Lowlands Iolo's Jewels of Wales

I'll be looking at some of the jewels of Wales

and the wildlife associated with them.

These are landscape gems.

My pick of some of the best natural and industrial landscapes of Wales.

I'll be meeting people who live, work

and play in this spectacular scenery.

I'll be finding out why they love it so much.

It's a national treasure really, you've got everything here.

I'll be exploring the sea.

I will also be finding out how the Welsh landscape is being used

today, and discovering some very surprising wildlife

right amongst this dramatic activity.

Wales has terrific landscape,

and it's been enjoyed and exploited for centuries.

It's been shaped by nature and by man.

In this part of my journey, I'm exploring real gems

on Wales's lowland, including a magnificent woodland.

I'm also taking you to some real choice locations on the coast.

And I'm venturing underwater.

But first I'm taking you to what I think is Wales's best green lane.

'It's found near the village of Chwilog, halfway between Cricieth

'and Pwllheli, and it's a delightful walk on an early spring morning.'

Just look at the shape of this tree here.

An old oak tree and the branches, they just curl around each other.

Reminds me of one of those trees I used to read about in fairy tales

when I was a kid, you know, one that's changed into a witch.

And this is Lon Goed, a famous old Welsh route.

And it would have been at one time the main entry and exit point

into the Llyn Peninsula. People would have come along here, they would have walked,

they would be on horseback. And I'm quite envious of those days

because they would have had a lot more time to just look around and listen.

And the birdsong here is incredible,

the whole route for miles is lined with these old oaks,

and you've got bluebells and stitchwort growing all around you.

It's a great place to come and enjoy wildlife.

During the spring, the trees are alive

with the sounds of common woodland birds.

Male chaffinches are singing and claiming their territories.

This great tit is chattering away, probably alarmed

that I'm walking underneath its nest.

But these two are not bothered at all, they're far too busy.

There's a pair of blue tits right up

amongst the uppermost branches of this oak tree here.

And they're frantically looking around for food,

they're investigating every single bud, every leaf, even tearing

the buds apart just to get at the eggs, the larvae of these insects.

And they're expending a phenomenal amount of energy,

but when you think that some of these mature oak trees have got

over 750 different species of insects growing on them,

there must be, what, tens of thousands of eggs and larvae there.

And those are packed full of energy, so it's well worth it,

because the food they get, they replace all that energy and more,

because they'll be egg laying now,

they'll be feeding young later on.

And they'll go along every single branch of these oaks.

Lon Goed in English means Wood Lane, and it's a valuable piece

of woodland nature reserve amongst farmland.

Ancient oak woodlands are hard to come by these days,

as most of the landscape has been developed for farming.

But a few have survived, and quite often because the terrain was

far too difficult to farm, or they were set aside in the past

as woodland for the production of wood for tools and other implements.

This one is called Coed Crafnant,

and it's a real jewel, set in a great location

on a hillside next to farmland near Harlech.

'The woodland floor is full of moss-covered rocks,

'only good enough for rough grazing

'if you're a farmer, but the owners of the wood,

'the North Wales Wildlife Trust, rarely allow that,

'they prefer a rich wildlife habitat to develop.

'And Coed Crafnant probably has one of the biggest selection

'of nesting woodland birds in Wales.

'And because the woodland is on a slope, the views of the birds

'are particularly good, especially high up on the hillside.'

There's a male wood warbler singing here to attract a mate.

He's not long back in from Africa,

so the first thing he does is establish his territory.

And he's got this...

that call now, hear it?

"Di-di-di-di-di rrrr!" Fantastic, that tells you every time,

no matter where you are - wood warbler.

And we're very lucky to see this, because it usually takes place

right up in the uppermost branches of a wood,

but because we've climbed up, we're looking down on all this.

And every now and again, he'll do this little song flight -

slow wing beats, sing, going from branch to branch, like that.

And when he sings, when he comes down, "Rrrr," like that, he puts

so much effort into him, you can see his whole body shake.

