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Iolo's River V.a.l.l.eys - Season 2 Episode 4 - Dee
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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 Tawi, the Taivi and the Dee. Heading from tidal shores to mountain streams.
00:37I'll get to see the fascinating wildlife living there. All four are rich in stories and surrounded
00:45by epic scenery. So join me through the seasons as I uncover the wonders of four great river
00:54valleys.
01:05The Dee is North Wales' longest river and its wide estuary marks the boundary with England.
01:13I'm starting my journey on the Welsh side at Flint and it will take me 70 miles up to
01:19its source on a ddeall mountain in the Erruri National Park.
01:28I can't walk the River Dee without stopping off here at Flint. Flint Castle behind me was the
01:35first of the big castles built during the reign of Edward I in an attempt to subdue the Welsh
01:41and who's finished in 1284. But I'm not here to enjoy the castle. I'm actually here to have a look
01:48at the birds.
01:49This part of Flint is a brilliant place for all kinds of wading birds and wildfowl as well.
01:55It's unusual in a way because I'm surrounded by houses. You've got Flint behind me, you've got factories,
02:01you've got a power station in the distance over there as well. And yet, because of the estuary,
02:06it's a real paradise for birds. Every winter, they've got over 120,000 waders and wildfowl here.
02:15There's a good mix. It's been a high tide this morning, really high tide, pushed the birds in.
02:19It's receding now, so the mud is becoming exposed, and this mud is rich in all kinds of invertebrates.
02:27There's shell duck, flocks of black-tailed godwits and curlew. There's lapwing coming into land as well,
02:36all starting to join in this feast. Now, it's been a real dull, wet start to the day, but it
02:43is due to get much, much brighter.
02:48The crew and I head to the English side of the estuary to see a few other species that are
02:54showing well.
02:57The rivers shifted a lot over hundreds of years, and over a hundred years ago, it was just here.
03:04This is an old quayside you can see here, so boats would have moored up. Now, it's shifted and it's
03:11two miles
03:11over onto the Welsh side over there. What it means is that you've got a vast area of salt marsh
03:18here.
03:18It's a brilliant place for all kinds of small birds, small mammals, wading birds and birds of prey.
03:25It's one of the best places I know to come and see birds of prey. We've got a marsh area.
03:30It's a great place
03:31for marsh areas. It's a young male, this one. Got a dark bird. It's got the white panels in the
03:38wings,
03:38you know, so. See the way they hunt, they always hunt into the wind. The wind is coming from
03:42from the north, so they're hunting from left to right here.
03:50Shorted owl, just above the horizon. Yeah, you got him?
03:54Well done, nice one. We've got two shorted owls. One's quite aggressive, chasing the other one away.
04:03Yeah, she's gone right into the sun almost, hasn't she now?
04:07These owls, they don't breed here. They breed in Wales, but they tend to breed up on the moorlands
04:14and mainly up in Scotland, north of England. But they spend the winter months here just because
04:20there's so much prey, small birds and small mammals here for them. These will have come from maybe
04:27Scotland or the north of England or even Scandinavia. They come across to avoid the harsh winters over
04:33there. Incredibly buoyant flight. And when they, when they come towards you, you see these big,
04:39beautiful lemon eyes that they've got. Amazing birds.
04:46A number of people I've had say, oh, you know, it's not that good, is it? You know, it's just
04:51a load of old
04:51grassland here, mud on the other side, but it's so rich. It's so important for all kinds of wildlife,
04:59especially birds. And it goes fast to say that it's one of the most important sites, not just in Wales,
05:07Wales and England, but in the whole of the UK. It's a fantastic place.
05:19The dee flows through a huge lowland floodplain that lies to the east of Wrexham and it's prized for
05:25its farmland. Hidden in this landscape is a rare habitat that really comes into its own in summer,
05:32and I've been granted special permission to see it. This is old Pulford Brook's Nature Reserve.
05:40And it's like stepping back in time a couple of hundred years. It's an old flood meadow.
05:46There are three fields here and it feels like this would have covered much of the lower dee going way
05:54back
05:54because the river would have broken its banks every winter. It would have flooded all the fields around here,
06:01would have deposited what they call alluvial soil, rich soils carried down in the water.
