Yesterday’s main job was to continue cutting back the brambles with the brushcutter. This year they have gone crazy and although I am changing my attitude to them, they do need controlling in some areas – mainly my paths and where I have planted saplings. I realise that there is no way I can eradicate them to any significant degree and that they are a useful habitat for a lot of wildlife. Food for insects, birds and small animals and shelter from predators too.

Walking about afterwards I spotted quite a few small young amphibians, I hope I didn’t mash any up! This one is a common toad and was only about 25 mm long. I’m puzzled as to where they breed. It wasn’t my pond and the nearest one I know of is several hundred metres away. I know they can migrate away but why would they not just disperse into their immediate woodlands?

The woods were incredibly quiet on the bird front. Hardly any to be seen or heard. I guess a lot of the summer visitors like the Blackcaps and Chiffchaffs might have returned to where they came from and also after breeding season, there is no need to advertise their presence with songs and calls.

I was keen to have another session with the metal detector and the recent rain has softened the ground a little making it slightly easier to dig. As well as the usual junk – spend cartridge caps, nails etc I found my first coin. Now don’t get too excited, it was just a 2007 penny but a significant find for a beginner. A little more exciting were two small brass buttons. They are tiny and I wonder what type of garment they might have come off and how old they are. They look to be the same type but were actually found in different parts of the woods. Could they have been shirt buttons on a woodland worker who got snagged on a branch or even the brambles! I’ll do some research and see if I can find an approximate age.

I was really dismayed to hear a story from another woodland neighbour. He is a keen nature lover and often walks the rides looking for wildlife to spot and photograph. He came across a distressed female fox calling out and went to investigate and found a young one had been caught in a box trap, set in another neighbour’s plot. He released it. Technically I suppose he was trespassing but in my opinion it was absolutely the right thing to do. He said he had spoken to the owner later and asked why he was trapping them. He said there were too many in the woods and they were killing the chickens and ducks that some neighbours down the road were keeping. I know they can be very destructive in that way but I believe it is the duty of the owners to make their property and birds secure from predators and not to feel they should annihilate them. I have said it before, the woods are not ours, they belong to the creatures that live in them and they have the right to exist there. It makes my blood boil.

Till next time – a few photos.