February in Cynwyd

It was great to have lovely weather and
a nice turnout for this not-very-promising
meeting - it felt as though spring was
really on its way!

The reservoir

We drove up to the reservoir above Cynwyd by the very narrow and exposed lane, high above the waterfalls on the river Trystion. We parked and had a lovely walk on forest tracks through three different tetrads. That always makes it difficult to remember to write everything down as we go from one to another [and sometimes back again to the first, as we did this time!]

Cynwyd Forest

The area is noted for a small population of red Squirrels and possibly Pine Marten, but we saw no signs of any mammals.  Crossbills were singing but botanically it still felt very wintry. We spent some time looking at the conifers planted in the area, including Noble Fir, Abies  procera, Giant Fir, Abies grandis, and a single small tree of Crypotomeria japonica, Japanese Red-Cedar We made 120 records altogether, [in SJ04, 3 were new hectad records]. The best native plant we found was Carex flacca in a small and potentially interesting flush beside the road - the leaves caught our eye first and then someone [who?] found a withered flowering spike from last year.