06:07That would have made the soil here quite valuable. Brilliant for wildlife, of course,
06:12but also valuable for the farmers too. What's happened since, of course, agriculture has modernised,
06:19they've ploughed, they've fertilised, they've reseeded nearly all of these fields. And we've lost about 95% of them now.
06:27And these three fields represent probably the best examples of floodplain meadows in the whole of Wales.
06:36Traditional ditch systems on these fields regulate water levels, providing ideal conditions for these
06:43tufted vetch to thrive. Their purple flowers are crucial stops for pollinators like bees and butterflies,
06:50between other key plants. Just look at the density and the variety of plants here. Meadowsweet are just about the
07:02most common.
07:02These creamy white ones, they're absolutely everywhere. But the real jewel in the crown of this place is this.
07:09This is great burnet. Not a common plant now. Lovely to see. And where you get a variety of flowers
07:16like we got here,
07:18all kinds of invertebrates. There was a lot of here. Hoverflies. And we overlook hoverflies,
07:24but they're really important pollinators. They're up there with the bees, really. So a lot of different types of those.
07:30There's aphids as well. These meadowsweet are covered in aphids. And because of that, it's really good for ladybirds.
07:37There's a lot of them around here today. Don't see many places like this left in the whole of Wales
07:43these days.
07:50Next, I'm heading west, following the river as it flows through the lower end of the Vale of Llangollen.
07:56This section is dominated by Pont Cysyllte Aqueduct, the first great masterpiece of civil engineer Thomas Telford.
08:05Built to carry the Llangollen Canal, it became a vital transport link during the Industrial Revolution,
08:12moving coal, iron and slate from Wales into the English Midlands.
08:17Its name comes from the Welsh Cysyllte, meaning to connect. And more than 220 years later,
08:24this World Heritage Site is still doing exactly that, and still very much in use today.
08:32It's 106 feet high. That makes it the highest navigable aqueduct in the whole world.
08:40And it's 1,007 feet long. It is massive. And if you're into your longboats or your kayaks,
08:47it's one of those things you've got to take off. And on a day like today, I tell you, it's
08:52very, very busy.
08:56There's one hell of a drop on that far side. I wouldn't want to kayak across here.
09:01All right, lads. Where are you off to? We are off to Cherk. Oh, to Cherk. Well done. Keep going.
09:08Keep going. Nice one.
09:14Hello. Hiya. It's a nice dog.
09:28Llangollen sits in one of the most beautiful stretches of the Dee Valley, surrounded by dramatic hills.
09:35And overlooking the town is Castelldynas Bran, which translates to the Castle of Crows.
09:42But in the 1500s, the chronicler John Leyland recorded a far more formidable resident, the Golden Eagle.
09:51This site was one of the last known breeding grounds for the species in Wales.
09:57These days, one of the most striking birds in the valley is best seen along the river,
10:02the Mandarin duck, originally from the Far East.
10:08They're non-native. They're introduced. They've been breeding in the wild in the UK for about 200-odd years now.
10:14But they're really smart. They're ridiculous-looking ducks, to be honest with you.
10:18The colours on them, they've got these orange sails in the middle of their backs, the males.
10:23And they're originally from China and Japan, but they're not doing well.
10:28The numbers are declining over there. But in the UK, they're actually doing really well.
10:32But the best place to see them, by a long way, is here, right in the middle of Llangollen.
10:36They're used to people, so you can get close-up views of them. Usually, they're quite shy.
10:42Yeah, they're introduced. They're not impinging on any of our native wildlife.
10:46And I quite like seeing them as well.
10:57The vast swathes of heather moorland above the valley is home to one of our most threatened upland birds,
11:04the black grouse. The best time to witness their amazing courtship display is early spring,
11:11right at the crack of dawn. So the crew and I make our way up onto the moor,
11:18joining Anja Vichkovsky from the RSPB, who's carrying out a survey.
11:25We need to stay well hidden, so we stick up the camo netting and then wait.
11:41Oh, I can see them now, Anja.
11:46You can see the white tails, can you? When they're fun, I love that.
11:50Yeah, and there's quite a few more jumping up from the heather when they're doing their display.
11:59So this moor above the Dee Valley has got to be one of the best moors in the whole of
12:05Wales now,
12:06is it? Oh, 100 percent, yeah. We're probably on this little area here. We have about 45 males.
