Pontypool Iolo's Great Welsh Parks

In Wales, most towns and cities have a park,

an area of green space for people to escape

the hustle and bustle of modern life.

But that's not all they are good for.

In this series, I'm taking a look at four urban parks.

Some are old family estates, others were once industrial sites,

but all are now places for communities to enjoy.

None are familiar to me,

so I'll be enlisting the help of local people

with knowledge to share.

Together, I'm hoping we'll uncover their wilder side.

Today I'm in Pontypool, a town that lies on the eastern edge

of the South Wales coalfield and was at the heart of the iron industry.

Pontypool Park is 150 acres of land that was once part

of the estate owned by influential industrialists the Hanbury family.

Their house sits on the edge of the park and is now a school.

The majority of the park came into the hands

of the local council in 1920 and is a valuable resource for the town.

It's the end of winter

and it's not the best time to come out looking for wildlife,

but I've come to the park to get to know it better,

see what the habitats are here and what they might have to offer for wildlife.

The sun is out, so we might actually see something as well.

I'm heading down to the river to meet music student

and wildlife enthusiast Gavin Vella,

a local lad who grew up ten minutes from the park.

-Hiya, Gavin.

-Good morning.

I didn't want to make too much noise,

you're obviously busy down here. Which river is this now, then?

This is called the Afon Llwyd, or Afon Lwyd.

Afon Lwyd, the grey river.

So what have you been looking for this morning?

There's a pair of dipper that I think are nesting

just up on the right of us here, so...

-It looks like a good dipper river, doesn't it?

-It does.

-All the banks, good places to nest.

-Plenty of places to nest.

How about things like grey wagtails here?

Yeah, we've got them just passing through as well now.

Right, can we go and have a look at some

of the other bits of the park,

because it's a park I don't know at all.

That's a nice little stream as well, isn't it?

Yeah, it is lovely, it runs straight into the Afon Lwyd

and goes right past our ponds up the top here now.

These trees that are surrounding these ponds,

the old sweet chestnuts are amazing.

-They're cracking old trees, aren't they?

-They're very old.

-Oh, wow.

It's got a nice little partially birch woodland here.

It's a nice wood and it's a fair old climb up there too.

It's a bit of a climb, right to the top is very steep.

Another hill, if you keep coming up here now, we should,

hopefully, if we're lucky,

see the white buzzard on its usual perch.

-A white buzzard?

-Yeah, we have a white buzzard.

It's got a few favourite perches,

one of which is a small tree in the middle of a field.

-Yeah, he's right there.

-Oh, yeah, it doesn't half stand out.

-Oh, wow, just a few dashes of brown.

-Just a few dashes of brown.

So, it's not a full albino, but it's not far off.

How long's that bird been here, then?

I've been talking to some of the locals, they've known it being here for a least ten years.

-That's got to be one of the highlights of Pontypool Park.

-It is, definitely,

it's the most obvious bird people come down here to see.

-Cracking. Right, onwards and ever upwards.

-Upwards, yeah.

Not quite to the top yet, Iolo,

but this is pretty much where the view happens

of Pontypool Park now behind us.

It's a shame about the mist, it would have been nice to see Pontypool...

-It is a shame.

-..and the whole of the park more or less from up here.

It's difficult to get a view of the entire park

because it is situated in a valley as well as a sort of round mountain.

I see you've lugged the camera everywhere with you,

I would imagine it's a brilliant place for bird photography, particularly.

Yeah, it is fantastic. It's surprising the amount of birds that are in here.

It's part of a project that I have called Rhythm of Bird Song.

-Oh, wow.

-The photography is all part of the research and part of showing

my friends and my social network about the things

that are on their doorstep, really.

Armed with Gavin's knowledge of the park,

I time my next visit for the start of April

and the beginning of the nesting season.

Now, when you are looking for early nesting birds,

and by early nesting birds I mean birds like blackbirds,

robins, song thrushes as well, you need to think the birds need cover.

