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00:04The rivers of Wales are among its greatest natural treasures, shaping breathtaking landscapes for
00:12centuries. In this series I'm going to be traveling along four of Wales's longest river valleys.
00:22The Ask, the Towie, the Tivey and the Dee. Heading from tidal shores to mountain streams.
00:35I'll get to see the fascinating wildlife living there.
00:42All four are rich in stories and surrounded by epic scenery. So join me through the seasons
00:50as I uncover the wonders of four great river valleys.
01:05The River Ask is one of the longest rivers to flow solely within Wales. I'm heading up its
01:1177 miles coast through the heart of the Banner Brychyniog National Park and ending in the
01:17west on the Black Mountain.
01:21I'm starting near the industrial docklands of Newport.
01:25And over my right shoulder is Newport's most famous landmark, the Transporter Bridge. One
01:32of only two transporter bridges still working in the whole of the UK. And although it's home
01:39to 160,000 people, there's still plenty of wildlife to be found along the riverside in the heart
01:47of the city.
01:53At low tide, the River Ask reveals its mudflats, attracting different birds to feed on invertebrates
02:00hiding under the surface. While patches of land above the river quietly support their own
02:06hidden wildlife.
02:09I've come down now, not far from the bridge, you can hear the traffic in the background. And the
02:14River Ask is about 20 metres over there and there's a housing estate just over here. And
02:19this is what most people would think of just as an abandoned bit of wasteland. But do you know what,
02:24it's not. Just look at the flowers here, common centauri, there's teasel, there's buddleia plants
02:30everywhere as well. And it's a real pollinator's paradise. There's a red admiral, beautiful red,
02:39black and white. And then when it shuts its wings, it just disappears. It's so well camouflaged.
02:45If you come on with me a little bit, just over here is a butterfly I always associate with woodland,
02:53woodland glaze, woodland rice. Here we are, here it is, speckled wood. It's landed again, this one.
02:58And this one's been dancing around, defending its territory, right in the middle of Newport.
03:05And bees, there are bees, several species of bees here as well. And I wonder how many people walk
03:11along here and really don't appreciate what's all around them.
03:26Every so often you come across a strange looking insect and Graeme the cameraman has spotted one.
03:32quite a while. I can see it, I can see it right on top there. Tell you what, I'll try
03:36and get around
03:37it. Here we go. Wait there, don't go too close. I'll see if I can get around it. It's such
03:42a cool insect.
03:44It's called a javelin wasp. Get down here now. And it's called a javelin wasp because of that
03:52ridiculously long ovipositor. It looks like a sting, but it's not a sting. It uses that to lay its eggs
04:00and
04:00it targets solitary bees and solitary wasps. So it needs to get that right into the burrows
04:06to lay the eggs. That is superb.
04:11Amazing looking insect. Look at that. Superb. Superb. And the Latin name, right? And I didn't make this
04:19up right. Genuinely, the Latin name is Gast Eruption Jaculator. Seriously.
04:36The lower section of the river Usk is one of the few areas in the UK where sea fish called
04:42shad come to
04:43spawn and the stretch through Usk town is a hotspot. During spring, hundreds migrate and gather in calmer
04:53fresh water where they'll eventually lay their eggs on the gravel riverbed at night.
05:00As we move upstream towards Abergevenny, the river's current pushes that gravel to the sides,
05:06forming shingle banks. And those quiet patches make perfect nesting spots for a few hardy riverbirds.
05:16There are quite a few birds that will nest on the shingle and right on the edge of the shingle.
05:23So if I stop and scan, just look for any movement because the birds that nest on the floor, they'll
05:28come off the eggs to go and feed every now and again. And the eggs are so well camouflaged,
05:32they're not worried. And it's a brilliant day to do this because it's nice and warm. The eggs won't
05:37get chilled. They won't get cold. And it's worth listening as well because some of the birds will feed and
05:42display and call. It's a little ring plover. It's a little ring plover nest. Wow. Okay. Now I've got
05:57to be careful now with this. It's quite a scarce bird. I have got a license, by the way. I've
06:03got a
06:03license to find, to monitor, to film the nest. You've got to have one. Just watch where you put your
06:10feet.
