Great Orme Iolo's Great Welsh Parks


Great Orme

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There are over 30 country parks in Wales.

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Thousands of people visit them every year.

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Some are old estates of wealthy landlords.

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Some are old industrial sites.

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The parks are usually close to towns and that's because they've been

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set aside for us to enjoy on our doorstep.

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But what I like about them most is that

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they're great places for wildlife.

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If you keep your eyes open, you'll see some great sights.

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There can't be many country parks that have a tramway

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running right through them, but this is one of the old trams

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that takes you right up to the summit of the Great Orme.

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This is the way to travel.

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The Great Orme is a magnificent limestone headland above Llandudno

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on the north Wales coast.

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It's been a popular tourist location since Victorian times.

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Today, it has over 500,000 visitors each year.

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In addition to the tramway,

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you can get to the summit by road and cable car.

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If you're feeling fit, you could also walk to the summit.

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Whatever route you'll take, you'll see fantastic views of Llandudno,

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the Conwy estuary and the north Wales coast.

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The Orme is open, exposed land,

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and on a casual walk, you could quite easily miss that this

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is a special place for both its landscape and wildlife.

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There are lots of paths going up and down and crisscrossing the Orme

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and hundreds if not thousands of people

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walk on them every year and the vast majority of people just don't know

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what they're missing out on,

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because you walk this area in the middle of June

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and there's a little gem - a Great Orme speciality - here.

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And here's one just down here -

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this lovely little blue butterfly here.

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It's called a Silver-studded Blue.

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It's quite scarce,

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but what's fantastic about this is that on the Great Orme,

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there's a unique race of Silver-studded Blue.

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They're just a little bit different to all the other ones in the whole

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of the UK and on a really good, still day,

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you can see them everywhere -

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clouds of them. There he goes, fluttering about.

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But now, because of the wind, they're staying tucked down out of the way.

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And they're just beautiful. If he lands again... Go on.

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They've got this lovely deep purply-blue on top of the wings,

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then underneath, this pattern of orange dots and black dots

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and bits of silver. It is a cracking little butterfly.

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Most of the Great Orme is a special area of conservation

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because it contains habitats and species like the Silver-studded Blue

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that are rare.

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It's also an important historical site.

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People have been living on the headland since the Stone Age.

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They've been mining copper here since the Bronze Age.

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It's actually thought to be the

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largest prehistoric mine so far discovered in the world.

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Some of the mines were dug in caves formed in the limestone headland.

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Archaeologist Sian Jones is taking me inside one of them.

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OK.

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How far in does this go?

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Quite a few metres beyond where we are going to just show you

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where the latest excavations were.

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And little William is used to it, is he?

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He is, yes. He goes with you everywhere, literally.

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He's definitely used to it.

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He's a little cave baby.

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Good boy.

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Would this have housed early people here, or is this a mine?

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This is a mine.

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Originally, it would have started as a cave overhang

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and they've extended it through -

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quite traditionally in the prehistoric way of mining is along,

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whereas a modern method of mining is shaft mining,

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where they go straight down.

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And all of this is to mine malachite,

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so a beautiful green copper,

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or possibly using it for pigment, maybe 5,000 years ago.

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So 5,000 years ago,

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that actually goes back before the time when they knew how to make

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copper, what it was used for.

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Yes, before the metal ages. Yeah.

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We've got evidence of people living on the Great Orme,

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being buried on the Great Orme, going back 14,000 years.

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Now, you've asked me to bring these in.

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What exactly are these two here?

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These are beautiful green bone tools

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that were found in the Great Orme mine, OK?

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See - William's holding it the right way. These are digging tools.

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These are cattle bones.

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These ones are only about 4,000 years old. Right.

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So that's right at the beginning of the Bronze Age?

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Yes, but they've taken on this

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beautiful green hue from the malachite.

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It's leached into the bone itself.

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And this, then - is that a rib?

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That's a rib bone, again of a cattle,

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and this is similar to the one that would have been discovered in here,

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in Badger's Cave.

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We have one that has two slices on it.

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It may have been actually used when it was butchered but some people

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are suggesting maybe it's a tally of some sort.

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I tell you what's really lovely as well - I saw them on the way in -

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we've got herald moths in here.

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See, there's one just above your head?

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And there are two more here.

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And these will come in in the autumn.

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They'll spend the winter here, and then go back out in spring.

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They'll overwinter...one has even got some drops of dew on it.

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They're a beautiful sort of rusty colour.

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They are, sort of burnished orange in colour. Yeah.

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Do you know, I've come in here many, many times

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and I've never noticed them before.