Fantastic little birds, lovely little birds.

'Coed Crafnant is also an important woodland for pied flycatchers.

'It's a migratory bird that's very special in Wales,

'as most of the UK population of pied flycatchers migrate here.

'The North Wales Wildlife Trust monitor the birds carefully

'and have set up nesting boxes in the woodland

'to supplement their natural tree hole sites.'

Just sat here quietly, watching a pair of pied flycatchers,

they've got a nest in a nest box on an oak tree here.

They're hole nesters, but they will take to nest boxes.

She's on a full clutch, I think,

she'll have eggs in there, but she's not sitting

comfortably at the moment.

For a day or two now, she'll be quite jumpy,

she'll move around a bit, she'll feed up a bit

and then, eventually, once she sits on those eggs, she'll settle down.

That's nice, the male's coming in now, he's coming in with food.

He's just fed her, she's come off the nest and he's just fed her.

The female is a fairly drab bird, brown and not quite white,

but pale cream if you like, but the male is stunning.

Black, and I mean sheer black, and bright white as well.

He's a handsome, handsome bird

and that's quite unusual in woodland birds because the canopy here

is incredibly dense, there are leaves everywhere,

you can't see much and most of these woodland birds rely

on song to be heard, whereas the male pied flycatcher,

yes, he's got a song, it's not a fantastic song.

But he's incredibly bright bird as well,

so he must be quite visible in amongst this canopy.

And one of the wonderful things is that people have been ringing

these birds for many years now and what they've found is that

the chicks and the adults will come back often,

not just to the same area, not just to the same wood,

but to the same hole in the same tree.

That's after flying all the way down to Africa and back

and that's phenomenal.

While oak woodlands are important for songbirds during the spring,

it's the estuaries that are important

for wading birds during the winter.

The Dee estuary, sandwiched between Flint and the Wirral,

is one of the most important feeding areas for waders, ducks and geese

in the UK, if not Europe. It's a real gem of an estuary.

During the winter, the population of birds reaches over 100,000

as shorebirds from all over Europe come here to escape

the colder continent to find guaranteed food on the mudflats.

The mud and sea is full of a fantastic range of worms,

molluscs, and other invertebrates.

I've watched these birds many times from the shore,

but I've never explored the estuary from the sea or indeed considered

the relationship between the Dee fishing community and the wildlife.

'Keith Marland has been fishing on the Dee for over 30 years,

'and he mainly fishes for cockles on the mudflats, which of course

'is one of the main food items of the birds,

'particularly oystercatchers.'

Is there a season now then for the cockles?

The season as it stands is July to the end of December.

Last year, the quota was 300 kilos per day.

-300 kilos a day per person?

-Yeah.

There's 50 licences with an option to have four apprentice cocklers.

And there's enough cockles on here

for the birds, for the people and for next year?

Yeah, rule of thumb is a third for the birds,

a third for the cocklers and a third for stock.

And the boats, why do you use the boats then for cockling?

Well, you're basically working on an island, you know,

so you come early on in the tide,

put the boat dry out on the top of the bank,

and then cockle, load the boat

and then wait for the tide to come back in.

-So you work between tides really, you just...

-Yeah.

Should see some birds on these banks as well, should we,

oystercatchers and a few redshank, maybe?

I'll take you over to Little Salisbury and let's have a look.

-See what's there.

-Usually oystercatchers,

feeding on the mussels.

'Spending much of his time on the estuary,

'Keith knows the favourite locations of the birds,

'and he also wanted to show me another special wildlife attraction.

'The Dee Estuary is one of the few places on the Welsh coast

'that grey seals haul up on sandbanks.

'Seals are usually very wary of people,

'and move quickly to water if anyone ventures too close,

'but these seals are very used to fishermen and their boats.

'Nevertheless, we'll keep our distance to avoid any disturbance.'

Fascinating creatures.

They are, they are.

Some in the water as well, see their heads bobbing up and down?