12:14We had our peak in 2015 when we had a really good number, but unfortunately since then they've just
12:22been continually declining. We used to have them across south in mid Wales and now you can probably
12:28fit the whole of the black grouse range on 1OS map, so it's quite scary stuff really. They're just
12:34really being pushed into a few suitable areas. What's happened then, Anja? Do we know? It's probably a
12:42combination of things, of the climate change, the lack of food. It's really that loss of suitable
12:48habitat because they like a nice mosaic height, so you need lots of short heather for them to
12:52lick and move around in, but you also need the longer older heather for them to nest in. The
12:59other thing they need is sort of the blanket bob because the cotton grass is really important for
13:02the females to get them to condition for breeding. So because they need such a range of habitats,
13:08obviously that does make them more susceptible to habitat loss. They really are like a species on the edge.
13:20There's a couple on the right to the leg having a right humding, you know, isn't there?
13:24Yeah. Just on the right core of each other. I love all the sort of dancing they do, you know,
13:30back and
13:30fall and back and fall and back and fall. Definitely. I think it kind of reminds me of flamenco dancing.
13:36Sort of very, lots of tension in there and, you know, there's beautiful blurry shaped feathers on
13:42the tail and it's amazing. They are beautiful birds. Yeah. And when you see them close up and
13:47the light hits and you'll call them black grouse, but they're not really. No. They're sort of purpley,
13:54bluey, kind of green sheeny, sort of all these colors and the red wattle above the eye. Oh yeah,
14:00so striking. I reckon you've got the best job in the RSBB. I do honestly. Yeah, it's pretty special.
14:16My bottom is almost stone. I've got a wall. Oh. Oh, that's better.
14:23Oh, the sun's come up a little bit more now and there's quite a lot of light. You can see
14:32the
14:33nice iridescent feathers of the grouse now. Yeah. And I tell you what, the white's standing
14:39out even more, isn't it, with the sunlight hitting it. Yeah.
14:50Looks like the last one's just flown. Do you know what? I've had a brilliant morning.
14:55It took me back to, you know, my old RSBB days just sitting there watching them. Yeah.
15:00I hope we still have that black grouse tradition of going off having a cup of tea and breakfast.
15:06Yeah, definitely. I think that's the next stop. I tell you what, it's been a brilliant morning.
15:09I'll buy. I'll buy. Thank you very much.
15:12That's all right. Pleasure. No, it's been a great morning. Come on, we'll head off. Nice one on you.
15:16Yeah. As we enter the upper reaches of the Dee Valley near Bala, the river feeds into Wales' largest
15:28natural lake, Llyntegid. You rarely see Llyntegid, this flat calm. There's no wind at all. It's lovely,
15:39lovely morning. And from here, you can see the length. It's almost four miles long, half a mile wide. It's
15:45quite deep as well. It's over 40 metres deep. And in the distance on the left, you can see Aram
15:52Fawdwy
15:52and Aram Benllyn, two big peaks there. Then in the far distance, Cader Idris. Beautiful, lovely the sea.
16:04The nearby Avon Treweryn flows into the river Dee and is a crucial stronghold for an ancient species
16:11that's disappeared from most Welsh rivers, the freshwater pearl mussel. They're so scarce you
16:18need a special licence to look for them. So I'm meeting Gethin Morris from Natural Resources
16:25Wales, who's taking me to see these remarkable creatures for myself.
16:31We'll just walk up slowly along the margins. That's where they usually are. If you just follow me.
16:37Yeah. They should be quite easy to spot in this light today.
16:43You've got some in there, Geth? Yeah. If you just come in, I've served it there. It's clear to come
16:47in this way.
16:47Yeah, absolutely clear. Yeah. So there's an individual here. Oh, I can see it. Yeah, I can see it.
16:53I've got to be honest, Gethin, I would have put my foot on that. I'll tell you what. I'll put
16:58this in very carefully downstream
17:02and try and get some footage of it. I'd say that individual is probably about between 60 and 80 years
17:08old.
17:09Is it that old? Yeah, it's that old. They live to well over 100. You know, if you're lodged in
17:15the river for that
17:15number of years, you're going to be bashed about a bit. So they do look a bit eroded and ragged
17:21at times.
17:21It looks like a stone, doesn't it? Totally. They like these dark stones.
