Two days ago and it was a lovely sunny day again. There’s a feeling of spring just around the corner. I noticed patches of Arum Maculatum or Lords and Ladies also know as Cuckoopint coming through here and there. They produce white lily type flowers which turn to bright orange berries. Poisonous but beautiful.

I’d made a new bird-box out of an old flower pot and commandeered another old but usable wooden box and wanted to put them up. Small birds will be busy sussing out possible nesting places now so my first job was to find suitable spots for them. I placed one on the edge of the sycamore plantation next to the sunny open glade. The other down in the area near where I have been re-coppicing hazel. There were lots of the tit family of birds around so hopefully they will use them.

Birdbox by the glade

Bird box placed near the hazel coppice

It was another day of hard graft. I had ten new hazel saplings to plant and stake up which took me to lunch time. In the afternoon I settled into some more tree felling. The holly I thinned last time needed more work and clearing away to reveal a huge hazel next to it. There were about 6 large branches. Two of them proved quite tricky as they were very tall and got hung up in other trees. They had to be cut in several places to release them and make them safe. It’s quite unpredictable how they are going to fall when you cut. Even though they appear to lean one way, the weight of branches pulling another way often causes them to twist and behave unpredictably. At first it seems a straightforward job and easy to tackle but experience is teaching me to think differently and treat each cut with respect and forethought. There is a lot of weight in these branches and getting it wrong could prove quite dangerous. I ran out of time before I was able to clear those away so that’ll be a job for next visit.

The branches are dressed by cutting off the twiggy tops and side shoots, leaving more or less straight poles and rods of varying diameters. They can be used for all sorts of projects. The bigger stuff will provide good logs for burning. The thin twiggy stuff is called brash. In the past, foresters often made huge fires to dispose of it. I’m not in favour of that as it damages the ground underneath. You need deadwood for fungi and insects to feed off so leaving piles of brash here and there is good. It also provides safe havens for small mammals and birds. Eventually it will rot down and feed nutrients back into the earth. The trouble is, I will have huge amounts before long. I have two very large piles already which look a bit unsightly. So I have ideas of making some dead or brash hedges. Basically you hammer a double row of posts into the ground spaced about two or three feet apart. You fill the space between these post with brash, compacting it down. You build it up layer by layer and it creates a dead hedge. As it rots and settles you keep topping it up. It makes a great habitat for insects, small animals and birds whilst using up your felling waste in a more orderly manner. I have a few ideas as to where I will build them but that is a job for later in the year. Here’s a good example of one.

A good example of a dead or brash hedge

I think yesterday’s visit was one of the most enjoyable yet. The sun shone all day and the temperature warmed enough to take my coat off. Some people might think that a woodland in winter is not very interesting and that it’s a time to take it easy until spring comes along. Far from it. There are a number of reasons that makes winter a great season to be in there. The trees are bare and you can really see the structure of the woodland. Walking around it is far easier and it gives you a chance to really study the trees, take stock of what you have, what might be diseased or poorly shaped and therefor candidates for some thinning out. The cooler temperature makes working more comfortable and no biting insects to pester you. It’s definitely a time to do some solid forestry work. And how satisfying that is too.

So yesterday I continued working on the south east corner where I cut the huge over-stood hazel a few weeks ago. I cut three more smaller ones back, a couple of youngish sycamore and one of the two large straggly holly trees that are shading out that corner. The area looks quite devoid of trees now. At first glance, it might appear that I have overdone it and created a bare piece of land but that’s not the case. The four hazel trees will hopefully recover by sending up lots of new shoots from the base. They need the extra light around them that the thinning out had created in order to photosynthesise and flourish. In a few years it will look entirely different again.

The newly coppiced area at the south east corner of the woodland

So what else is going on right now? Well the bluebell leaves have pushed through quite nicely. They are everywhere and spring is going to be very interesting this year. The hazel trees are covered in long catkins already. Some of the grasses are starting to grow again and there are various green patches of plants that I can’t identify yet. There’s a nice patch of young ash saplings which look about 2 years old. They weren’t so obvious in the summer but now you can see them clearly. They are in an area where there aren’t many trees, so they will be a welcome addition. I will try to transplant a few into other areas to fill some spaces. Due to the spread of ash dieback disease, it is not permitted to plant new trees or move them around the country. As there is no disease yet in my area and I am only moving them a few metres from one position to another in the same small woodland (my woodland) I see no harm done.

The tips of the bluebells showing through the woodland litter

A group of ash saplings naturally regenerated