Hello, my name is Sabine Nouvet and I am the new monitoring officer and field ecologist at Hafod y Llan and Gelli Iago.
My job is to help the farm director, Arwyn, and warden, Dave, to manage the special habitats, like the heaths, oak woods, and blanket bogs in a sensitive way. I am the one who sets up ecological surveys and monitoring projects here: from counting birds in the uplands and woods, to measuring the amount of heather the sheep or feral goats eat. In my first year (2007), I focused on creating a baseline of information for the future.
© NTPL / Joe Cornish
This meant that I spent a lot of my summer walking in the hills mapping and recording habitats, assessing what condition they are in, and what plants and animals live there at the moment. Hopefully we can work as a team in the years to come to develop this farm as a place where healthy mountain livestock live and are used to produce healthy and vibrant landscapes: natural woodlands creeping up the mountains, flowering bogs in the deep valleys, and curlews and red grouse nesting on the hills.
Simply put, I am the one who tracks these changes with numbers, photos, and maps, so that I can tell Arwyn and his team whether or not our work is having the effect we wanted.
Cattle Grazing in Coed Rhiwallt - Friday 1 August 2008
We've been experimenting with grazing cattle in the woodlands at Hafod y Llan, with the long term goal of encouraging their expansion up the hills. After Arwyn and the shepherds placed about 30 Welsh Blacks in Coed Rhiwallt for a couple of weeks, I conducted a survey of what and where they had grazed. Some of the criterium I recorded were grass height (to see how much they had grazed), the extent of bracken trampling, levels of poaching, and damage to flowering herbs and saplings. I also created a map to illustrate where they had grazed and how much.
Results confirm our previous beliefs that the cattle will graze anywhere accessible. Where they did not graze, areas were either too steep or densely covered with tall bracken. Maybe because of this extensive habit, the cattle rarely grazed the grass short (<10cm tall), and frequently grazed it so lightly (>30cm tall) that the flowering herbs were left to bloom. To top it off, the cattle looked good at the end as well!
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Looking for butterflies and moths at Gelli lago - Tuesday 22 July
Andrew Graham, our local recorder for Butterfly Conservation, spent a day with us at Gelli Iago last week. We were looking for a protected butterfly species, the small Pearl Bordered fritillary, which feeds on marsh violets in wet grassy areas. Although considered rare in the UK, the SPBF seems to love our farm, as we counted about 50 on the day! With Andrew's guidance, we then set up a series of butterfly transects to count these pretty creatures on an annual basis. The hope is that by replacing sheep grazing with cattle grazing on parts of the farm, we will see a gradual increase in violets, and therefore in SPBFs.
In addition to checking out the rare butterflies, Andrew helped us start a species list of butterflies and moths on the farm. We caught or identified almost a dozen species on the day, and hope to add to the list during a moth trapping event one evening later in August. If you are interested in learning about the moths and would like to join us, check this blog for a date and time later this month.
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Bat count this Friday - Wednesday 28 May
There is a lesser horseshoe bat roost situated at Hafod y Llan and as this is a highly protected species, we need to monitor the population. Since I arrived as the ecologist on the farm, I have been doing this on behalf of CCW, which means counting the bats as they exit their home at dusk, twice in the summer. This year's first count will be this friday, and the second will be in early June.
Having volunteers on the night of the count is a great help for me, not to mention a good excuse for you to come see our farm at an unusual time! We have bat detectors to use, which allow us to hear the bats and identify many of the different species. It is an interesting and fun experience and I can assure you that you will enjoy the evening.
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