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That's because you're looking for different things.

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You're looking at all the archaeology and what's here.

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I've got not a clue with that.

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I'm looking for the wildlife and finding herald moths.

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Yes. There's something here for everyone really. Absolutely, yeah.

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During spring, the Great Orme is an important stopover point

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for migrating birds, so it's worthwhile getting up at dawn to

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scan the headland for any visitors that may have landed.

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Alan Davies lives in Llandudno, just below the Orme,

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and regularly comes up here to see what's dropped in.

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Nice morning, anyway, Alan.

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It's a perfect morning. These are the sort of mornings you want on the Orme.

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It's calm, a little bit of light breeze from the east,

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and that anticipation is what it's all about at this time of year.

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Coming out this morning, you see the wheatear on the wall down there now

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and that's a really good sign.

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You see a wheatear drop in and you think, if the wheatear's here,

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maybe there's going to be something else as well.

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There's quite a few wheatear, I think.

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Over there on the edge of the limestone over there.

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So all of those will be passing through on their way further north,

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will they, all these? That's the great thing about these birds,

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they just drop in. You never know how long they're going to stay.

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They might stay an hour, they might stay a week.

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Perhaps some of these birds are even going to go as far north as Greenland.

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To think that a wheatear can fly from Africa to Greenland,

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stopping off here in north Wales to feed,

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it's just mind-boggling, really.

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That's the most exciting thing about this time of year.

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Why here? Because it's a really well-known spot for birders to come,

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because it does attract so many migrants.

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Yeah. It's the geography really.

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You've seen how the Great Orme sticks out into the Irish Sea -

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you've got the coast on both sides.

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Imagine you're a migrant flying over and you see that land sticking out

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into the sea and you think - "This is my chance!

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"Do I stop now and rest, or do I carry on over that Irish Sea?"

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A lot of birds think, "Let's drop down, have a rest, have a feed,"

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before they continue their migration further north again.

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I've come over to the eastern side of the park now

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and this is St Tudno's Church

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and it's from here that Llandudno gets its name.

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And the original church here dates back nearly 1,500 years

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and it's a lovely place to come because it's really quiet, really peaceful.

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It's also pretty good for migrant birds.

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Quite a few migrant birds stop for a rest here and I've been told

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by a local birder that just up here there's a mistle thrush's nest,

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so I'll go and have a look at that, I think.

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The mistle thrush nest is just in that bush by the wall,

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the other side of those graves.

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I have to say, unusual for a mistle thrush,

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because every other nest I've ever seen has been quite high up

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in a tall tree but here, there aren't many tall trees so needs must

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and she's sitting really happily on eggs there while he's off.

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He'll be defending the nest if anything comes past,

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but at the moment, it's just a picture of serenity.

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The male has returned.

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It will attack any intruder that

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enters his territory, including people.

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This pair will stay together through the seasons

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and may well use this tree every year.

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She will do most of the incubating

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and with no present threat to his patch,

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what else do you do on a sunny day

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other than give yourself a good clean?

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The Great Orme is home to cashmere goats.

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The herd, which has roamed the Orme

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since the middle of the 19th century,

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is apparently descended from a pair of goats that were presented by the

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Shah of Persia to Queen Victoria shortly after her coronation.

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They are lovely creatures but they become a nuisance if their numbers

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become too high, so - believe it or not - they're taking contraceptives.

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Sally, the country park warden, is supplying them with a birth control.

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I make it, is it ten?

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Yes, I think there are, yes.

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With just the one little one?

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That's right, yes. And she's with a nanny that isn't vaccinated with the

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contraceptive vaccine.

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I'd know if she was vaccinated -

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she'd be wearing ear tags in both ears.

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So you vaccinate some of these goats now just to control them,

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to make sure they're not producing any more young?

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Yes, that's the way we've adopted to manage the goat numbers.

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That's a good way to do it, isn't it?

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So we've got ten here. How many have you got on the whole of the Orme?

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The total population at the last count, including this year's kids,

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was 112.

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Is that ideal for what you want, or

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would you want a few more or a few less?

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Well, we've reached what we think is our ideal.

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We've reduced the population down from 220 -

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that was the highest number on the Orme back in the year 2000.

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It's gone down a lot, then.

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Yeah. We've done that with a combination of contraceptive control

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and also relocating a few goats in small herds to other nature reserves

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for conservation grazing.

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Well done, you. With the combination of the two, we've managed gradually,

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over the years, to bring it down

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to...around 100 is what we were aiming for.