06:13Be really careful. See that there?
06:18Look at how well camouflaged those are. What the bird does, it remembers where some of these key
06:23stones are so it can make its way back to those eggs, to incubate those eggs. Four eggs is a
06:29full
06:30clutch. Just hope we don't get any high water now for the next few weeks until these eggs hatch.
06:35But that is absolutely brilliant. Right, let's back off.
06:41We stuck Graham the cameraman hidden under a nearby tree to film the bird coming back to the nest.
06:47And I'll watch from further back.
06:53I've only just had time to settle down here, well away from the nest. And when the bird's come back
06:58straight away, straight away. She landed on the shingle and is making its way back up to the nest now.
07:07Oh, it's lovely walking through. Oh, there's another bird. The partner's already incubating the eggs.
07:15Where did that bird come from? I didn't see the other bird coming in at all.
07:18It shows you just how tolerant they are. There'll be fishermen making their way up and down and the
07:23birds are used to coming off the nest, going back on the nest all the time.
07:30They'll be feeding on insects and it's a good river for insects. And there's not a single Welsh river, I
07:36think,
07:37that's in great condition these days. But the ask, comparatively speaking, is one of the better ones.
07:46The river ask is also known for having a good brown trout population, partly down to the abundant
07:52insect life that it supports. Warm spring weather is a good time to see newly hatched food sources
07:59for all sorts of wildlife. What's interesting is that you get all kinds of flies. You get your
08:05your mayflies, you get your stoneflies, your caddyflies, your alderflies, all these different flies.
08:12But they'll emerge, not just at different times of the year, all the way through from late winter,
08:18right through spring, summer, autumn, again into early winter, but different times of the day as well.
08:28Here we go. Here's one of them. Lovely little insect, member of the mayfly family. It's called the medium
08:35olive. See the yellowy body and the yellowy wings and the big, big black eyes. Right, I better let that
08:43one go. We'll see if we can get some more now. Oh, look at this. This is a big one.
08:51Look at that.
08:52Large brook dun, this one's called. And it's a sizable mayfly, this one. Imagine being a brown trout,
08:59jumping up to catch one of these. That is a fair old meal in itself. And these like the fast
09:05flowing areas of river, just like this one behind me, and they'll emerge from the shore, from the
09:10bank here. And the reason they all hatch at once is because it's much safer for you as a fly
09:18if you
09:18are emerging one in 10,000, one in a million. If you emerge just one or two of you, you're
09:24all going
09:25to get eaten. But if you're in a mass of other mayflies, then the chances are you'll live long
09:30enough to mate and to lay eggs again.
09:46The Usk Valley is scattered with remnants of its industrial past, many of which have since been
09:52transformed into peaceful areas for recreation. And the canal at Llanvois is one of the prettiest.
10:13I've left the valley bottom to come and have a look at another significant waterway that actually
10:19follows the River Usk for much of its course. It's the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal that was built
10:26during the Industrial Revolution to transport coal and iron. They would be brought to the canal by
10:33railways and tramways and taken to the docks down at Newport. It closed in 1962, but a section 35 miles
10:42of
10:43it has now reopened. And in the summer, it can be very busy here with tourists. Not so busy now,
10:52of course, but I think it's at its very best in the autumn, at its beautiful best.
10:59But I'm not here for the canal actually. I'm going looking for a special spider.
11:12Once a route for workers and trams, this dark and damp tunnel is ideal habitat for a large spider,
11:19perfectly adapted for these conditions.
11:27Oh, here we are, girl. Here we are. Right. I'll hold the light. I don't want to put it too
11:32close.
11:33It's about six inches above my finger. It's a European cave spider. And they live in caves,
11:43as the name suggests, and dark tunnels like this. And of course, usually it's dark here 24-7. And you
11:51might wonder, how do they survive here? Well, there is a slight wind. This is the old walkway that was
11:57right underneath the canal. You can hear the water dripping behind me here. And there is a slight
12:02breeze blowing through. So you will get the odd insect coming through and being blown into the web.
