Forty years ago, the forestry in the Elenydd mountains was a monoculture of young Sitka spruce plantations. Today, it is a patchwork of ‘clearfells’ and different aged plantings. The overgrown clearings are rich in small birds and here, cuckoos are calling in surprisingly good numbers. One catches a drinker moth Euthrix potatoria caterpillar that it…
Tag: Elenydd-Mallaen SPA
Mid Wales Midwinter 2
It is 10 years since the first Mid Wales Midwinter post and I’m back spending a few days before Christmas with my old friend Tony Cross. The rural landscapes of rolling mountains, small green fields, steep bracken-clad valleys and cliff-lined coastline are as beautiful as ever. Of course, the day we take the mountain road…
Ffridd
The unenclosed hill slopes or ffridd are a mosaic of bracken, scrub, heather, grass and wet flushes that lie between the pasture fields and the mountain plateaus. Around the Elenydd mountains in mid-Wales, ffridd is rich with small birds including redstarts, yellowhammers, tree pipits, whinchats and stonechats. Redpolls, siskins and mistle thrushes are common in…
Cwm Doethie’s Merlins
Right at the heart of the Cambrian Mountains in mid-Wales, the Doethie valley runs north off the Pysgotwr which in turn runs down into the Tywi by the Dinas nature reserve; it is a rare valley in that there is no road or driveable track just a path used by walkers and mountain bikers between…