-Oh, yeah.

-Do you reckon...

There's a lady doing some research on them and they reckon

that some of these may well come from Pembrokeshire,

all the way around the Welsh coast, they come here

just to haul up, to mature, I suppose, and to feed.

Well, as you can see,

-they're not starving.

-No, no!

What have we got here, there's got to be 60 or 70 here?

-In the summer, they increase.

-Is it?

-400 or 500, they reckon, in the...

-It's a good number, isn't it?

-Yeah, in the summer.

When do you get peak time then, when do you get most here?

July and August?

It's a coincidence, it's when there's the biggest run of salmon...

..we seem to have a lot of... of seals.

-They know, don't they?

-Course they do.

They know when's the best time to come, they know when's good fishing.

They probably know you by now.

Yeah, I should imagine, yeah.

They are a lovely animal, but it's a pity they eat too many fish!

-Yeah? You don't like them eating your fish?

-No, no, no.

'I confess I'm very envious of Keith,

'he has a front seat view of the Dee's wildlife

'pretty much on a daily basis, and it's part of the estuary's make-up.'

Well, it's just one of those things you take for granted,

it's a national treasure, really. You've got everything here.

'I'm walking, early May,

'on Malltraeth Cob on the western coast of Anglesey.

'The cob is a mile-long embankment built during the early 1800s

'to protect the low-lying land from flooding.'

This is the Cefni estuary,

one of the lesser-known estuaries of Wales,

but still a wonderful place for birds.

And especially in the winter for waders and wildfowl.

But can you imagine before this Malltraeth Cob, this sea wall

was built several centuries ago, what it would have looked like?

At that time, the estuary would have extended halfway across Anglesey.

A whole series of creeks and lovely wetland area,

must have been a great place for breeding waders,

redshank and lapwing.

And although the land now behind the cob has been improved

for agriculture, much of it dried out,

it has actually created a very different habitat,

and a habitat which in parts is just as good as the estuary itself.

The Cefni Marsh at Malltraeth was in fact originally drained

for coal mining and the building of the A5 turnpike road to Holyhead.

And over the past two centuries,

this reclaimed lowland has also been used for farming.

Today, much of it's owned by the RSPB,

and is one of its main wildlife reserves in Wales.

It has a great mix of habitats.

There are wetland pools and reeds,

which attract waterfowl like these shovelers.

There's farmland pasture, which attracts greylag geese,

and it's an important nesting site for lapwings.

There are also plenty of shrubs and hedges for butterflies.

When the RSPB first bought this bit of land here, Malltraeth Marsh,

one of the target birds

was to get marsh harriers back into Wales, nesting.

And there's a female marsh harrier flying around,

just hunting over the reeds and up in the air and then back.

Very leisurely, slow flight back and forth,

trying to flush moorhens or coots or a teal,

or if it sees a water vole, it will plunge down.

And it's an odd bird, because in other parts of the UK,

in England, they're now quite common.

In East Anglia, they're nesting in corn fields,

in Scotland, they're nesting as far north as Insh Marshes in Speyside

and even beyond that.

But for some reason, they haven't nested in Wales

for the best part of 35 years now.

And why they don't come back,

especially when you've got an area like Malltraeth Marsh,

which is huge, with plenty of food,

we just don't understand, but we've got a female here now.

All we want is a male. Will it happen?

I don't know. I don't know.

Amongst the low-lying farmland of Wales,

you'll find the occasional patch of rough ground.

These are areas that are either too wet to farm,

or have, for one reason or another, not been drained for farming.

This area of marshy ground

on the Llyn Peninsula in northwest Wales

is called Cors Geirch,

and is another lowland jewel of mine.

It's a national nature reserve,

and during spring, it's full of plants and insects.

This is a broad-bodied chaser,

a common dragonfly of ponds and natural pools.

The four dark brown patches on the wing bases

instantly identifies the species.

One of the big attractions for me,

coming to a wetland area like this in spring,

is to see the bogbean flowers - they're absolutely beautiful.

