14th: Parc Slip – South and West Wales

Variety. I think that’s the word that best sums up the experience of visiting Parc Slip, that and swallows, but more on those later. Firstly, it was a beautiful day, which always makes things easier, but the place was beautiful. It felt like the habitats had been there for centuries, which is pretty remarkable, considering it was only made into a reserve in 1999 and was a working mine until the 1980s. There was such a variety of habitats, it was incredible. One minute you were looking over a lake, the next a group of scrapes, then you were walking through mature conifers and after that mixed woodland and brush.

There was an equivalent abundance of wildlife, as you’d expect, I guess. There were loads more, I’m sure but we saw, highland cattle (although they’re reasonably difficult to miss), coot, heron, moorhen, wonderful orchids (and lots of other flowers and plants, but I thought the orchids deserved a special mention!), damselfly, rabbit, jay and the icing on the cake swallow.

Now, I’ve been wanting to get a really good close encounter with swallows for years and we walked into one of the many hides at Parc Slip, pointing out the highland cattle to my wife, very loudly, when she (very politely) told me to be very quiet and gesticulated to a fence right in front of the hide, and there, no more than 6 feet away was a swallow.

Unbelievable.

We were stunned and thrilled in equal measure. There were a nesting pair who clearly were wanting to get into the hide. We moved to one end of the hide, and in they came, continuing work on their nest. We stayed for as long as we thought sensible, before leaving them alone to get on with it. We couldn’t believe our luck.

When we continued around the reserve (that was the first hide we’d been in) it became clear that swallows use pretty much all the hides to nest in and this was, in fact, probably a very common sight in Parc Slip. However, working that out made no difference to the thrill we had on this very special day. As for the art (I’d almost forgotten about that, in all the excitement!) I think there has to be a swallow picture, although the black and white element will be a challenge, but where there’s a will, there’s a way!