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And one thing that's really obvious to me is that these goats here -

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they're very, very different, different looking goats,

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to the ones you get in the high mountains of north Wales.

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Yeah, these are cashmere goats,

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so they're completely different to the goats of Snowdonia.

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Mostly pure white and introduced in the sort of late 1800s, we think,

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although there's no exact date for when they were introduced.

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And they have that lovely beard as well.

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Yeah, yeah - nannies as well as... Even the women!

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..the billies, yeah!

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So these are all nannies, you say?

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They'll be in a herd together now. Yes. And the billies will be where?

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The billies will be in groups together in various places

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around the headland. I tell you the other big difference -

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the horns on these are nowhere near

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as big as the ones up in the high mountains. No, they are different.

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These are nanny goats, so they're always shorter.

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But a billy goat has quite impressive horns.

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Look at that! That's a horn from an eight-year-old billy.

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Wow!

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That is massive. And that's eight years old, you say?

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Yeah. They say you can count. Is that one to there?

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Yeah. Two, three, four, five, six,

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seven, and then eight to the base, is it?

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That's right, yeah. Coming into its ninth year, this one? Yes. Wow!

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I know a lot of people like coming up here and seeing the goats.

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Look at them now. Beautiful weather, beautiful day,

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and what a fabulous backdrop - the whole of Llandudno behind them.

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Yeah. Typical goats, they're right on the edge.

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Right on the edge, especially nanny goats. They love being on the edge.

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It's where they can escape to and take their kids to safety

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if anything comes along. Dogs, people.

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That's fantastic. Lovely looking things.

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This is a very different part of the Great Orme.

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It's got a different feel to it.

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Looking down over the bay and the pier and the Little Orme

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and the town itself over there and you've got this -

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this is the old Druid Circle from the 1963 National Eisteddfod.

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It's called the Happy Valley and it's a beautiful place.

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You've got woodland and you've got the gardens as well.

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It's a great place to come.

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The gardens are very different to

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the exposed open spaces on the summit.

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And Shirley is one of the gardeners

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who's responsible for keeping the Valley in check.

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Hello there. Oh, hello.

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How are you? All right? I'm fine, thank you, Iolo.

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Tell you what - you've got the best job in the world in this weather!

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I have got the best job and I'm working

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in the best office, aren't I?

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The best office to come to in the morning.

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You are indeed. It's a really,

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really nice mix and it looks cracking.

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It's the best time of year with all these flowers and the bees

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are everywhere as well. Now, the park itself,

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I saw a picture when I was in town a few years ago.

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I remember seeing a picture of some kind of event here in Victorian times,

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and there were thousands here.

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Yes. So they must have held, what,

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open-air concerts and all kinds of things here?

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They did. As you come up to as is now the cafe,

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just on the bottom of the hill here, that used to be the theatre.

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And it forms a natural amphitheatre shape and they would have had all

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sorts of acts that we might laugh at now

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but back then it was really, really popular. Really popular.

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Today, the old theatre site has been transformed into these beautiful

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gardens but the relationship between Happy Valley and the Great Orme's

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famous goats is a bit testing.

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We've got a goat issue and the goats seem to like quite a lot of what

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we're planting. People either love or they hate the goats, don't they?

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In general, the public love them and they are cute.

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They come down with the babies but they do walk through and this is

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like a smorgasbord for them. This is their dinner table.

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So they will come down off the

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Great Orme in the night and they just help themselves.

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But we found out especially what we're planting,

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we're putting it in and they're coming in at night and they're

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defoliating quite a lot of it.

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So I'm having to take these hebes out because they're not going to do

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anything now for the summertime.

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These should be a lot of foliage, looking really good by now.

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So that's what's happened here?

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This is exactly what's happened here. Oh, wow!

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The plants have been completely chewed down.

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They chew the bark, they chew the foliage.

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So we've just got to go with it and find something they don't like.

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That's what we're aiming to do as well, I think, next time.

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This is interesting. I've come right up to the top end of Happy Valley

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and there's quite a few mature trees here

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and a pair of great spotted woodpeckers has bred in here

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somewhere but the chicks are out of the nest.

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I think they've got three chicks in all and what they're doing is,

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they've led them onto this rocky slope here and the adult is teaching

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the youngsters how to dig around in the soil for invertebrates.

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That's something you usually see in a bird like a green woodpecker.

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That will spend a lot of time on the floor.

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But great spotted woodpeckers spend nearly all of their time high up

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in trees and looking for grubs in dead branches, rotting wood,

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that kind of thing.

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But this parent has led the youngsters and is showing them,

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basically, how to find food in here.

