By Sophie, 28th Apr 2025
April has been a month of two halves for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the weather has changed from being very dry and warm to being dark, cold and rainy. But, we can’t say we are completely unhappy with the change in weather; due to the rainfall, our parched soil has had a very good watering, providing the plants and trees with a well-deserved drink!
Due to the extremely dry beginning of April we have had deliberate grassfires on bordering land, but luckily our park has remained unscathed. The biodiversity of the area will have undoubtedly been affected by these grassfires, especially with the extent of the fire at Jumbo Hill. We will be seeing the aftereffects of this species loss at Bryngarw Country Park, as our birds, mammals and insects will have used the surrounding areas for food, water, shelter, and breeding grounds. If you see a grassfire or suspicious activity, please don’t hesitate to report it to the emergency services. Grassfires can start and spread quickly and are extremely dangerous.
Despite this, we have had some positive spring activity. We have noticed birds gathering nesting material, with bits of moss, twigs and animal fur in their beaks to build their nests. If you sit in the outdoor seating area of the café, you may see some of this behaviour! We have also seen the first mallard ducklings of the year on the ponds in the Japanese Garden.
In the second half of April we had the Easter Holidays, which has brought families and visitors to try out our all new Easter Egg Trail!
Have you seen any Bluebell Rust (March’s Species of the Month) at Bryngarw Country Park? You can still submit your records to us at Your.Bryngarw@awen-wales.com or directly to SEWBReC.
Bug Hotel Workshop
Looking back on the last weekend in March, we invited families to try our new Bug Hotel Workshop, where children built their very own Bug Hotel, hand screwing the panels together and learning how to entice all sorts of creepy crawlies into their gardens. We went on a wildlife walk into the woods to collect pinecones, leaflitter, sticks and bark to fill their boxes. Some of the participants even found some woodlice in their materials, welcoming in their first tenant into their Bug Hotel!
Our next Bug Hotel Workshop will be in September, keep up to date with all our Ranger events HERE.
Easter Holidays
For Easter 2025, we launched a new Easter Egg Trail, where families could come and try to find 9 giant Easter eggs around Bryngarw Country Park. Once the activity sheet has been completed, the participants returned to the visitor centre for a prize! We have had more participants than ever for this Easter event, welcoming a record number of families into the park, with some venturing into areas they have not visited before.
Wildlife Wednesdays
Wildlife Wednesdays are a Ranger-led activity happening every Wednesday of school holidays. Check the What’s On page for future activities!
Unfortunately, our first Wildlife Wednesday ‘Mighty Moths’ morning had to be cancelled due to it being a wash out. Moths are less likely to fly in wet and windy weather, resulting in an empty moth trap on Wednesday morning. We will be rescheduling the session for May half term.
Our second Wildlife Wednesday of the month was spent Nature Journaling! Nature Journaling is a very creative way to make sense of nature and wildlife. We identified several species by making notes on what we found and drawing what we see. By paying attention to the species’ smell, feel and sound we successfully figured out what we were studying, and learned a lot in the process!
Volunteering Groups
We would not be able to manage our wonderful park without the help of our amazing volunteering groups.
Our Saturday Volunteering Group meet on the first Saturday of the month to complete conservation tasks. In April, the volunteers cleared some rhododendron and bamboo from the Japanese Garden. These invasive species were introduced to the Japanese Garden along with other non-native species in the early 1900s, as was the fashion with stately homes of the time.
While bamboo itself is not officially listed as an invasive species under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, certain types, can still spread rapidly and may require containment measures. As you have may have noticed, we have done a lot of work to eradicate the bamboo at Bryngarw Country Park.
It is non-native and crowds out native plants through vegetative reproduction, rapid growth, and leaves forming a thick suppressing litter layer. There are more than 1,400 species of bamboo, distributed across temperate to tropical regions. They are fast-growing perennials, with heights ranging from 15cm in the smaller species to 40m in larger species.
Controlling the species requires a combination of mechanical and chemical methods, we tasked contractors to remove the bamboo in areas of the Japanese garden and behind the main lake of Bryngarw Country Park in May of last year. Our ongoing management of Bamboo is to cut back the remaining stalks by hand – as brush-cutters struggle to get through them – and to rake and remove the cuttings.
Tuesday Volunteering Group
Another busy month for our weekly volunteering group, thank you to everyone who contributed!
Rhododendron Control
The first Tuesday of the month was spent managing Rhododendron Ponticum in the Japanese Garden.
We manage invasive Rhododendron by cutting it back and where possible, digging out the roots, as Rhododendron has characteristically twisted branches which can re-root if laying on the ground. So cutting back and removing these shrubs are very time consuming! We will be cutting back the new shoots which pop up, hopefully suppressing the plant and killing it.