This time of year the leaves aren't out yet

so they're going to aim for trees that are covered in ivy maybe,

they're going to aim for bramble patches,

nice thick patches like that

or they're going to aim for somewhere where there's a tangle of branches.

Just behind me here is a female blackbird sitting on her eggs

and I've watched dozens of people walking past and nobody,

absolutely nobody has taken any notice of her,

so I reckon she's safe enough in there.

Oh, wow, that's nice. Just watching a nuthatch.

It's nesting in a little hole in this old sweet chestnut here.

There it is, it's on the tree, there we are, look.

It's just flown off.

Let's go over and have a look, these are fabulous old trees.

See this one here, it's got three holes quite low down.

See the upper hole, the bigger hole,

that's a natural hole, and then it's got two holes made by a woodpecker,

great spotted woodpecker in this case.

This is the interesting one, this one here.

What the nuthatch has done

is it wants the hole a particular size,

so it gathers fresh mud and packs it in the entrance there.

You can even see little beak marks there

and that will eventually solidify like concrete.

So they've more or less finished doing that now

and what the birds are doing now is coming back and fore with

nesting material.

The birds are preparing their nest for a clutch

of usually six to eight eggs

which will take just over two weeks to hatch.

They'll then feed the young for about three-and-a-half weeks.

I'll try and catch up with them later in the year to see

how they get on.

I've got a rather larger animal to try and track down next.

It's difficult to believe that you might see deer somewhere

like this today because it's such an urban park and it's used by

so many people, but there have been a few records and one of the most

recent sightings came from this area here in broad daylight.

One of the council workers saw it bounding away towards the woods over there.

Tracking deer is really difficult and very time-consuming,

so we've had a deer expert out all morning and I'm going to go

and catch up with him now.

I want to see what species are here and how they're using the park,

so I'm hoping Steve Griffiths from the Deer Initiative has had

a successful morning.

-Steve!

-Hi.

-You had to pick the highest part of the park, didn't you?

Well, it keeps you fit.

I tell you what, easier to find you than to find deer.

Big question I'm dying to ask you, have you found anything at all, any evidence at all?

-There's a few little signs here.

-Oh, there are, are there?

Yeah, there are.

Are you looking for vegetation that's been nibbled

or anything like that?

We're looking at the type of plants that they like, holly, ivy, so we're

looking for browse lines, you can sort of see on that tree quite well.

So it's eaten all the leaves all the way up to about here?

That starts to give you an idea of what species you're dealing with,

is what height they are.

So what do you think this is, fallow?

I don't think it's fallow, I think it's roe.

Roe deer, yeah. And how old is this?

-That's last season's growth that they've taken off.

-Right

So I don't think anything has been here for a while.

-So by a while, you mean the last few months?

-The last few months.

-Right, OK.

So I would think this is juveniles been pushed out of their main patch

looking for somewhere else.

This looks ideal to start off with,

then they see there's too much activity here for them to settle in.

Especially roe because they get stressed if there's a lot

of people around, so they can never settle down to relax and that.

They are always being moved off

-so they move on again, find somewhere else.

-Right, right, right.

This is typical bramble that they like

and you can tell that's deer because deer have only got lower teeth.

-Right.

-So they bite 95% through and then a little tear,

whereas rabbits would bite straight through, and those again last season.

One of the things I was hoping, if you found signs of deer,

was to put out the little camera traps so I could actually

film them and tell people, look, you've actually got deer in Pontypool Park,

but it seems to me from what you say

that it's pointless putting them out now, is it?

I wouldn't put them out now.

July/August is the rutting period for roe deer.

The juveniles have been moved out of the established bucks' areas,

so they're looking to establish their own area,

that's when they would be moving to a place like this.

-So, late summer into the autumn.

-Into the autumn.

At the start of May,

there's a real surprise waiting for me up near the stone circle -

an insect I've not seen before.