12:09But the main food source is that around here, you've got midges. These are the midges that will bite you
12:15in
12:15the summer. Where it's the females that bite. And they'll overwinter in caves and in tunnels like this.
12:22And that provides the spider with this main food source. I'll tell you what's really cool about them
12:28as well, is that the adults, they don't like light. That's why I don't want to put light too close,
12:33because it'll shy away. It'll go up into one of the cracks up in there. But the egg sac, let
12:40me show you
12:40an egg sac. Egg sac is up here, hanging down like a small ball of cotton wool. That's where the
12:48eggs are.
12:49And you might have maybe a couple of hundred eggs in there when they hatch out the spiderlings.
12:54Well, after they've molted for the first time, the spiderlings are then attracted to light.
13:01So they'll walk to the entrance of the tunnel. They'll provide some silk, a long line of silk,
13:08and that'll act like a parachute to carry them away in the hope that at least one or two of
13:13them
13:13will land by another cave. And that's how they spread from one place to another. And of course,
13:19once they land, they then go into the cave, they're then attracted to the dark rather than the light,
13:26just like the adults are. It's cool. Nature thinks of absolutely everything. Fantastic spiders,
13:31I really like them. Overlooking the valley south of Crick Howell stands a dramatic wall of rock
13:41that defines the landscape. This was once a huge limestone quarry during the industrial revolution
13:49and used to make fertilizer, whitewash, and as a vital part of the iron making process.
13:57These days, the rock faces are mostly visited by organized groups here to climb them,
14:02but I'm here to explore the slopes underneath. I couldn't walk up the Esk Valley without bringing
14:09you here. This is Crigachilliae. Now it's limestone, so it was quarried for hundreds of years, but
14:17today it's a national nature reserve and that's mainly because it's got some pretty rare plants here.
14:23Whilst most of the rare flowers cling to the crag's inaccessible ledges, there is a scarce arctic
14:30alpine plant that grows beneath the cliffs. It's amazing, you know, it's so heavily grazed here, but
14:38one flower that's surviving summer, and I don't know how, is mossy saxifrate. It's quite a rare one,
14:46scattered all around this rocky area here. Lovely little white flowers in the carpets areas of the floor.
14:56And also, there's a bird chak-chak in up here.
15:04Let's tuck in here for a minute. It's a wheat year. There's a bird you'd expect in an area like
15:10this. They like it well grazed, but rocky, the Welsh name is excellent.
15:16Tinwenagarn, the white bum of the rock. It's got this bright white bottom, but it nests in scurry like this.
15:23Here we are. Here we are. Let's have a look.
15:27Oh, that's nice. It's the male. I need some grubs in his beak.
15:34Go on, boy. Go on, go on.
15:37Yeah, there'll be a nest here somewhere for you. He's quite nervous. He knows I'm here, but here we go.
15:47Yeah. He's just disappeared into the rocks there. See if he comes back with an empty beak.
15:54Yeah, yeah. There we are. Back chak-chucking at me, telling me off again. Now, the nest is obviously tucked
16:00out the way in that area of scurry there. It'll be really nice and safe somewhere. They'll have tunnels
16:06in their little nest right against the floor, so it'll be nice and cool. The chicks will be protected.
16:13Here comes the female. The female's coming in now. Yeah, she's got a beak full again.
16:18Oh, nice to see, but it's a bird you'd expect. They're like these over-grazed areas because they
16:23can find beetles and grubs on the surface, but I'm going to back off and let them be.
16:31One bird I wasn't expecting to see here is the redstat, a migrant from Africa that's usually
16:37found along woodland edges and glades. Since it's carrying insects, there'll be a nest nearby.
16:44So, to avoid disturbing this busy parent, we turn our cameraman Graham into a bush by covering him
16:51in camo netting. There's a male redstat. There he goes, look, just flying along.
16:59Bear in mind they're using nests in holes in trees, in holes in walls. I've seen them in holes in
17:04houses,
17:04but the nest is in the ground. There's a small shrub and the male and the female occasionally keeps
17:11disappearing with food into that hole there. He does the same thing every time. He goes to the tree
17:19at the back, then flies to the tree at the front, the small tree, looks around, makes sure everything's
17:25okay and then he drops into the hole, stays for maybe 10, 20 seconds, comes out and then off he
17:31goes
17:32again. Really confiding bird and I think it's the first time I've ever seen a redstat nesting in the ground.