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They're cracking little birds because they've got

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these bright red caps. They're lovely little things.

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They'll spend the next few weeks with the adults, learning.

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Here we are. There's one moved up onto the rocks higher up, I think.

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They'll spend the next few weeks learning as much as they can

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from these adults - where to find food, where to look for food.

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And then they'll be kicked out after that.

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Sea birds nest on the steep cliffs of the Great Orme but they're very

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difficult to see from the headland itself.

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The best way of seeing them is from a boat.

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Every year, there's an annual bird count by a team

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from the country park and I've joined them on this trip.

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The amazing thing is, you can't see much of this from the road

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or from the Orme itself - you've got to come onto the sea,

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and there are hundreds, hundreds of sea birds here.

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Mainly guillemots, you've got razorbills, you've got kittiwakes,

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you've got cormorants as well, a few fulmars,

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and all just packed onto these sheer cliffs.

0:19:210:19:24

You see from here just how tall some of these cliffs are.

0:19:240:19:26

They've got to be about 250, 300 foot tall.

0:19:260:19:29

These birds will probably start nesting on the cliffs here

0:19:330:19:36

April time, mid-April maybe,

0:19:360:19:39

and the last chicks will leave probably early to mid-July,

0:19:390:19:44

so if you were to come here late July, August, it'll be dead.

0:19:440:19:48

There will be hardly anything here at all.

0:19:480:19:50

Maybe the odd gull and that's it.

0:19:500:19:51

And I always love the way that nature divides things up.

0:19:510:19:56

You've got one cliff and you've got maybe 1,000 birds on there but

0:19:560:20:00

they've all got their little niche,

0:20:000:20:02

they've all got their different little place.

0:20:020:20:04

The guillemots, they'll be on the long ledges,

0:20:040:20:07

maybe no more than the width of my hand,

0:20:070:20:09

and you'll have them packed on there.

0:20:090:20:10

Dozens, sometimes hundreds.

0:20:100:20:12

Kittiwakes, then, they'll build a nest -

0:20:120:20:15

they'll build a nest on the little knob or a

0:20:150:20:18

little bit of rock jutting out.

0:20:180:20:20

They'll stick the nest on there.

0:20:200:20:22

And then cormorants - they need a little bit more space,

0:20:220:20:24

they need wider ledges.

0:20:240:20:26

So even though it looks like they're all packed on there,

0:20:260:20:29

they've all got their own individual little place within that one cliff.

0:20:290:20:33

I've come right over to the western edge of the Orme now.

0:21:060:21:09

You're looking out over the sea and the high mountains in the distance

0:21:090:21:12

over there and this was a Coast Artillery School.

0:21:120:21:16

You can see this is where the guns were pointing out to sea and the

0:21:160:21:19

habitat here is very different from anywhere else on the Orme.

0:21:190:21:22

A lot of cover, a lot of shrubs, a lot of bracken, a lot of gorse here.

0:21:220:21:26

It's really good for rabbits.

0:21:260:21:27

Signs of rabbits - I've seen a few walking down here, rabbit droppings,

0:21:270:21:31

rabbit holes everywhere, and it's also a great place for stoats.

0:21:310:21:34

I've been told that a stoat has been seen here regularly

0:21:340:21:37

for the last few days so what I'm thinking of doing is,

0:21:370:21:40

I'm going to sit myself down on this green bank over here -

0:21:400:21:44

I'll sit there and I'll watch,

0:21:440:21:46

because I'll have a view of all of this and the weather's perfect.

0:21:460:21:49

The wind will be in my face, the sun is out,

0:21:490:21:51

and I'll be able to see, hopefully, if anything moves here.

0:21:510:21:54

So I'll sit, I'll watch and I'll wait.

0:21:540:21:56

The old site of the Second World War Artillery School

0:22:010:22:04

is also a perfect place to see kestrels.

0:22:040:22:09

They like to launch off the cliffs

0:22:090:22:10

and hover in search of mice and lizards.

0:22:100:22:13

It's quite amazing to see how their heads stay perfectly still,

0:22:130:22:16

irrespective of other body movements.

0:22:160:22:18

There he is, there he is, there he is - on the wall, on the wall!

0:22:380:22:41

He's just gone up on the wall with a bit of rabbit.

0:22:410:22:42

He's just gone off. Wow, they're fast movers!

0:22:440:22:47

It's brilliant.

0:22:470:22:49

They're such cracking animals. They're not rare.

0:22:490:22:52

They're quite widespread.

0:22:520:22:54

But I don't see stoats that often and when you do, I tell you what,

0:22:540:22:58

it really makes your day.