All of a sudden here, I've hit one small corner of the park

and it is alive with bees.

Can you see them all buzzing around here?

They are called ashy mining bees or grey mining bees and this area is

particularly good for them because it's mown, it's like a lawn, really.

They're digging little holes like little volcanoes here

and they then carry pollen and nectar into it,

seal off a little chamber once they've laid an egg inside.

The egg will hatch and the grub lives off that pollen and nectar

and eventually it'll hatch out and it'll form the next generation

of ashy mining bees.

And if you've got them in your lawn, welcome them, because they

are really important pollinators of fruit trees like cherry trees

and apple trees and pear trees.

The good news is, a lot of our bees are declining rapidly

but these are actually on the increase. Hello!

It really is an incredible sight to see,

there are thousands of bees here

and, for once, they're benefiting from our wish

to keep the lawns mown and tidy.

Here in Pontypool, it's not just the lawn mowing that is helping wildlife.

There's a group who help to look after the park's habitats

and carry out monitoring.

I'm with Jeff Oates and Heather Bergstrom to find out more.

So both of you, I see you're wearing tops with "Friends of the Park",

what exactly does that mean?

Yes, well, we're a volunteer group, a small group unfortunately,

that, over the years,

the park had fewer and fewer people looking after it

so now we're retired we joined a group and the council provide

all the utilities for us, all the tools, and we provide the manpower.

We plant bulbs and work with the trees...

Clean the river.

Jeff and I are particularly interested in the reptiles and amphibians.

Yes, last year we went on a course and learnt all about them.

They think that they're reducing in numbers seriously. so we volunteered

to survey the park, and the first site is just on the right here.

Just up there.

Oh, it looks good, doesn't it? Mixture of bracken, some trees around it.

-Plenty of cover for them.

-Yeah, yeah.

-Now, if I was a betting man...

-Go on.

..I would reckon grass snake, maybe slowworm, maybe common lizard.

-Found the first two, but no lizard.

-No lizards here, are there?

-No lizards at all

-Oh.

-Maybe we've just been unlucky.

We're going to have to be pretty quick here, aren't we?

OK, three, two, one, go.

-No.

-Plenty of ants.

Yeah, lots of ants. OK, next one.

Well, let's hope we have better luck at this one.

No, quiet again.

-No-one.

-At least it's dry.

-Yeah, it is nice and dry.

-You do the honours.

-Here we go

-One, two, three, up she goes.

-Yes!

-Grass snake. Oh, dear, she was straight away.

-Little scamp.

Well, there was one there, she was straight in to cover.

-There was, there was, honestly.

-Just saw the tail disappear.

That doesn't matter, she's healthy and fine, that's the big thing.

It's not just the reptiles that the group have been trying to help.

They've also been creating a network of habitats allowing

populations of amphibians to move about more easily.

So this is an old pond, is it? It looks like it's got wall around it.

I think it dates back to somewhere around 1780.

It was found on an old map, 1780, shown as a duck pond.

When we first discovered it,

it was completely filled in, but we managed to get a digger up here

to empty it out for us, but we've got a problem with a leak.

Somehow we want someone to volunteer to bring some puddling clay

up for us so we can create another feature for the park.

That'd be nice, it'd be lovely, wouldn't it?

In ten years, that'll look lovely, hopefully.

Oh, it will, if we're still here.

We'll be here with our Zimmers, looking at the view.

Yeah, it'll be nice.

I've come back to Pontypool Park after dark

because the habitat here, the mature trees and the grassland, is ideal

for one very large insect that's out in late April and throughout May.

Now, unfortunately, it only comes out at night

but it is attracted to light.

Kevin Dupe from the local moth group has agreed to help me

try and find May bugs or cockchafer beetles, which he often catches with his light trap.

As a bonus, I get to have a close look at some of the more

impressive moths as well.

