats in.

-That's the idea, yeah.

'And, sure enough, just minutes later, we have our first bat.'

Oh, look, long-eared. Yeah.

Just reach in here, just scoop it up like that.

Oh, wow! Look at the size of those ears!

It looks like a ram, doesn't it?

Yeah, they call it ram's horn position.

So it is a female bat.

Are you checking to see if she's lactating, are you?

That's right. And in fact she is.

OK, so we need to let her go, don't we?

That's right. All we'll do.

I'll take a step... Look at the ears! Look at the size!

She's just scanning around and she'll fly straight away, I think.

-There she goes.

-Oh, wow!

So brown long-eared bat - are they known to be here?

Absolutely, it's a woodland species.

They're really what they call a gleaning bat,

so this is a bat that almost flutters around the outside

of a tree canopy, looking for insects,

and then, rather than using echo-location like most bat species,

they're listening for the insects moving.

So they're listening for the footsteps

and for the wing casing movements of the insects.

-Hence the long ears of course.

-Hence the long ears.

-All makes sense in nature, doesn't it?

-Absolutely.

We're having much more success tonight.

Within minutes, we've caught four more bats.

These all look like pipistrelles from this angle.

They're almost dog-like, aren't they, the pipistrelles?

They're lovely-looking things.

'Richard and I assess each one.'

How very tiny it is.

'By looking at their colour, size...'

This is probably about four or five grams.

'..wing veins, facial features and their smell...'

Quite musky.

'..we can tell that all of them are soprano pipistrelles.'

And again, he's warm, he's going to go very quickly, I think,

so there he goes.

So if these are mainly canopy feeders,

I'd have thought with all the mature trees you've got here,

ancient ones, this must be a fantastic place for them.

Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah, and it's no particular surprise that we

don't often encounter these bats as well because they spend such

a lot of time 20, 30 metres off the ground.

It's a whole new world up there.

'There's just one more mammal I want to catch up with before I leave Dinefwr.

'Fallow deer have been in this park since medieval times.

'October is mating season, otherwise known as the rut.

'Dawn is a good time for me to try and find fighting males.

'I soon come a cross a buck and decide to wait for some action,

'but he seems more interested in eating.'

I haven't heard any fighting here, so I'm going to move on up that way.

There are more deer in the woods up there.

If I sit in the woods and listen for a while,

hopefully we'll have a bit more fighting,

a bit more noise up there.

DEER CALLING IN DISTANCE

'I soon hear not fighting, but the call of a male.'

(There's a buck literally about 20 metres away from me,

(the other side of this tree.

(He's lying down, he's absolutely shattered and that's

(the thing with the rut - the whole year for the males builds up towards this.

(It's all about getting a mate and they'll defend a harem of does,

(and fight off all the other males to hold onto their harem

(to pass their genes on to the next generation.

(But so much effort goes into it,

(because they can be fighting virtually non-stop for two weeks,

(that they are shattered,

(and this poor buck here just looks down and out.)

'Judging by the state of this buck,

'I think I've missed the majority of the fighting.

'I decide to come back in the evening, when there might be more activity.'

(There's a big herd here, there must be 50, 60 fallow deer

(and one dominant buck right in the middle.

(He's walking around looking for unmated does so that he can mate with them.

(But we're getting towards the end of the rut now, there's less

(fighting, still a lot of noise, he's still patrolling his harem

(and this one has obviously been very successful - a lot of females in his harem.)

'The park will have plenty of new additions to the herd next June.'

Dinefwr, it has to be said, is one of my favourite places

in the whole of Wales.

There's a real richness about the place and I don't

mean money, I mean wealth - wealth of wildlife in a fairly small area,

and I've seen some rare things here too, lesser-spotted woodpeckers,

I don't see many of those in Wales any more.

But what's impressed me I think most is the sheer number of ancient trees,

and particularly the oldest one of them all the castle oak.

It's almost a thousand years old and still flourishing,

wildlife in every nook and cranny and for a human being,

who would be lucky to see a hundred years old, that's very humbling.

'Next time, I'll be visiting Plas Tan y Bwlch

'in the Snowdonia National Park,

'where I'll go in search of cold blooded creatures...'

Oh, that's nice! That's really nice.

'..uncover nocturnal secrets in the garden...'

Ah, that's a nice record!

'..and join a special hunt for wildlife with the locals.'

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