0:22:580:23:00

I think what's happened - I'm not 100% sure -

0:23:000:23:02

she's obviously killed recently - I think she killed yesterday -

0:23:020:23:05

and she's got a cache somewhere, she's hidden it somewhere,

0:23:050:23:08

and she's coming to retrieve food from that cache.

0:23:080:23:11

I suspect the cache might be in this little bush over here because she

0:23:110:23:15

makes her way across the road and up onto that little wall and uses this

0:23:150:23:19

cover here. What's interesting, I can track where she is,

0:23:190:23:22

not because I can see her but because I can hear the small birds'

0:23:220:23:26

alarm calling as she goes.

0:23:260:23:28

But like a little clockwork toy, like a wind-up toy,

0:23:290:23:32

you wind them up, put them down and off they go, busy all the time.

0:23:320:23:37

Fantastic animals.

0:23:370:23:38

(It's actually rubbing in the moss.

0:23:540:23:57

(Really enjoying itself, having a bit of a scratch.)

0:23:580:24:01

(Right in front of me!)

0:24:170:24:18

And there are so few places I know of in the whole of Wales

0:24:240:24:27

where you've got a good chance to sit down and watch stoats like this.

0:24:270:24:32

It's such a rare thing. It's a real privilege.

0:24:320:24:36

Later, the stoat returned to kill another rabbit.

0:24:440:24:48

The rabbit is at least three times the size of the stoat

0:24:510:24:54

but that's no problem for this efficient predator.

0:24:540:24:57

It's an incredibly strong animal.

0:25:000:25:02

It'll hide this catch until it needs it.

0:25:050:25:07

And while all this activity is taking place - others,

0:25:120:25:15

unaware of the action, are picking blackberries and enjoying the view.

0:25:150:25:20

Autumn's a great time up on the Orme.

0:25:350:25:37

There's something going on, it doesn't matter where you go now

0:25:380:25:41

and I've come right up to the top to look for something

0:25:410:25:44

which is pretty unique to here, really.

0:25:440:25:46

It's the best place to see it in the whole of Wales -

0:25:460:25:49

and that's the goat rut.

0:25:490:25:50

There's a group of goats here - actually, they're all around me.

0:25:500:25:54

I'm being surrounded by goats at the moment. There's some down here.

0:25:540:25:57

But it's this lot here that I'm interested in,

0:25:570:25:59

because you've got subordinate males.

0:25:590:25:59

You see the heads and the horns there,

0:25:590:26:01

there are three subordinate males and they're working out a hierarchy.

0:26:030:26:09

Every now and again they'll turn, they'll head-butt

0:26:090:26:12

and I'm waiting to see whether we'll get a real, full-on, meaty rut -

0:26:120:26:16

because the dominant male, he is down here with a couple of females.

0:26:160:26:21

You can see him just over the horizon here.

0:26:210:26:25

That's the dominant male down there and he's happy.

0:26:250:26:28

He knows that he's not going to be challenged in any way this year,

0:26:280:26:32

so he's concentrating on the two females.

0:26:320:26:34

They're about to come into season and he's sticking close.

0:26:340:26:37

He's quite loving with them, actually.

0:26:370:26:39

But the real action is going to be, I suspect, over here.

0:26:390:26:43

The subordinate males look as if they're playing a game of

0:26:470:26:50

Ring a Ring o' Roses.

0:26:500:26:51

The top goat looks on amusingly.

0:26:540:26:57

You may think he's having a laugh,

0:27:020:27:05

but he's actually sampling the air for pheromones

0:27:050:27:08

to see if one of his females is receptive.

0:27:080:27:10

Meanwhile, the threesome have had enough of the game.

0:27:140:27:18

It's now down to serious business.

0:27:180:27:20

From the look of this handbag fight,

0:27:370:27:39

it's going to be a long time before they'll be challenging number one.

0:27:390:27:43

What a great way to end my visit here to the Great Orme -

0:27:500:27:54

in the company of the goats.

0:27:540:27:56

They've given up the fighting for now.

0:27:560:27:59

They've found an uneasy truce but

0:27:590:28:00

I'm sure it will kick-off again soon.

0:28:000:28:02

And as a naturalist, I always love coming up here.

0:28:020:28:06

The rare butterflies, the migrant birds,

0:28:060:28:08

there's always something to see.

0:28:080:28:10

But even if you're not into your natural history,

0:28:100:28:13

it's still a great place to come.

0:28:130:28:16

I'm Hayley Pearce.

0:29:000:29:01

I'm Hayley Pearce.

0:29:010:29:01

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