Llechwedd Slate Caverns... The Red Chough

The Red Chough at Llechwedd

Red Chough

The Chough is now a rare bird but a pair returns year after year to nest at Llechwedd Slate Caverns, Blaenau Ffestiniog - quite undisturbed by trains and passengers, which rumble every quarter-of-an-hour into what the Victorian miners called Choughs' Cavern long before visitors were first admitted in 1972.

During the summer of 2000 the visitors had the rare experience of seeing the adults regularly feeding one of their chicks that had fallen to the ground, but had not acquired the flying skills with which to return to its nest on the slate cliff.

"This ability to habituate to certain types of disturbance is one of the keys to choughs' successfully nesting in areas such as Llechwedd, and the adjacent slate quarries," says Dr.Sian Whitehead, ornithologist at the Bangor headquarters of the Countryside Council for Wales.

She says that despite past blasting and other quarrying activities choughs have historically nested in parts of the slate quarries of Blaenau Ffestiniog, having learnt that the noise and disturbance was of no direct threat.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has been ringing the Llechwedd nestlings since 1996, with some interesting results. Of the 1996 brood of three nestlings, one was recorded spending its first autumn 17 km away, at Llanberis.

Four nestlings were ringed in 1997, and two spent their first autumn in Cwm Croesor, 6 km away. One of these was subsequently recorded several times during 1998 and 1999, some 15 kin away, near Llanberis.

Of the 1998 brood of four, one spent its first autumn in Cwm Ystradllyn (14 km) but subsequently took up residence 46 km away at Cilan Head, where it was seen several times during 1999 and 2000.

There were no subsequent sightings of those ringed during 1999, but all three of the 2000 brood spent part of their first autumn at Cwm Croesor, two of them later moving on to Barmouth, 32 km away. Four chicks were ringed in 2001.

There are two other nesting sites within the Llechwedd complex. The male of one of these nesting pairs was hatched and ringed at Beddgelert in 1996 and was two years old when it began nesting at Llechwedd (at the Foty & Maenofferen site) with a female ringed in the same nest in 1997. The pair returned in 1999 and 2000.

Choughs mate for life and may live into double figures. They will return to the same nesting site year after year - Llechwedd Slate Caverns' obviously having been colonised by successive pairs over many decades. Continuity is maintained by the survivor's finding a new mate when one of the pair dies.

Oddly, the chough is not an inland bird. Its real habitat is coastal cliffs. Until about 1865 it was a common sight from the Dyfi Estuary to the Little Orme, at Llandudno. By the end of the 19th century most of its habitats were deserted, Meirionnydd being one of its last haunts in North Wales.

There is a large colony of choughs in South Wales, living amidst the noise of Army tanks and artillery on the Castlemartin range and the adjacent Stackpole National Nature Reserve.

The chough has distinctive red-orange legs, and matching long beak with pronounced downward curve.

Its scientific Latin name is pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax. It has several Welsh names. In the North it was once known as bran Cernyw (meaning "Cornish crow") but is now usually called bran big coch (meaning "redbeaked crow"). In the South it is known as bran goescoch (meaning "red-legged crow"). It is also known as bran Arthur (meaning "Arthur's crow").

The chough is a protected species. There are only 310 known nesting sites in Britain.