Well, I've got to say it's going pretty well so far.

We've got a couple here, if I can hold them up to Graham here,

who's got the macro lens. Can you see that?

That's a pale tussock.

By day, that will lie up on tree bark

and you can see that'll blend in really well there.

Kev's coming in with some more here now. What have you got for us, Kev?

I've got a really nice moth here called a lime hawk-moth.

-Oh, look at that.

-And we are actually under a lime tree here

so that's what the caterpillars feed on.

Oh, look at the size of it, first of all. That's amazing.

-And that's a male, the females are a lot bigger than that as well.

-Bigger again?

-Yeah, because they're full of eggs.

-Right, I'll put him back.

This isn't a moth, this is what you've been hoping to find.

-Oh, good man.

-This is a May bug.

Now these, the adults feed on leaves?

Yeah, leaves of oak trees and other broad-leaved trees, but the grubs

live in the ground eating the roots of plants for three or four years.

And birds love them. You get starlings sticking their beaks in looking for the grubs.

Yeah, they're big grubs.

And the adults then, of course, they're really important food for bats,

for little owls, for all kinds of things.

Now you're going to tell me there's a way to sex these.

The males have got seven lamella on each antennae,

-which is like a fan, if you like.

-Right.

-And the female's only got six.

-I can't see.

I think these are folded up, aren't they?

Yeah, these are folded up.

Let's see if he goes and eats the leaf, go on, get on there.

We've got another one as well.

-Oh, do you know, I think that's bigger again, that one, isn't it?

-Yeah, it is.

That's a fantastic shot of it, so clear.

And you can see the chevrons down the side,

you can see the shape of the wing cases and everything

and you can see the hooks on the end of the feet.

You can just see the lamella there, can't you?

It's like a fan opening out.

Oh, here, look, count the one on the right.

-One, two, three...

-I think that's seven.

-Yeah, I think it is.

-So that's a male.

Animals like these May bugs have fascinated me since I was a boy

and I love passing on my passion about wildlife

to anyone who'll listen.

So I was delighted when Ena Morris got in touch to ask

if I could introduce her to some of the wildlife in the park.

In exchange, she promised to give me

some background on the history of the place.

Our first stop is the River Lwyd.

You might wonder why I'm carrying a laptop around with me.

Sit down here, look, I'll show you one thing on this first.

I went out with a camera trap, I left it out overnight

not far away from here, and I wanted you to see what we caught on it.

Oh, wow! Ohhh!

Nice, isn't it?

It's a dog otter, have you ever seen one of these here before?

No, never. I'm gobsmacked, I never realised there were otters here.

We only had it out one night, and lo and behold, a dog otter.

To think how dirty and spoiled this river was years and years ago

-and now it's....

-Changed completely, isn't it?

-There's an otter here.

-It's changed completely. Now there's another thing.

-Dippers.

-Oh, yes.

-Do you see dippers on the river?

I do occasionally see dippers, yes.

Right, well, if you sit patiently and watch the far side of the river,

there's a pair nesting over there and I'm pretty sure they've

got quite old chicks, so they should be in and out fairly regularly.

-Oh, here he comes.

-There he goes.

-He's gone underneath the arch.

-See that?

-Yeah.

-It's nice, isn't it?

Just coming in, skimming in just above the water.

-So they're in and out, here we are, look.

-Here he comes.

With dippers raising young here, it's hard to imagine how

industrialised the river was during the heyday of the iron industry

with its nearby furnaces and forges,

but there are signs of that past to see.

-This is a nice path too here.

-This is an old tramway.

-Oh, is it?

-Yeah, that would bring the trams down to the forge in Pontymoile,

and these are the sluice gates, so this would control

the amount of water to run the water wheels in the forge.

So, you use the park regularly.

I use the park very often, I love Pontypool Park.

It's a real community park

and, of course, that's what the Hanburys wanted,

they wanted it used for local people to have pleasure and leisure.