And great for all kinds of insects,

especially bees, bumble bees and honey bees, flying everywhere.

And many people extol the virtues

of flowers like orchids, for example,

and quite rightly so, I suppose,

but you look in detail at the flowers of a bogbean

and it's every bit as intricate, every bit as beautiful.

If not more so, I think.

Not only is Cors Geirch alive with the sounds of insects during spring,

it's also full of birds singing and calling on their territories.

BIRDSONG

When you come to a marsh or a fen like this,

you really need to use your ears as much as your eyes,

because a lot of the birds,

especially some of these warblers

that have just come back from Africa -

your reed warblers and sedge warblers - they're skulking birds.

They don't come out into the open.

They'll be in the middle of all this mass of vegetation,

singing away like mad. And if they do pop up,

they pop up invariably for a couple of seconds,

you get the binoculars out, and they've gone back down.

But very lucky at the moment, because there's a sedge warbler,

male sedge warbler, up on the edge of the alder,

singing away like mad in this sun, showing himself.

I've had some of the best views I've ever had of this bird.

Lovely bird, you can see the black eye band here and dark cap as well.

It's a lovely bird, really nice bird.

An incredibly rambling song,

scratchy and then a little bit tuneful,

and then scratchy again, just goes on and on and on and on.

Much of what's good about lowland Wales is along its coast.

And if you measure every portion

of every beach, bay and rugged cliff,

including Anglesey's coast, as the Ordnance Survey have done,

you'd total an amazing coastal length of nearly 1,700 miles.

Just look at this.

There's not much I can say to add to that, is there?

Incredible.

And we're so lucky in Wales,

not just to have landscape like this, but the fact that these days,

you can walk almost all the way around the Welsh coast.

And some of those paths are well-established and well-known,

Pembrokeshire Coast Path maybe being the best one.

But this one was only opened a few years ago.

This is the Ceredigion Coast Path

and it stretches from beyond Aberystwyth in the north,

all the way down to the south side of Cardigan down there.

And the section I'm walking, this is Cwmtydu down here.

I've climbed up and I'll follow the coast around,

only for about 4½, 5 miles maybe,

but I think this is probably the best section of all.

I'm heading south in the direction of Llangrannog,

with the headland of Ynys Lochtyn and Aberporth in the distance.

The path follows a route along the cliff tops high above the sea,

and you walk at eye level with the coastal birds.

On the cliffs themselves,

peregrines are nesting.

The cliffs are also great vantage points for the peregrines

to look out for passing prey.

They hunt and kill birds as they fly.

Pigeons are a favourite.

There are also kestrels about.

There are a few things you do in life

where time passes and you don't really notice it.

One is watching waves on a shore,

another one is looking into an open fire,

but for me, it's watching hunting kestrels.

There's a male and a female kestrel hunting up here now.

They're not hovering,

they're actually using the wind just to stay up in the air.

She's just gone down...

No, she's come back,

maybe with a beetle and a talon full of grass there.

In fact, the kestrel has caught a lizard.

Its body shape can clearly be seen hanging from the kestrel's talons.

They don't always eat on the wing. These two are now,

because they're catching mainly beetles, a few lizards,

but if they catch something bigger, if they catch a vole,

they'll land on one of these posts and feed there.

But you can watch kestrels, I find anyway, for hours and hours

and time will just pass.

The Ceredigion Coastal Path also passes through pasture,

and it's in those habitats

that you'll find this magnificent red-legged, red-beaked crow.

One of the really special birds

along this section of coast is the chough.

Very scarce, very much a western bird.

I think Wales has something like

two-thirds of the UK population of them.

And there's a pair here

feeding away on an old bank

and that's ideal for them, because that long sickle-like beak,

they dig up grubs, particularly ants.

They love ant eggs, ant grubs as well.

And this bank has been warmed by the sun,

so it will be full of invertebrates for them.

