A wild and windy day at the woods yesterday. No sign of Bertie when I arrived or throughout the day. I’m hoping he’s just busy somewhere else. I wanted to do some felling but the tall lanky trees were blowing about all over the place making it a dangerous and almost impossible option. I did take a small one down, then gave up on the idea and spent most of the morning clearing brash and logging up the ones I had felled in December which I’d just left where they fell. I decided to cut them into four foot lengths and start stacking them to form a “cord” which is a measurement of four feet long logs stacked four feet high and eight feet wide. Green logs, being full of water, are very heavy and by the end of the morning I was shattered, having had to drag or carry them through the woods to where I stacked them. This is how it looks so far. Not very impressive but to get to this point involves a lot of manual work. I count about thirty logs here. They are bigger than they look. The larger ones had to be dragged one at a time, the smaller ones could be carried in twos but it still accounts for about twenty trips of 40-50 metres each time, often through tangled bramble.

At this point one of my neighbours, Steve arrived which was a welcome break. We had a walk around and a good chat about nature and our woods. At one point he commented that he could hear small bells, like those used on birds of prey and falconry. My old ears couldn’t hear them but shortly after we spotted another neighbour who was flying his Harris Hawk around the woods. I met him later and he told me his bird had caught a rat which bit the bird’s foot, causing massive swelling. As part of it’s recuperation, he wanted to exercise it, giving it the opportunity to land on branches of differing diameters.

A buzzard caught my attention with it’s mewing call. It was flying low over my woods and I was hoping it might land but no. After lunch I did a few small jobs and took some photos. Not much of interest to record. My next door neighbours have just felled four large trees on the corner of their plot which is opposite the hazel corner of mine. Taking advantage of the extra light where the two tracks join is a good idea. It will be interesting to see how this small area responds to the extra light in the next few years. This is how it looks now. They have some hard work to do to clear it up yet.

Steve had invited me to see what he’s been doing at his woods. He only started felling a year ago and had no previous experience so I was well impressed with what he’s achieved. He took me to an area in the middle which had been a very dark place. I was stunned and amazed at the transformation. He has taken down numerous huge trees to create a very large open area which will become an nice sunny glade. All around the edges were large piles of brash teaming with small birds. They seem to love this type of environment. Another area which will be interesting to see how it develops with new growth and wildlife activity. He gave me permission to revisit and include as one of my Woodland Trust fixed position photography sites. I hope to show you how it progresses over the next few years. We spotted a hare running around, then a Sparrowhawk flying fast not far away. I love seeing animal and bird life around us. It brings the woods to life.

It was time to leave. I took a few photos in my hazel coppice and in the foreground, it shows the regrowth of three stools that were cut right back two years ago. Now standing about three metres high. Very satisfying.

Happy New Year to everyone and it’s that time when we become a little retrospective. To be honest, the New Year thing washes over me these days. One year just rolls into another doesn’t it? You don’t need a special date to make plans and resolutions, you can start and re-organise your life any time you like and those annual resolutions will most likely fall by the wayside just as they do every year. But it’s not a bad idea to reflect on the last year and make some plans for the new one. If you have nothing to aim at, then how can you hope to hit the target?

I’ve just had a quick look back at my posts last year and it brought back so many good feelings from my visits to the woods. Projects I completed, family and friends visiting, cooking over a camp fire, observations of nature and making friends with a robin. To list a few successful projects – rebuilding the composting toilet walls, helping a pal build a shavehorse, making a woodland rustic chair, building a pond and renewing my felling licence. Getting and award for my blog was an unexpected treat.

Wildlife highlights were discovering a colony of feral honey bees in the owl nest box, learning about fungi identification, butterflies and the Tawny Owl bathing in my pond.

Camping trips were below expectations, I only managed to fit in one. I hope to get a few more in this year and hopefully try my hand at some winter or early spring camping. It’s such a lovely experience to wake up early and see the woods at that time of day, listen to the dawn chorus, light a fire and cook breakfast. It’s a feeling of freedom and truly being alive.

