Tag Archives: Cardiff

‘Dedicated Naturalist’: Brown rats

14 Thursday Apr 2016

Posted by in 'Dedicated Naturalist' Project, animals, nature

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

A snippet from my volunteer work on the ‘Dedicated Naturalist’ Project, helping to decipher and digitise, record and publicise the life’s work of naturalist extraordinaire, Dr Mary Gillham. 

Love them or hate them, you have to admire Mary’s poetic description of the brown rats (Rattus norvegicus) she saw during a walk along the banks of the River Taff, between the Queen and Wood Street bridges in Cardiff city centre, on 27 October 1979.

Sleek brown rats obviously well fed can be viewed from a little riverside grandstand where the human scent above the expected level instigates only momentary peering of beady eyes and twitching of whiskers. Rats have acquired their inauspicious aura only by being carriers of human diseases and frequenters of human sewers. Whose fault? Ours or theirs? Viewed dispassionately here their weavings between the straight sturdy canes of Japanese knotweed resembles that of a jaguar in a primeval forest, their more intricate passage through tall cocksfoot like lions in elephant grass. There are pickings in plenty, both local and river-borne.

I have retraced Mary’s path along this river bank many times in 2016 and not seen any rats. Good thing or bad thing?

160414 brown rat

Mary Gillham was also a talented artist – this is one of her drawings

The mighty Taff

22 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by in nature

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Today is World Water Day. I have lived in countries where water is a daily issue for the local people. In the rural villages of Cambodia and Peru, piped water and sewage disposal were just a dream and the threat of disease from contaminated well water and poor hygiene practices was all too real.

taff (2)

I feel privileged then to live in a country where I can take such things for granted and where I seem almost to be surrounded by water. Here in Cardiff, Roath Park Lake is just a 10-minute walk from where I’m currently living, the seaside at Penarth is only 20 minutes by train from my nearest station, and the city itself has grown up around the beautiful River Taff. The river rises in the Brecon Beacons, the mountains north of Cardiff, and winds its way down the valleys through several towns, across weirs and under bridges, into Cardiff Bay and, eventually, into the Bristol Channel.

taff (1)

where the Taff flows in to Cardiff Bay

Having recovered from a century of coal mining pollution, the Taff is now home to impressive quantities of trout and salmon, sightings of otter are on the increase, and a splendid variety of birds can be seen on, in and around the river.

A series of television programmes has recently been made about the Taff. Here’s a link to the first of these, which is currently available on iplayer. 

I’m following a tree: month 2

08 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by in nature, spring, trees

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

160308 dawn redwood (4)

Though I have strolled past Dawn Redwood a couple of times this month, I hadn’t really noticed any change in her, until today – and then it was only when I was reviewing this afternoon’s photos and zoomed in on one or two. Note to self: next time, choose a shorter tree to follow, the better to see what’s happening up top – because it’s at the top of the tree that all the action is happening.

160308 dawn redwood (2)160308 dawn redwood (1)

Not only is Dawn still carrying last season’s cones up there, she also still has more of a flush of this spring’s flowers higher up and, at the very top, the green of this year’s foliage is just beginning to burst out. I find each of these things surprising – the cones and the flowers because the top of the tree must be the most windblown so I’d have expected both to have been blown off more at the top than lower down the tree, and the budding foliage because I thought the tree would green from the bottom as the sap rose upwards with the warmer weather.

This is exactly why following a tree is so very interesting. The more closely you look, the more you see and learn.

160308 dawn redwood (3)

small cones for such a large tree, and very tiny seeds (bottom of photo, left of centre)

Why not join the tree following community. You can find out more here.

I’m following a tree: month 1

12 Friday Feb 2016

Posted by in nature, nature photography, trees

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

dawn feb 2

She is a statuesque beauty, tall for her 67 years, but with a very slight lean to one side – I blame the strong winds blasting inshore from the mighty Atlantic Ocean. Her name is Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides, to be precise) and her kind was thought to be extinct, having only been identified in fossils until some time between 1941 and 1944 when she was rediscovered, growing in the town of Moudao, in Hubei, in south-western China. Long ago, her family and her cousins, the sequoias, could be found right across Europe, in Asia and in the Americas but all were killed off during the last ice age.

dawn feb 1

My Dawn came from the first shipment of international seeds to arrive in Britain in 1949. She grows in Bute Park, in the Welsh capital of Cardiff. She was a champion tree, the tallest of her kind in Britain, in 2005, but she has since been surpassed. Still, she has a regal air and a wonderful pyramidal shape.

dawn feb 4

Flowers blown off during recent stormy weather

Dawn is deciduous, which is unusual for a conifer, but at the moment she is flowering, which has given her a rusty tinge – perhaps she’s blushing! In fact, she is monoecious, which means she has separate male and female flowers on the same tree. The male flowers hang in clusters at the end of her branches, while the female flowers are solitary. Over the next 12 months, I will be visiting Dawn often and will blog about her monthly.

Why not join the tree following community. You can find out more here.

dawn feb 3

Male flowers