17:25That's an indicator that the river bed is really stable. Right. So when you get a big flood,
17:31this bed here is not scoured. So they're pretty safe in this kind of habitat. So it's kind of leaning
17:38into the flow. Yeah. And just filtering. Is it filtering particles out of the water? It is, yeah.
17:44You can see that the top edge of the mussel is open by a few millimeters. So it'll be taking
17:49water in
17:50through the siphon there and then feeding on, you know, tiny organic particles. Why are these so scarce?
17:59Erm, it's, it's many factors really. Erm, basically down to man. We've, we've dredged rivers.
18:07We've altered rivers. Erm, the numbers of fish are decreasing. Pollution.
18:12Their life cycle involves fish, doesn't it? It does. Basically, they release the larva.
18:19It's like a small packman in a way. They release millions at a time. And they've got to find a
18:24host.
18:25And that host is either a, a juvenile salmon, sea trout or brown trout. And they attach onto the gills.
18:31And they'll feed on the gills until the following early summer, when they drop off. And they'll bury themselves as
18:38juveniles into this gravel. Erm, and then the cycle starts again.
18:42So what are you doing to try and help them? Is there much we can do? Or are we watching
18:47a species grow to become extinct in the end?
18:50Er, they're in trouble. No doubt about it. They're in trouble. Erm, but what we're doing under the Life Deer
18:56River project, erm, is we've removed some individuals to a captive rearing unit.
19:02So hopefully within a few years, we're going to have a few hundred muscles to reintroduce in another section of
19:08the decatchment.
19:09We're improving the habitat. We're removing, erm, structures in river structures. We're also introducing gravel below the reservoirs, which will
19:18feed down to this area.
19:19That improves the habitat. We're working with landowners, with industry, erm, you know, to improve water quality.
19:27We're doing what we can and hopefully, you know, within time, erm, we'll see the benefits.
19:33And it'd be nice to think that, you know, we'd come back one day and, er, see them back as
19:38they used to be. Hundreds of them all up the river here.
19:40Oh, it'd be fantastic to see. Yeah, it'd be lovely. It would be fantastic.
19:43But what an amazing creature. Amazing creature.
19:52As the seasons shift, the Dee Valley can offer different spectacles. And every so often, weather conditions align.
20:00When cold air becomes trapped in the valley bottom, it forms a cloud inversion that blankets the landscape in fog.
20:07As summer gives way to autumn, damp woodlands along Llynteggit come alive with fungi.
20:16And to see something special, I'm heading out at night.
20:23Here we go. This is the one I've been looking for.
20:28This one here. This is called a sulfur tuft. Or the old name. I much prefer the old name. It's
20:36called Clustered Wood Lover.
20:39If you see, it grows in a real tight cluster here, always on dead wood.
20:45And it's an exceptional year for them this year. They're doing really, really well.
20:49Now, you might be wondering why you've come out after dark to look for fungi.
20:55Well, let me go and get Graham and Zach, the camera team, with a special lens and a UV light.
21:00And I'll show you.
21:14How does that look through the lens, Graeme?
21:17That's a really interesting way to see fungi, that's for sure.
21:21It's lighting up anyway, isn't it? Amazing stuff.
21:24Zach and I have got ultraviolet torches. Graham has got his probe lens on.
21:30And you'll see that the sulfur tuft are lighting up.
21:35And this is called biofluorescence, and there'll be fungi all over this wood that will light up in this way.
21:43The chemicals in these fungi soak up UV rays and release them as visible light, giving them that amazing natural
21:51glow.
21:52Cool, isn't it? Really cool.
22:00Every autumn, sea trout, also known as Siwin, make their way up to the upper tributaries of the Dee Valley.
22:08It's an amazing journey just to get to these streams.
22:12Then they still need to overcome numerous rapids before reaching their spawning grounds.
22:20Stand the best chance of spotting sea trout, I've waited until dark.
22:27I've had a tip-off from one of the local fishermen that this is a really good area for sea
22:32trout spawning.
22:33It's just getting dark now, so they'll get a torch out, and this is the best time to watch them
22:39without disturbing them.
22:42To keep our disturbance to a minimum, we're using a pole camera.
22:48About half a metre from the bank under the vegetation.
22:51You see it?
22:52Yeah, got it.
22:54Can you lean that against the bottom?
22:56Yeah.
22:56Perfect.
22:57Hasn't moved, look.
22:59We've got a sea trout.
23:00It's really close to the banks.