I know a few of my friends suffer with mental health issue, anxiety, stress, depression and I do too at times. It’s a common symptom of our modern way of living. We are normally surrounded by concrete, plastic, traffic and the constant brainwashing of media on our tv and phones. To spend time in the woods either with friends or on our own is truly a healing experience and I cannot recommend it too much. You don’t need to own your own woods to benefit from nature. Just get out there, take a flask of tea or coffee and find a nice quite spot in the woods, by a lake or river, on the moors or the beach and just sit, watch, listen and take in the beauty of it all. It’s where we come from and it’s where we truly belong. Thanks to all of you for taking time to read my ramblings and for the kind feedback many of you have given me. Hope this year is a good one for you.

It was the morning of New Year’s Eve. A cold and clear morning with lots of jobs planned. As I opened the main gate I heard the distinct noisy sound of a flock of geese, flying in formation high above the woods. It’s a sound I love. It evokes feelings of freedom and the wholesomeness of nature and for a fleeting moment, all seems well in the world.

I stepped out of the car looking for “Bertie” the robin. It was a while before a robin appeared but it didn’t attempt to take the food from my hand. Surely he hasn’t forgotten me already?  It wasn’t him but soon he arrived too. If you remember, the children at my daughter’s workplace helped me name him. I wanted to try to capture some video of him feeding off my hand so she could show them. I set the camera up and using an app on my phone, was able to operate the camera remotely. Here’s a short film I compiled for them.

After a nice long walkabout, I set-to brushcutting some areas of bramble that had grown rampant and were choking some young hazel trees I planted a few years ago. I’m not entirely happy doing it as the bramble provides safe habitats for all manner of life. It’s cover from predators for small animals and birds and it’s a food source for insects. It has to be kept in check though. You can see the before and after photos and how much it had invaded the woodland floor.

Lunch was a sardine sarnie (that alliteration looks good written doesn’t it?)  A small flock of long tailed tits had descended and were foraging in the understorey. They must be one of the cutest British birds and are a joy to watch. Bertie kept me company eating some seeds I had put on a stump at the side of my chair. This odd photo is a result of his head turning quickly and a slow shutter speed. I’d like to say it was done intentionally for artistic purposes but that would be a lie.

My wife gave me a robin type nest box as one of my Christmas gifts, so I wanted to set that up somewhere suitable. They like a low position, under thick scrub where they are safe from predators. I picked a position under some beech trees at the end of a brash hedge I created some years ago. I made a sort of framework of sticks around it to support a pile of the brambles I had cut back, leaving just a small entrance to the side. It looks pretty well hidden so I’m hoping Mr and Mrs Bertie might take up residence in Spring.

A final word just to set the record straight. In my last post I stated that it was the Winter Solstice on the 21st Dec. A few observant folks corrected me to say I was a day early. In fact the actual time of the Solstice was around 4.30 am on the 22nd. In the grand scale of time and the universe I reckon it makes no difference to anything but just in case you felt you had missed the boat with your pagan celebrations, my apologies.

It’s a New Year now, though I reckon that is wrong too because surely the actual new year starts a second after the Solstice? Anyway to all my friends and readers, I hope the coming year will be a good one for you. It certainly seems significant with a new British government and Brexit looming and the written year – 2020 a pleasing visual appeal. All the best.

Yesterday was the Winter Solstice – the so-called shortest day of the year. It’s a day I am always pleased to see because it means that soon the afternoons will stay light longer and we are on the run up to Spring and new life emerging. Ironically it’s also the official start of Winter which makes no sense to me.

I was meeting a pal to spend the day with, no work to do, just enjoying the woods and a catch-up. No his name isn’t Bertie, that’s the name I have given to my little robin. During a conversation with my daughter, she said I should give it a name and as she works at a childrens’ nursery, I thought about getting the kids to come up with some suitable names. To me the bird seems like a male so I discounted all the girls names and picked Bertie out of the rest. I was hoping to get him to take food from my pal Phil’s hand but despite several attempts, he just didn’t have the confidence to. Later, when on my own, Bertie came to me and landed three times for food. I guess he’s a one-man robin.

Recently I had a blacksmithing session with another mate Simon. We made a cooking tripod to go over the camp fire and a firesteel for using with a piece of flint. You create sparks by hitting a glancing blow to the sharp edge of the flint with the straight portion of the steel. When one lands on a piece of charred cloth it will smoulder which is then popped into a tinder ball and used to start a fire. I wanted to initiate both items and light a fire to cook lunch on. Here’s the equipment and Phil blowing the tinder bundle into a flame.

