It's hard to believe that it’s mid-December already, it doesn’t feel that long ago that Molly and Bluebell, the two ponies’ from Carnog Working Horses, were rolling the bracken on Yr Allt – the slopes of Bwlch Mawr on the upper site at Bryn Ifan, or the lush colours of summer across the site.  A few days of rain and windy nights and here we are, dark, wet and, at times, quite miserable weather. However, that hasn't stopped us cracking on at Bryn Ifan

At the start of August we had Barbara form Carnog Working Horses over to Bryn Ifan with her two horses helping to roll the bracken. Using horses is an environmentally friendly way of controlling the bracken and the bruising can also be timed to avoid bird nesting season. The roller crushes the bracken, bruising it and weakening it for next year. It also flattens it, giving us the land back again.  The horses were working on the slopes of Bwlch Mawr in the area we hope to restore to woodland. The bracken is a thick blanket across the hillside; we hope the trees will reduce the bracken and give a richer diverse hillside, Molly and Bluebell made a great start on making the area more accessible and weakening the bracken to give the planting the best chance. Walking the hillside late autumn was very interesting seeing the difference between the rolled and unrolled areas, the lush green grass pushing through and the thick mess of years of untouched bracken.

As the bracken was dying back it gave us the opportunity to better assess the land and we’ve been working hard on our planting plans for the site. As the saying goes ‘right tree in the right place’,  and it’s a difficult site to plan with varying habitats, thick slopes of bracken, gnarly scree slopes with the odd giant boulder, manganese mines, archaeology, lovely long sloping wet flushes and borders of clawdd banks and big dry-stone walls.

And not forgetting why we chose this site - it certainly fits the bill for a temperate rainforest on damp foggy days! However, when you do get a sunny day, not to be bias, but from the tops of Bwlch Mawr looking north over Y Foryd and the mouth of the Menai, up past Llanddwyn and seeing as far as Ynys Lawd! To the east the fantastic mountain ranges, south across the sandy beaches of Harlech and Morfa Dyffryn then west looking down the Llyn, it has to be one of the best views around! 

September saw us getting into marsh fritillary web counting time, last year was a true washout with not one single successful day to monitor the webs - we had a bit more luck this year. Albeit a bit damp,  a group was arranged between us,  Butterfly Conservation and Natural Resources Wales (NRW) in the hope of starting a long-term programme of surveying marsh fritillary populations in the area. This was the feeler session to see what interest we would get, and it started well.  We spent the morning in the village hall in Clynnog, learning a bit more about the butterfly and the plans we hope to achieve in the future. I must admit, before this job I hadn’t heard of a marsh fritillary and it’s been quite exciting learning about the life of this beautiful butterfly. I feel quite a privilege to have them on a site I manage. The plan of the afternoon was to head up to Cors Y Wlad, see the habitat they like and learn about the management required and to see if we could find some larval webs. I’d seen my first marsh fritillary this summer on the site but only read up and seen photos of the webs. I feel that I have a keen eye. Between previous jobs and my time volunteering for the RNLI, I’ve spent many a night at sea and always thought I have the eyes of a hawk and thought that finding these webs was going to be a doddle! A sharp learning curve, noticing that I was severely mistaken once out at Cors Y Wlad! Luckily, we had the expert eye and knowledge of Claire Williams, Conservation Manager for Butterfly Conservation leading the day! When I was feeling a little disappointed that we weren’t going to see any that day, she soon raised our spirits by pointing one out. Not what I expected after looking at so many different photos! It was quite amazing seeing one close up, the mess of old and new webs working its way across their foodplant, devils-bit scabious, and you could just make out the little caterpillars inside. We saw three webs that day, and Claire came back on a brighter day to do the transects for the site and had a total of three webs.

We’ve been doing a lot of work on Cors y Wlad this year, with the help of grant money from the peatland project. The first ‘official’ Bryn Ifan work party started on the access to the site, mapping out the lost public rights of way, cutting the route through, and opening up thick clumps of willow and gorse to create access and help with future work across the site. A fencing contractor is due soon to put in new gates and tidy up some of the fence lines. We also got a team in from Enfys Ecology to do the mammoth job of cutting a strip 4m wide down the side of the wetland between Cors y Wlad and the big sitka spruce plantation, so we have a buffer that we can manage more easily with volunteers to stop the encroachment of trees onto the wetter area.

