The dune slack at the end of the shell path is one of several to be found across Ynyslas. These moist flat hollows are a great breeding ground for orchids, helleborines and other plants.

A major attraction is the purple marsh orchid which flowers during June and July. These have been abundant in Ynyslas since the 1960s.

Look out too for the special Welsh subspecies of the western marsh orchid which has leaves with heavy, dark brown blotches.

The northern marsh orchid has been here since 1918. Ynyslas is one of the few places where it grows beside the southern marsh orchid. The nearby dune slopes are favoured by the bee orchid and the pyramidal orchid.

The marsh helliborine - a plant which was unknown until 1965 - also flowers here in July. Around the end of August, look out for the small flowering spikes of autumn lady's-tresses - especially in the zone where dune slope and slack meet.

The water-table is never far from the surface and dune slacks can be flooded to a depth of up to a metre from October through to May. Mosses and thalloid liverworts are well adapted to this as are rushes, sedges and primitive horsetails.

Ynyslas is home to hundreds of rabbits. They keep the grass short and they're also responsible for creating the little raised mounds of earth which are dotted around the dunes. Rather than soil their burrows, rabbits designate nearby areas as latrines.

When the rabbits have moved on, these mounds of old dung are a particularly fertile growing ground for plantlife. Up to 40 different species can flower in just one square metre.

Go ahead along the boardwalk noticing how restharrow, whose pink flowers can be seen from June to September, binds the sand together to carpet the dunes. Fixing nitrogen like clover, it blends in with the aromatic wild thyme.

Birds living in the dunes include linnet, stonechat, skylarks and meadow pipit. Elder thickets, bramble bushes and large marram grass tussocks provide cover for linnets to nest in. Grasses are preferred as cover by stonechat, meadow pipit and skylark. Abandoned rabbit burrows may be exploited as nesting sites by Wheatear and Shelduck. It is the rabbits which also attract the Red Kites, especially in winter.