The new tripod in action, kettle on for a nice mug of coffee from a cafetiere. Who says we have to rough it in the woods?

Lunch was a simple but tasty affair, sausage sarnies with onions and ketchup. Pork for Phil and veggie ones for me. Phil took charge of the cooking. Words aren’t enough to describe the wholesome pleasure of lighting a fire in the woods and cooking over it, then sharing the meal with a mate.

The day was mostly just chatting and enjoying the woods in winter and that’ll do nicely for me. A last walk around and we found this weird fungi growing on some dead oak logs. I think it ‘s Bulgaria Inquinans (Black Bulgar fungi). Hope you all have a good Christmas.

We’ve had rain, rain and more rain for weeks now, so it was refreshing to have a cold, dry frosty morning to visit the woods. Dawn was just breaking as I left home and as I drove, I watched the sky turning from a vaguely greyish purple, to dark crimson, fiery burnt orange and lemon yellow before the sun finally flashed through. It was a very cold morning. The instant I stepped out of the car, my friendly robin appeared and flew directly toward me, as if about to land on my head. Having second thoughts it dropped to my feet hopping around me. I quickly got some dried mealworms and offered them on my hand. It had little hesitation in landing but stood just looking at them then flew off. Plan B – pull some crumbs off my piece of home made fruit cake. Back onto my hand, grabbed a crumb and took it to eat under some bramble. Who could blame it for preferring cake over some dry maggots? It continued to visit me throughout the day and has become a special friend to me now.

My main jobs for the day were to start felling again. The sycamore plantation still needs lots of thinning, just like gardening and growing your rows of vegetables, the weak and badly shaped ones need to come out to lessen the competition and favour the bigger stronger ones. The tree in the middle of the photo has been bugging me. You can see the top has snapped off and another large limb lower down and on the right had come off. It was like that when I bought the woods. I decided to ring bark it rather than fell it so that it would die off and provide a nice big veteran deadwood tree for wildlife to take over. You can see the dark collar where I did this four years ago. Despite taking deeper cuts, it would not die but was now posing a danger. If the centre was rotting, it could eventually topple and as it was close to my car pull-in area, it really needed to come down.

I was going to leave it until I had some help as it poses a tricky operation. But impatience (and possibly a little stupidity) and enthusiasm to make a significant difference, I decided to tackle it. It was quite a big heavy tree, about 15-18 inches diameter at the base and with a lean. The usual wedge cut at the front, then straight through back cut was too risky. The weight of it on the lean can cause it to “barber chair” where it splits while cutting, then pivots sending the base flying upward. I won’t go into all the details of how I did it but it took quite a while, lot’s of stopping and starting and reassessing it before some heavy thumps at the wedges finally caused it to come down. My cuts were not perfect but it fell just where I wanted and in a slow majestic way, concluding with an earth shaking thump and a wave of relief fro me. It had started to send new shoots from the base after I ring barked it and I’m sure it will do so again but with more vigour. So, far from having killed the tree, I have probably rejuvenated it. I’ll show you the results in a couple of years time!

I continued thinning and took four more small ones down. The last one got hung up but fortunately my good neighbours were around and gave me a hand to dislodge it. I was starting to get tired and that’s the time to stop. I took time to have a slow walk and take a few wintry photos. A satisfying day.

It was with some reluctance I set off to the woods yesterday. I needed to go to finish the W.T. photographs but for once there was a certain lack of enthusiasm. We have had another wet week and as I headed off early in the mist, my mood was sombre and unenthusiastic. But that’s just the way it is sometimes. The whole woods felt dank and dreary and hardly a sound as I donned my boots. “What am I doing here on a day like this” ran through my head. Then another thought, “Just enjoy it for what it is. Seeing the woods in another light adds a different dimension, just see what the day brings”. I wasn’t going to be disappointed.

