Country diary: an alien presence is bad news for the locals

Talsarnau, Gwynedd: It was quiet and indigo evening. Then the American mink turned up to upset the gullsOn a cooling evening I walked down to the Dwyryd estuary. The track ran through fields that were won from the sea two centuries ago, in the early stages of the great reclamation schemes around this country, which culminated in the Cob embankment between Aber Iâ and Porthmadog. This is good farming land now. The first hay crop is already gathered in, the air heavy with its scent, which mingles with honeyed fragrance of meadowsweet growing in profusion along western banks of ruler-straight drainage channels choked with rushes and duckweed.It was very quiet. A lesser horseshoe bat zig-zagged close by in the dimity light. Swifts flew high above, their screaming a barely audible scratchiness. A bright half-moon had emerged from behind the Rhinogydd range to describe a slow arc of ascent southerly. Hill detail was already lost in indigo shadow. Above Moel Ddu's cleft summit the first stars glimmered hazily. To the north, the elegant pyramid of Yr Wyddfa - Snowdon, if you must (but never "Mount Snowdon") - lent symmetry to this finest of Welsh panoramas. Continue reading...