17:49The middle section of the Usk Valley is an important area for one of our rarest mammals,
17:55the lesser horseshoe bat. After they emerge from their winter hibernation sites in spring,
18:02they spread out to nearby areas looking for good feeding sites and gather at different maternity
18:08roosts to raise their young. One of them on the outskirts of Brecon is an old manor stable block
18:15dating back to the 1600s. Carys Piotto from the Vincent Wildlife Trust monitors this site
18:23and I'm tagging along this evening. So this was part of the stable block of the old manor and it's
18:31just excellent for horseshoe bats. Oh wow and where do the bats come out? Is it this archway here?
18:37Yeah so they've got two main exit points. Their favourite is this one here in this arch and then
18:42there's another one around the back near vegetation. The bats emerge just after sunset so we get our
18:49gadgets out including infrared light, camera and thermal scope. We're all set up now, all we're
18:56going to do is wait for it to get a little bit darker, wait for the bats to come out
18:59and then we'll
19:00go over to infrared. So here's some footage that we've recorded and this is inside the building.
19:10And you see why they get the name Lesser Horseshoes because of this the nose area and it looks like
19:15a mini horseshoe kind of thing. Absolutely yeah and they echolocate through their nose.
19:19Oh do they? Yeah. So they emit the noise and then it comes back in their ears obviously.
19:23Absolutely yeah and those satellite ears are constantly moving to pick up all of those
19:28echoes and pick up all the detail. They're quite stunning, some people say they're ugly but
19:31I think they're beautiful in their own way. I do, yeah I do. Have these got youngsters?
19:36Yeah absolutely you can just see. Oh look at that. They're actually upside down here so that you'll
19:41see in the back of the baby there that's the tail and just the end of their wings.
19:47There are what 30, 40 maybe a few more bats in there in that scene now. How many have you
19:53got in the roost here?
19:54Probably around about 500 adults. Majority will be females, that's not including pups.
20:00500 is a big roost isn't it? Really good yeah. This whole area is a bit of a stronghold for
20:05Lesser Horseshoes.
20:06It's just lovely landscape if you look at a satellite image you've got great quality woodland,
20:11lovely connected hedgerows, lovely sheltered valleys, everything that a Lesser Horseshoe needs to be happy.
20:16I don't want to panic you, I'll take that. There's quite a bit of activity going on now so
20:21what exactly is happening? Let's get the bat detector on.
20:25This behaviour you can see of them coming out and coming back in again is called light sampling.
20:30Right. A couple of different theories why they do this. They're obviously nocturnal so perhaps it's
20:34to reset their circadian rhythm so when the days are getting shorter it helps them adjust to those
20:40alterations as well as seeing what the conditions are like when they pop out of their roost for the
20:44first time because they're quite shy bats. They are our highest accolocated bat in the
20:51UK so about 108 to 114 frequency. Human hearing is at best about 20 kilohertz.
20:57Wow. There's a lot of activity now and then they're actually coming out a bit more now as well over
21:06our heads.
21:07Yeah getting a bit braver now as it's getting a bit darker as well.
21:10It's actually very hypnotic watching them here you know but this is brilliant.
21:19So these are probably mostly mums bats that have given birth recently and their pups are either
21:24old enough to just hang them up inside and leave them when they go out and hunt for
21:27some of their favourite foods which would be sort of crane flies, moths and midges that sort of thing.
21:33It's amazing isn't it? I mean I would look up there now I can't see a thing, can't see anything
21:38up there
21:38but it's only by looking at this that I can see how many there are, how they're whizzing around.
21:44They're just phenomenal mammals. Yeah absolutely and with the detector off as well it'd be completely
21:49silent and it's just a whole world that you wouldn't know is there.
22:01Reckon and the surrounding area is a magnet for visitors heading to explore Bannai Brychyniog National Park.
22:10But I prefer the quieter spots that are off the beaten tracks.