Before long my friendly robin appeared, bringing a tiny ball of fiery life. I was prepared and had some dried mealworms in my pocket which I offered out in my hand. It skirted around me a few times, eyeing me with those tiny coal-black eyes, flying close but not landing. After ten minutes I placed them on a log, but it still didn’t seem interested. Despite what the packet says, I don’t think they particularly like them! At lunch time it soon joined me again and a small crumb of bread tempted it onto my hand. It followed me around the woods all day. Every time I moved and started another activity it was there, curious, running around my feet or landing on a nearby twig. That little bird lifted my spirits no end.

I checked the pond and was pleased to see a small movement on the surface. It was weird. A small, translucent grub with a long tail which seemed to be moving along the underside of the water’s surface, as if it was the ceiling of the pond. I tried to take a closeup but the camera focus failed to lock onto it. Back home, good old Google helped me ID it as the gruesome sounding rat-tailed maggot. Well it gets better because it turns out to be the larval stage of a Drone fly which is a harmless hover fly that looks rather like a bee. The tail is actually a kind of snorkel, allowing it to breathe under water. So I have my first sign of life inhabiting my new pond – exciting!

The day brightened in the afternoon and I headed to the hazel copse to do some work. A flock of long tailed tits flitted about the tops of the taller trees. Somewhere not far away a tawny owl hooted and my spirits lifted another few notches. I spotted a semi-circle of beautiful small fungi which I think are Goblet Funnels pseudoclitocybe cyathiformis

I was surprised to see one hazel tree full of catkins already. These are the male flowers which do apparently form in autumn and winter, stay closed like this until spring when the tiny female flowers form and the males open up to release their pollen. Life in the woods doesn’t rest for long.

There has been lots of flooding this week in some areas of the UK and my woods are not far from the area but there was no problem getting through yesterday. Naturally the woods were very wet and many of the leaves are down but it is still looking pretty in it’s Autumnal colours. The pond was full of leaves so the first job was to scoop as many out as possible with a home made net. Someone gave me a chunk of pondweed, so I threw that in too and hope it will multiply and add some oxygen.

As I made coffee, a robin appeared, just as it had done last time, landing only a few feet away. It was clearly interested in me, so I quickly pulled a few crumbs off my sandwich and held my hand out to it. It came closer toward my hand. It hovered like a hummingbird then unsure, flew back to the branch. Eventually it plucked up courage to land and take a piece – fantastic. It flew to the ground to eat it then back onto a branch. Rather than come back for more, it started to sing loudly. My human brain thought, “How nice, it’s happy and saying thankyou”. I heard another robin respond then a coal tit arrived to check out the scene. Seeing no obvious food it didn’t stay. My theory is that when food appears, some of the small birds announce it to others. It doesn’t quite make sense as you would think they would like to keep it to themselves, avoiding competition. But time and again, as soon as I put food at the feeders, several birds will appear within minutes.

I wonder if any bats have taken up residence in the bat box. Can you spot it?

My main visit was to meet some neighbours and  agree some new locations for the W.T. fixed photography project. Two of the locations I was taking were showing no signs of progress, so I wanted some new ones where active management is being, or will soon be done. That took up the bulk of my time but I did take some time to have a good look around and see what I could find. I came across something that looked quite gruesome, a grey ball containing various small bones and what appeared to be bird claws. It was about an inch in diameter and I recognised it as most likely and owl pellet.

For those of you that don’t know what that is – a brief description. Owls will swallow small animals whole, bones, feathers, fur and all. Their stomachs will digest the meat but all the indigestible bits get rolled up into a pellet which the owl eventually regurgitates and spits out. Examining these pellets will give some clues as to what the bird ate. Looking at this one puzzled me. It appears to be the foot of quite a large bird. The claws are way too big to be a normal woodland species that you might expect it to predate such as robins, blackbirds, bluetits etc. I had to take it apart to see more clearly what it was. It is a whole foot and part of the lower leg. The bobbly white material gave me a clue. It’s the pads on the underside of some sort of predatory bird.

The watch wasn’t in the pellet by the way, ha! Now I would have been worried when camping. That’s just to show it’s size. I thought only owls produced pellets but many others do too including larger predators such as hawks etc. Owls have also been known to eat each other and this appears to be the foot of a Tawny Owl. Maybe it was a vulnerable young one earlier in the year. So who got the meal and why eat the least nutritious part? I’m guessing that whatever ate it, didn’t kill it and was simply eating the remains of a carcass that had mostly been devoured already. Could have been another owl or maybe a buzzard.