Rhododendron are pretty but very invasive plants which are a threat to our temperate rainforests. Like most invasive plant species, they were introduced to the UK as an ornamental plant in gardens and they have since spread into woodlands and the wider countryside.
Rhododendron spreads quickly and outcompetes native woodland plants for space and sunlight, its extensive root system and leaf litter is also toxic to many other plants. If left uncontrolled, rhododendron would eventually dominate the habitat.
Raking and Removing Bamboo Stalks
As mentioned above, our ongoing management of the bamboo is to cut, rake and remove the remaining stalks from the affected areas.
This session was cut short by a surprise visit from the cows! It seems they broke out of the field to visit the Japanese Garden for its lovely pond water (which – by cow logic – is better than their water troughs). We walked the herd back to their field without incident but are unsure how they escaped, so if you see the cows on the run, please let us know. The Ranger’s office phone number is 01656 725155.
We would also like to thank B-Leaf staff and trainees who will be cutting any uncut stalks and new growth in the bamboo control areas.
Skunk Cabbage Control
During a very wet Tuesday morning, we waded through the mud to cut back another invasive species in the Japanese Garden. Skunk Cabbage is a water-loving plant imported from America and was introduced to the UK as an ornamental plant in 1901.
It can grow up to 1.5m in height, with a basal rosette of impressive leathery green leaves that grow up to about 70cm long. If you don’t see it, you’ll definitely smell it! American skunk-cabbage emits a strong odour, like that of a skunk, from bright yellow flowers that emerge before the leaves in spring and that are reminiscent of lords-and-ladies.
We cut back the foliage and flower spike (the spadex) of the plant to reduce the spread of this species before it sets seed.
During our snipping, we found some interesting characters despite the horrible weather. We found a common toad which was camouflaged in the mud of the pond, and a Large Red Damselfly which was sheltering in the foliage. The Large Red Damselfly was the first odonata (dragonfly and damselflies) sighting of 2025!
Path Maintenance in the Sensory Garden
The final week in April was spent creating and maintaining the edging of the path through the Sensory Garden. Creating this style of dead hedge edging provides shelter and food for invertebrates and fungi, which in turn provides a source of food for birds and mammals.
Spring Surveys – Butterfly Transect
We started our UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS) in the first week of April, walking a transect through several habitats in the park and counting and recording how many butterflies are seen.
The UKBMS is one of the longest running insect monitoring schemes in the world. The scheme began in 1976 and now records data on over 3,000 sites per year. The resulting UKBMS dataset is one of the most important resources for understanding changes in insect populations. Not only are butterflies biologically suitable as indicator species, having rapid lifecycles and, in many cases, high sensitivity to environmental conditions, but the recording and monitoring volunteer networks and datasets enable accurate assessment of their trends.
On our first few butterfly walks, we have recorded Brimstone, Peacock, Orange tip, Speckled Wood and Red admiral butterflies.
Here at Bryngarw Country Park, we are embarking on several survey methodologies to monitor a number of species. Would you like to help? Get in touch to enquire about our Citizen Science Volunteer role!
We are looking for individuals with a passion for nature and recording wildlife. You will be instrumental in recording species at Bryngarw Country Park and the development of a biological record database. Contact Your.Bryngarw@awen-wales.com for more information.
What to look out for in May
We have a recording challenge for you! We want to know more about the species we have at Bryngarw Country Park. Once we know what species we have, we can manage the park in a way that better benefits those species and monitor them in future.
In April, we would like you to record your sightings on your walks and submit them to recording apps or to the Ranger team (your.bryngarw@awen-wales.com).
Species of the Month – Batman Hoverfly / Pryf Hofran Batman (Myathropa florea)
This common hoverfly can be recognised by the dark markings behind its head, which often resemble the Batman logo.
The Batman hoverfly is commonly found in wooded areas across the UK and will visit gardens. They feed on the pollen and nectar of a range of flowers, from blackthorn in spring to umbellifers in summer and ivy in autumn. Look out for them basking on leaves or hovering in sunbeams.
Their aquatic larvae develop in water-filled holes and crevices in trees, but adults can lay eggs in just about any container with some standing water. They’ve even been known to use compost and wet cow dung. The aquatic larvae have incredibly long ‘tails’ and are sometimes known as rat-tailed maggots, along with the larvae of other species of hoverfly. The tail is actually a breathing tube that acts a bit like a snorkel.
A fairly large yellow and black hoverfly. The abdomen ranges from dull to bright lemon yellow, with black markings. The most distinctive feature is a dark mark on the thorax (the section behind the head) that resembles the Batman logo, though some are more bat-shaped than others.
If you spot a Batman Hoverfly during April (or at any other time of year), please submit your record! Ideally via SEWBReCORD or the LERC Wales App. Instructions on how to submit records are available here.