22:24It's an amazing spot this is called Panta Skathog not far from Senny Bridge and it's privately owned
22:31but I've got landowner's permission to be here. It's one of those places where you can just stand
22:37and just soak in the view. Lovely place, really nice. It's one of the many little hidden gems all along
22:46the usk.
22:49I'm talking of little gems I'm gonna make a bit of a detour go to a privately owned woodland nearby
22:55in search of one of Wales's rarest and smallest birds.
23:18Just come up to some conifer woodlands above the floor of the usk valley now. We're looking for quite
23:25a scarce bird, quite a scarce breeder. It's called a firecrest. It's kind of a close cousin of the gold
23:31crest but it's got white and black stripes across the eye and just a bright orange cap here.
23:40I suspect there are more around than people know but it's not an easy one to pin down and certainly
23:46not an easy bird to film so we're gonna have to just sit and watch and wait and hope we
23:52see something
23:52flitting around amongst the top branches of these trees here.
24:19I don't sleep still for very long, don't I? No, no, no. I did warn you.
24:35Oh, we've hit gold dust. We really have hit gold dust here. We've hit the edge of a territory between
24:42two firecrests. There are two males here. One on the left, one on the right and they're so vocal.
24:49They're calling. It's really hard to hear. It's high pitch but they're calling constantly. And the one on the left,
24:55he's quite nervous I think, but the one on the right here, he's got a flame orangey,
25:02flame-coloured feathers on top of his head and he's flaring that out as a threat to this other male
25:08over here
25:08going boom, boom, boom like that. Beautiful birds, beautiful. Best views I've ever had of a firecrest.
25:15Honestly, it's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And he's still singing away. He's up. Have you got him,
25:23Gray? Have you got him? You've still got him, right? He's still there. He's still there.
25:35Just amazing. Usually you get just a skulking little bird hard to see, hard to get the binocs on.
25:41But this one, yeah, he's up, yeah, he's up. He's still there. This one is just brilliant.
25:47And it's as if he's holding a torch on top of his head. It's an amazing bird. It really is.
25:59We've got a fox. Gray. Fox. We've got a fox. To cap it off. Just let a fox walk right
26:11out and down the middle of the path.
26:13In the middle of the day. What a place. It's not brilliant. It's not brilliant.
26:28The Ysk Reservoir is fairly remote. About 280 acres of water surrounded by the Glasfarnedd forest.
26:39It's the main supply for Swansea and Cardiff and is fed by the rain that falls on the northern slopes
26:45of the Black Mountain Range.
26:47This is where my journey ends.
26:54It's well worth checking out any wet flushes you come across
26:58because there's a greater diversity of flowers and more insects.
27:02These are mating six spot burnet moths.
27:06And everyone thinks moths are boring and brown and fly at night.
27:10But look at these, these are day flying and they're beautiful.
27:14Just black, bright black with red spots on them.
27:18Now they're mating so I don't really want to disturb them.
27:21I'll just let them get on with it.
27:39This is the perfect place to end my journey up the Yask Valley
27:43in the shadow of some of the high peaks here.
27:46You've got Van Brecheyniog on the left and then you've got Van Voil
27:51and then the start of that long ridge there that's Picos D.
27:56And the Yask I always think is one of our most varied rivers from a point of view of wildlife.
28:01You start in the industrial estuary around Newport there.
28:05Then you meander up the lowlands past Abergevenny and Crick Howell.
28:10And it's been an eye opener for me to see ground nesting red starts.
28:15Then you carry on towards Brecon, a vitally important area for lesser horseshoe bats.
28:20There are hundreds of them there.
28:21And then you reach Banner Brecheyniog, the Brecon Beacons itself.
28:25And I'm going to carry on following the river because this is one of the least visited parts of the
28:31Brecon Beacons.
28:32One of its major attractions for me.
28:37Next time I'm heading up the Tawi Valley where I look for fallow deer during the rutting season,
28:45find different birds living on an ancient site,
28:48I'll get to see juvenile salmon in a tributary,
28:51and I explore a stunning oak woodland.
29:07And I'll see you next time.
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