The next thing I want to show you is just up here,

something I found first in April.

If you sit on that, you can have the posh seat

and I'll sit on the floor here.

-See the lower hole there?

-Yeah.

-That's a nuthatch nest.

The eggs have hatched and the youngsters are about ten days old.

So the adults should be coming back and fore, feeding them.

Oh, there he goes, see him?

Just landed on the hole

and off up again like a little mouse going up the bark.

So what would he feed the little ones, then?

Well, anything and everything, grubs mainly.

That's where it's useful to have a park full of these big old trees,

lots of holes in them, lots of food, lots of grubs,

lots of seeds here as well.

So it's got everything a bird like a nuthatch needs.

Well, we have got plenty of old trees here.

They planted a lot to be used as charcoal for the iron works.

It's lovely, isn't it?

It's really nice to be able to watch them like this at the nest.

It's now June and about a month since my visit with Ena.

The morning sunshine is definitely worth getting up early for.

Summer is a good time to take a closer look for smaller creatures.

An overgrown hedgerow tucked away in the corner of the park

has caught my eye.

Ah, this is nice stuff, it looks like spiders' webs, doesn't it?

But it isn't. Actually these have been created by a caterpillar,

the caterpillars of the peacock butterfly.

It's quite a common butterfly and it loves nettles,

so this nettle bed here is ideal for them.

What they do is, the female will lay

eggs on the leaves, they then hatch out into small caterpillars,

and they're the ones that spin this web and that protects them from birds.

You can see that then, between that point and when they pupate,

which means they are going to turn into an adult butterfly,

they shed their skins four times so that they can grow.

The first time is on there, there are some small skins there,

the second time will have been over here by the looks of things,

you can see that the caterpillars have got just a little bit bigger,

and then they will have come over here,

you can see some recently shed skins there.

The caterpillars themselves now, there's some there,

but the vast majority of them are over here.

Just look at that - a whole mass of them there.

And they have various defences as well,

they don't need that web now, so what they do is, if I tap,

they might start wriggling around,

one or two are sort of doing it here, and that'll scare off a bird.

But they also, because they eat this...nettle leaves,

they ingest some of the toxins from there and they'll secrete this

horrible greenish chemical which has got some of those toxins in it.

But all of this is on just one little bit of what most people would

think of as weeds, as wasteland right on the edge of the park.

It's late July and I'm heading to the woodland where Steve Griffiths

found deer signs back in April, as it's now the right time of year

to set up my cameras to hopefully capture any passing roe deer.

There we go, that should do it.

We'll be keeping an eye on these over the next couple of months,

and with those set up I can indulge in an activity

I enjoyed doing as a kid, walking a stream looking for watery wildlife.

Steve Williams, an ecologist from Torfaen council, has joined me.

Oh, I got a couple of little things under the rock here.

-Oh, yeah.

-Is that gammarus, the freshwater shrimp, there?

That's correct, yeah.

-Well, it's a good sign it's very clean.

-It is.

Remarkably clean. Put him back again gently.

And that's key, isn't it,

when you are doing this, to put stuff back exactly as it was.

Absolutely, really important, because that's their environment.

I tell you what there is here, if we can catch it.

See him in there? A little bullhead. Oh, where's he gone?

-You got him.

-Oh, look at that! Nice little thing, isn't it?

-Fantastic.

-And another name for them - miller's thumb.

Absolutely, yeah.

Cos in the olden days the millers would get their thumbs battered.

-Absolutely.

-And it looks like a battered thumb, doesn't it?

That's right. I think this one is quite a young one, Iolo.

Here we go, miller's thumb back in, go on.

Big old rock here now.

Oh! I've hit the jackpot here.

Now that is something.

That's a freshwater white-clawed crayfish, Iolo.

-Wow. Here we are.

-Right, in the tray.

Well, I've got to say, Steve, that is a really lovely find, isn't it?

