Tuesday morning, we started bright and early at Henbant Permaculture farm for a dawn chorus walk. A group of 17 arrived by 6:00 to start on a walk through the diverse habitats on the regenerative farm to see and listen to the buzz of activity. Ben Stammers, our Wildlife and People Officer, led us through a wetland area and down into a thick woodland where a nice track had been made by the cattle that periodically graze the area. As we walked, the habitats changed from woodlands of willow to Sitka plantation to open glades, and then to newly planted areas and ancient woodland. These opened up to reveal large ponds that are footprints of the old sand and gravel quarry from many years ago. It was a wonderful walk. Ben stopped us every now and then to listen to the call of a garden warbler or a distant cuckoo and to watch a buzzard flying overhead or the floor crawling with hundreds of newly emerged frogs and toads. Wherever we looked the woodland was alive and thriving.

We made our way back up to the barn at Henbant to a freshly prepared breakfast and an opportunity to chat about the beautiful morning. Once everybody had had their fill we walked up to Bryn Ifan for the main event of the day, the Bryn Ifan Wildlife Count.

Joining our day was Cofnod, the local environmental records center for North Wales, Celtic Rainforests LIFE project, Natur am Byth and many from the North Wales Wildlife Trust team. Just over 60 people where split into four groups – reptile and amphibians, insects, birds and plants. Two groups went down to Henbant for the morning and the other two stayed at Bryn Ifan; in the afternoon they swapped over. Moth traps had been set the night before and sorted first thing in the morning with a few key interesting species being kept back for people to get the opportunity to observe what we rarely get the opportunity to see.

Bryn Ifan is a unique among the land the Trust owns. For one, it still retains the characteristics of a farm; grazed by sheep on the lowland fields and up on the hill of Bwlch Mawr while the wetlands are grazed by cattle. We are working to create a farm for the twenty-first century, one that puts nature first and want to show how nature can benefit farm productivity, protect the land for the future and help the climate crisis. We hear a lot about nature friendly farming and we want to show how it can be done. The  Wildlife Count and the observations of the groups walking through the productive farmland will provide a baseline against which to measure future changes.

I was in the reptiles and amphibian group that headed down to Henbant. The first refuge we lifted - ‘an old corrugated iron sheet’ – revealed a beautiful grass snake; a good start! All around Henbant and Bryn  Ifan Isaf, the groups where busy seeing what they could spot and our experts where at hand to help I.D some of the trickier species.

Iolo Williams had travelled up to join our day, a fantastic opportunity for us to be able to share our exciting new Bryn Ifan project. Everybody enjoyed his company and getting to chat and share their passion for wildlife and where we live. We are still tallying up the day but we’ve found many interesting species that will help us understand how best to manage the site going into the future of the project.