The Man Who Has Kept a Nature Diary for 60 years | A Visit to Cruglas Farm
Video from Schoffell Country
The Man Who Has Kept a Nature Diary for 60 years | A Visit to Cruglas Farm
"Terry Mills has kept a country diary every day since 1960. For three decades of that, he has recorded the wildlife returning to Cruglas Farm, his 510-acre hill farm in Ceredigion, west Wales.
When Terry and his wife Jo bought Cruglas in 1995, it was, in his words, "a typical Welsh prairie": no hedgerows, one pond and very little wildlife. Today the farm has recorded 146 bird species, 82 of them breeding, along with 27 butterfly species, 16 dragonflies and 31 mammals. In 2025, Terry won the Nature-Friendly Farm/Estate category in the Schöffel Countryside Awards, run in partnership with the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT).
In this film, Terry shows us around Cruglas Farm on the edge of the Cors Caron nature reserve and the River Teifi. He explains how a working sheep and suckler-cattle farm can make room for nature – and, importantly, how monitoring and keeping a diary with accurate records of what he has seen on the farm over the years has helped him identify improvements that are having a real impact, and areas for improvement.
🌿 What's changed at Cruglas Farm since 1995?
– 17 km of mixed-species hedgerows, some following boundaries traced on 1781 tithe maps
– Ponds increased from one to 12, including a four-acre lake and a sand martin nesting island
– 165,000 trees and shrubs planted; woodland now covers around 14% of the farm
– More than 300 nest boxes. One barn owl box has fledged 102 owlets in 20 years
– Little grebes up from one pair to seven, barn owls from one pair to four, and pied flycatchers now breeding
– Sightings of great white egret, bittern, hawfinch, garganey and all three UK swan species – to name just a few species...
– And much more...
Terry follows the GWCT's "three-legged stool" approach to wildlife recovery: habitat, supplementary feeding and legal predator control. He has also helped bring seven neighbouring farms into a GWCT-run scheme.
"When I step outside I can hear all the wildlife… I feel really alive." from the video introduction
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