Across Wales, we’re blessed with a huge range of parks which we use for walking, playing, running, relaxing and lots more. But did you know there’s a whole world of hidden wildlife in our parks waiting to be discovered?
In the first series of Iolo’s Great Welsh Parks we concentrated on larger, wilder parks - places like Dinefwr Park near Llandeilo and Stackpole in Pembrokeshire. This time, we’ve concentrated on four urban parks, Singleton Park in Swansea, Wepre Park on Deeside, Pontypool Park and Holyhead Country Park. Each park supports a wealth of wildlife and each one is unique. In this new series, I take a good look around them, to show viewers just how much there is to discover.
Singleton Park is set right in the heart of Swansea and despite being completely surrounded by roads and houses, wildlife thrives here. Several bird-loving locals visit the park daily to feed our feathered friends and this means that great tits, blue tits, robins and nuthatches now come to the hand in search of peanuts. There’s at least one family of foxes in Singleton Park, but the main attraction for most visitors is an exotic and rather noisy ring-necked parakeet that has taken up residence alongside the local jackdaws.
Iolo has a surprising find at Wepre Park; a population of stickleback fish in little more than a muddy puddle
Wepre Park near Connah's Quay in north-east Wales is a wonderful mix of ancient woodland, shallow ponds and grass meadows. In spring, the woods are full of birds with treecreepers, tawny owls, buzzards and great-spotted woodpeckers amongst them. The stream that bisects the park is home to sticklebacks and dippers and the meadows, on a sunny summer's day, are awash with common blue, meadow brown and large skipper butterflies. The real stars here though are the rare and protected great-crested newts that gather to breed in the ponds on spring nights, one of the reasons why a section of the park has been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest.
Iolo at Holyhead's Breakwater Park
Unlike all the other locations, Holyhead's Breakwater Park is situated on the coast and is therefore quite unique. The coastal heath is home to the scarce and beautiful silver-studded blue butterfly and a few colourful bee orchids as well as the very elusive adder. So elusive, in fact, that we didn’t actually manage to film a single one! (First prize to any viewer who sends us a picture of this mysterious native!) The pools support a variety of dragonflies and damselflies including one of our largest species, the emperor, and the large quarries provide nesting and perching sites for dozens of jackdaws and a pair of little owls. Offshore, harbour porpoises, dolphins and seals can all be regularly seen and encounters with choughs, the rarest of our crows, are a daily occurrence.
Enjoying a spot of impromptu fishing at Afon Lwyd in Pontypool Park
At Pontypool Park, we filmed several stunning species of moths and large cockchafer beetles that were caught in a light trap by the local moth group and we used a camera trap to film an otter on the Afon Lwyd. It was an unexpected bonus to find ashy mining bees nesting in holes in the ground near the druid's stones at the top of the park. Unlike most of our bees, these harmless bees are on the increase in Wales and as key pollinators of fruit trees, that's good news for everyone who likes apples! We were fortunate at Pontypool to film grass snakes and, the undoubted highlight for me, native freshwater crayfish at one of their few remaining strongholds in Wales.
Our urban parks are fantastic places which bring wildlife closer to people. So tune in to series 2 of Iolo's Great Welsh Parks for more tips on what you might find - then go out and enjoy them for yourselves.
Episode 2 Monday 19 January 7.30pm, BBC One Wales
Episode 3 Sunday Friday 25 January 5.30pm, BBC One Wales
Episode 4 Monday 26 January 7.30pm, BBC One Wales