23:02Not doing very much.
23:04It's probably waiting for a mate once they've found the perfect place where the gravel is the right size,
23:11where the flow of water is good, providing oxygen, and they'd use their body to cut a depression,
23:19a small depression in there, and if we had two here, one would be the female,
23:24she would lay her eggs in that small dip, and then he would sperm on them,
23:30and then they would use their bodies to cover it back up again with gravel.
23:35Now, that's what they call the red.
23:37That's the sort of nest, if you like.
23:40Also at this spawning site are brown trout, which have more defined red spots on them and live in the
23:47river all year round.
23:49What's fascinating is that they're genetically the same as sea trout, and both species can interbreed.
23:56After spawning, some fish will die, but most will head back to the sea.
24:02I'm going to leave them. I'm going to put my light out now.
24:04I'm going to come back tomorrow morning and see if there's any activity then.
24:14I've had a bit of snow overnight. It's really gone quite cold, but if anything, this might spur the sea
24:21trout on to spawn.
24:22There's a couple of, well, quite large looking fish actually, over on the far side over there.
24:28So what I'm going to do, I'm going to back off. I really don't want to disturb them.
24:31And these are, these are scarce fish now.
24:34If we leave it maybe an hour or two, let them get going, then put up a drone so we
24:38don't disturb them and see what we get.
24:44Later that day, we finally started to see some action. Using the drone, we get a much clearer view of
24:51the fish below.
24:53The female turns onto her side and uses her tail to dig a shallow hollow in the riverbed, the nest
25:00where she'll lay her eggs.
25:04Beside her, the dominant male, a little browner and more heavily spotted, stays close to her and keeps watch.
25:14Chasing off any rivals that stray too close. Together, their efforts give the next generation a fighting chance.
25:24A small, but welcome bit of hope for a species that badly needs it.
25:40My penultimate stop lies south of Llyntegid, along a disused railway line that once connected Baland Dolgellai.
25:50It opened in 1868 and closed almost a hundred years later in 1965.
25:57And I like this section because I've got the River Dee down below me here.
26:02And then on the right, there's an area of frith, bracken and gorse and scattered hawthorns.
26:10And this year the hawthorns are heavy with berries. You can see them red everywhere.
26:15And they've attracted wintering thrushes. There are one or two field fairs, not so many this year.
26:22And red wings, quite a few red wings as well. Those two birds will have come over from Scandinavia to
26:28spend the winter with us here.
26:29But the most numerous birds are blackbirds. Now these won't be the birds that have nested in our gardens this
26:37year.
26:37These will also be birds coming over from the continent to spend the winter here.
26:42And I can see them gorging themselves on the berries. Nice to see.
26:48And I see so much food here for the birds.
26:58High above the valley, the River Dee trickles off the mountain through Penaran forestry.
27:05This whole upland area was once open moorland, but it's changed quite a bit since I was last up here
27:12nearly 40 years ago.
27:14The one thing that stood the test of time is located right next to the river near the base of
27:21the mountain.
27:26Look at this old sheep fall down below me here. Look at that.
27:29It's been built to last and it's solid. Some big, big stones in there.
27:33And I wouldn't mind betting that that dates back probably a couple of hundred years.
27:37You can imagine way back then all the shepherds coming together to sort out the sheep, to shear them by
27:43hand as well.
27:44This has seen some activity in the past, but now I am the only one here for miles.
27:50And this is the River Dee. It meanders on for about half a kilometre.
27:55And the source is at the foothill of the Yall in the distance there.
28:00And I've enjoyed my journey along the Dee Valley.
28:04It's an interesting river from its mouth, the estuary there with its tens of thousands of waders and wildfall,
28:11making it one of the most important estuaries for birds in the whole of the UK.
28:17And black grouse displaying male black grouse. Beautiful, beautiful birds.
28:23Freshwater pearl mussels too. These ancient shellfish still hanging on in some of the Dee's tributaries.
28:32We've had biofluorescent fungi, migratory fish holding on on the Dee, declining everywhere else.
28:40And I'm pleased that I'm ending my journey here somewhere where I haven't been for over 30 years.
28:47Our friends.
28:49We'll learn now.
28:49Thank you very much.
28:52To be continued...
28:52After a series...
28:52Chauntingbes.
28:52Heall....
28:52games.니다braih.
29:04Allys... Ja.
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