Also, by happy coincidence, the line they were cutting ran along the edge of the stream that is the beginning of the Afon Dwyfach, allowing light back and giving more life to the brook. Through the grant we’ve managed to purchase hardwood sleepers, fencing material, way marker posts, photo-monitoring posts, spill kits, chainsaw, brush cutter, winch and many other things that will be fantastic for the management of the site next year and the coming years.

Reptile surveys have continued across the site, mostly concentrating on Bryn Ifan Isaf while we got the program underway, with the hope of extending across the site into next year. Our volunteer, Mike Potter, has been fantastic at getting this underway,  and it's been very interesting to see numerous common lizards, frogs, toads and grass snakes - no slow worms or adders yet, I’m quite positive we will get (at least) adders when we get more refuge mats out next year. Mike and his team have been on form getting all the co-ordinates recorded and the findings onto Cofnod and we're looking forward to discovering what else the site has to offer.

October saw a great fungi season, again an area that I’m not very experienced at but getting very excited with our finds, the various shapes, colours and even smells! We’ve had groups out on fungi courses to see what can be found as well as Debbie Evans out on-site recording, you might have seen some of our posts on social media with our finds, if not then worth a look back!

Once the nights started drawing in, Jack Slattery has been heading out with a lamp to see what visitors we have feeding on the land; several woodcock and golden plovers are regular sights. In December he even spotted a short-eared owl! I find it very interesting meeting the different people from various fields of experience who get in touch wanting to know more about what the site has to offer, hearing the finds later is great!

On Bryn Ifan Isaf we have been tidying up and getting the infrastructure sorted ready for our future plans to manage the farm in a way that works for nature. A new water pipe got laid, volunteers stripped old fences and replaced with new, gates got repaired. Earlier in the year, edges got planted, we got the soil tested and we’re in talks with The Apricot Centre, a farm consultancy, to create and run small sustainable and diverse farms with the hope they can help us shape our plans and show the different methods that could benefit on the farm. We’ve also been continuing in the Bioscan project, as one of four other UK Wildlife Trusts involved in the project studying the genetic diversity of flying insects across the UK over a 5-year period. The resulting data tells us about insect species diversity and provides a foundational resource for DNA-based biomonitoring in the UK. Partners participate in BIOSCAN for many different reasons including to inform conservation decisions and understand the impact of local land management changes.  That’s where we slot in, with the hope of seeing the difference and improvements in number and diversity as we progress with management of the land. The first samples just got posted yesterday, hopefully in about six weeks we will have our first report on the progress so far.

In these last week’s running up to Christmas we’ve managed to secure a grant from Gwynedd’s Local Nature Partnership to fund a quad bike and a seed harvester. The plan for these items is to create wild flower meadows on Bryn Ifan Isaf. Wildflower meadows are great for biodiversity: a single healthy meadow can be home to over 100 species of wildflowers, which in turn supports other meadow wildlife. For example, the common bird’s-foot trefoil is a food plant for 160 species of insects, which in turn support mammals and birds.

Established wildflower meadows have complex root systems, which makes the soil very stable. This helps to mitigate flooding by holding on to rain water, and stops nutrients from washing away. But speaking with my farmer cap on, there are also benefits to the farm income in wild flower meadows; in an industry that is under pressure, there is a need to look outside the box and into a mix of lost practices - we hope to be able to show a few in the coming years. The hope with the quad and seed harvester will be to harvest the seeds off the meadow at the tail end of the season and later put the livestock back in to graze, ready for the following year. Then with the harvested seeds, we will be in a position to be able to sell local native wildflower seeds as a means of income for the farm as well as distributing the seeds on neighbouring sites and for local projects. Watch this space.

For now I hope I’ve given you a bit of an insight into the last few months at Bryn Ifan. To find out more or to get involved please get in touch with me at Dafydd.thomas@northwaleswildlifetrust.org.uk.

I'd like to thank you all for the support over the year and wish you all a ‘Nadolig Llawen’ Merry Christmas and best wishes for the new year and look forwards to catching up with you again in 2025.