It is excellent, it is one of the jewels in the crown

of Pontypool Park, and it's good to see that the species is

still hanging on in the stream.

They are in decline and they are a protected species,

but they do need the right chemical composition in the stream to thrive,

so they won't occur everywhere.

What do you mean by that?

Well, they prefer streams with a good calcium content.

-So, you mean limestone streams?

-Limestone streams.

In this part of Wales we are right on the western edge

of their normal distribution, because that's where

the limestone is, around the fringe of the coalfield.

So this stream feeds out of limestone

and it's exactly what this species requires.

Well, well, well. And they've become really rare

because of this introduced American crayfish.

There is certainly an issue with signal or American crayfish

which were brought over for the pot.

It's important that where we find white-clawed crayfish,

we do what we can to make certain they are thriving and survive.

Steve had said they were here, but with them being in such decline

I was sceptical about actually finding one.

It's important to remember too that they're a protected species

so you need a special licence to catch and handle them.

By early autumn, the leaves of the trees in the park are turning.

The old sweet chestnut trees

are heavy with their characteristic fruit,

as are the unrelated horse chestnut trees.

And this is by far the best time of year to see fungi.

If you've got dead and dying trees, they're often festooned

with them, and all of this just adds to that natural harvest.

Autumn is a really interesting time of year

because all through spring and summer, our deciduous trees,

they've supported millions, and I mean millions of insects,

but now the leaves are dying back and they become far less palatable,

so most of the insects that were on them, they've either

laid their eggs and the adults have died or if they were caterpillars

they've pupated and they're waiting for spring to arrive.

So many birds turn their attention to the coniferous trees,

finding insects hiding away inside the cones,

and also to the cone seeds themselves.

There are three great spotted woodpeckers and they're

looking in the bark, any crevices in there might have insects,

but more than anything else they're looking in the pine cones for insects

and it's the perfect hiding place, full of nooks and crannies.

If you go bird-watching at this time of year,

then my advice is to make sure you pay close attention

to the park's huge variety of conifer trees.

My final task is to catch up with the deer

and Gavin Vella, who I met on my first day, has been helping the team

to monitor the cameras.

I'm meeting him now to find out what we got.

-Thanks for all your help.

-You're welcome.

Now the moment of truth, have we got any deer on the cameras?

Unfortunately not, Iolo,

we've managed to get squirrels and rabbits,

plenty of squirrels and rabbits,

and we did get some footage of a fox.

so we're happy about that, but no deer, I'm afraid.

We were quite optimistic,

speaking to quite a lot of the locals actually,

and one person in particular did manage to see and encounter

a male deer, a stag,

while walking her dogs, so we were quite optimistic.

-So, this is recently now?

-This was recently, she was quite shocked to see this male stag deer,

but, yeah, we didn't manage to get the footage, I'm afraid.

I did manage, however, to find a weasel, which I'm really happy with.

-I've got pictures if you'd like to see them.

-Yeah. Oh, fantastic.

Oh, this is in the wall down here.

This is in this wall running right next to us.

Oh, that's a fantastic shot.

So, that's the first time in Pontypool Park for me.

-Well, well, well, and that's right place, right time.

-Right place, right time.

And that's often the way with wildlife,

making any walk in the park an exciting one.

Pontypool Park was an important part of my childhood.

During the 1970s,

I used to watch out for the results of the great Pontypool rugby team,

and having come here now it's been a real eye-opener

because it's a fantastic place for wildlife.

We've got native crayfish here,

one of only a handful of sites in the whole of Wales now,

and the ashy mining bees.

I'll never forget lying down and having thousands of them all around me.

But more than anything else, I think,

Pontypool Park is about the people,

Ena and her knowledge of the history of the place,

Gavin and his enthusiasm and knowledge of the wildlife,

and that's what these urban parks should be about.

Yes, they should be great for wildlife,

but they should be great places for people too.