They don't like the sections

that are covered in gorse and heather and bracken.

They like these well-grazed but unimproved parts of the coast.

And they're lovely birds to watch.

To call them a member of the crow family isn't really fair,

because when you look at them close up,

you see that the feathers aren't black -

they've got this lovely purplish-green sheen to them.

And then when you add the bright red bill, the bright red legs,

they're quite stunning birds.

On a sunny spring day, there aren't many better walks in Wales

than this stretch of coast overlooking Ceredigion Bay,

and the variety of birds that you'll see,

from stonechats along the path

to nesting fulmars on the cliffs, makes it even more worthwhile.

The Welsh coast is blessed with some impressive sand dune formations.

On the dunes, you'll find special wildlife.

And those at Oxwich on the Gower Peninsula in south Wales

are a very important jewel between March and April.

A familiar-looking plant, this one.

I'm not a great botanist, but these are pussy willows.

The willows are a little bit different,

the pussy willows are more yellowy

than the ones you see in hedgerows and woodlands.

And it's creeping willow -

it's a willow that lives in dunes like this,

especially in dune slacks, and those are the wetter parts of the dune.

And here at Oxwich, these provide valuable food,

valuable pollen for a very rare insect.

And this is it - it's called the vernal colletes mining bee

and it's a real Oxwich speciality.

It's incredibly rare.

It's found in only three sites in the whole of the UK -

two in south Wales and one in the northwest of England.

And this bit of dune here might not look like much to you and me,

but to these bees, it's ideal.

It's south-facing and has very little vegetation on it,

so it warms up quickly.

And because they feed on creeping willow,

they appear in April and May,

not later on in the year when it's much, much warmer.

And basically, they're a Mediterranean,

a continental, a warm weather species.

And this is the very edge of their range.

Though they look similar to honey bees,

they're a very different kind of bee,

and they don't live in a social colony.

Having mated on the dunes, a vernal mining bee

will raise its own young in a burrow dug in the sand.

It'll fill the burrow with willow pollen, and lay its eggs in it.

When the larvae hatch, they'll have plenty of food ready for them.

Wales has a very rich and varied sea life all along its coast.

It has stunning wrecks,

kelp forests,

sandy beds,

and dramatic rocky landscapes.

I've dived much of the Welsh coastline,

and I've experienced first-hand this wonderful hidden treasure of Wales.

Today I'm diving with a team of divers

off the northwest coast of Wales.

RADIO: 'Stand by. This is Holyhead Coastguard.'

We've come out just off the north coast of the Llyn Peninsula -

this is Yr Eifl, a very well-known landmark there -

and we'll be diving in about 11-12 metres of water.

And the visibility at the moment at the end of spring is excellent -

it's about 15 metres,

which for Welsh waters is unheard of.

I'm looking forward to seeing what's down there.

The seabed is a flat, pebbly landscape,

on which lurk all sorts of bottom-dwelling fish

and other underwater creatures.

This place is just...

absolutely covered in dead man's fingers.

Now, these are not solitary animals -

they're a whole colony of creatures that have come together

and they filter

all the miniscule particles out of the water.

And you can see where they get the name dead man's fingers.

It really does look like a dead man's hand

sticking out of the ground.

As the seabed here is so flat,

the dead men's fingers are good places

for small crabs to hide, and for attaching mermaid's purses.

It's a spotted dogfish egg.

And hiding behind another group of dead man's fingers

is the dogfish itself.

One of the biggest creatures you'll see down here

are these spider crabs.

And the fishermen will tell you

that in recent times, they've increased remarkably.

And you might think this is a big one,

but they will grow to be the best part of a metre across,

so this one's just a baby, really!

In the next part of my journey of the Jewels of Wales,

I'm heading to the uplands, where I'll be discovering history...

It looks like a crown of thorns!

I'll be joining the Army.

I'll be felling a forest.

It looks like you're working a T-Rex down here!

I'll watching the best of Welsh upland wildlife

in some great landscapes.

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