Onto more pleasant subjects. The trailcam in it’s new position revealed shots of a fox and a pair of muntjac deer. The same position produced similar results a year ago. Sorry I haven’t got around to doing compilations of the pond clips yet. I’ll leave you with a few photos of my walkabout.

Jelly Ear fungus (used to be known as Jews’ Ear)

Yesterday’s visit was a special one in several ways. I’ve been mooting the idea of doing an out of season overnight camping trip but having never done one before and there are a few issues giving me some concern. One aspect is cooking and spending a whole evening in the dark. Also I am always reluctant to leave late afternoon after a good day in the woods so I decided to try it out. The weather forecast was rain in the morning, then clearing by midday – wrong! The first part was right but the rain and the cooking in the dark provided a very fulfilling and different aspect to my woodland experiences. Stay tuned.

I arrived just after dawn and sat in my car to watch leaves falling like rain. They are at the stage where many are just hanging on by a thread and the slightest breeze or patter of rain sends them fluttering down in showers of brown, gold and yellow. It was like a weird and beautiful striptease act put on by, errrr – trees! I marvelled at how nature wastes nothing, unlike humans who waste most things! The leaves will be consumed by myriads of recyclers – invertebrates, fungi, bacteria who will enrich the soil ready to feed the trees and the new growth next year.

It was drizzling so I decided to spend the wet morning in my shelter. I had a couple of jobs to do and I fancied making a long handled spoon for my cooking pot. A nice filter coffee kick started the morning and I set-to with a small piece of fresh sycamore. First split it in half then debark it. Rough shaping is done with a sharp axe. Then the hollow is cut with a special curved knife and then the rest done with a straight knife. It didn’t need to be highly finished, just useable and took about an hour. The other half I used to make a small teaspoon sized one.

Well the drizzle turned to heavy rain which lasted until mid afternoon. It’s getting dark by 4pm now, so I started preparing a fire at my usual camp area. Just got it nicely going when it started to rain slightly again. How wrong had they got the forecast? Was it going to get heavier? I didn’t want to risk it as I hadn’t provided any shelter there. Decision time – take the easy route, pack up and go home or try to be resourceful? The first option equals failure and lack of resolve, that’s the opposite of what I am trying to achieve. I quickly rebuilt a temporary fireplace where the old one at the permanent shelter is but I didn’t want to have to start a new fire. Brainwave, move the fire that was already established but how? I have an old metal dustbin that I keep the bird food in. I took the biggest embers and put them in the lid and carried it (coughing and with eyes stinging) around to the new site. A bit of blowing on it and it was away again. A friendly robin came to check me out while all this was going on.

My meal was to be a veggie sausage casserole cooked in the dutch oven.  I believe the key to successfully negotiating cooking and moving about the woods in the dark is to be well prepared beforehand and organised in the way you work. Get all the gear you need down to the site before dark. Be aware of where you are putting things down and put things away back  in their bags or whatever you brought them in as soon as you have finished with them. A head torch is invaluable leaving both hands free.The cooking process was fairly easy, I’ve done enough before to be quite confident now but doing it in the dark is harder. The results? Yeah not bad and fitted the mood of Guy Fawkes night, bonfires and surroundsound fireworks.

After clearing up, I took a short walk around some of the woodland rides just for the adventure and possible wildlife sighting. A male Tawny owl hooted nearby and a mouse scuttled into the undergrowth. Fungi stood out in the torchlight and I was probably the only human, alone in this dark and beautiful place. Far from feeling afraid I felt nurtured and protected. As I said at the start, it was a unique day. The rain and the darkness pushed me to another level of appreciation of the amazing place I have the privelege to be part of. There was an intimacy somehow that is not so obvious during nice sunny weather. The woodlands somehow seem to enfold you and at the same time make you more alive. Definitely worth doing and definitely repeat at some point.

British Summertime ended last weekend when we turned the clocks back an hour. That always makes me feel a little sad. Symbolically it’s the final goodbye to another season of growth, light nights and warmer weather. However, it’s not so depressing now that I have the woodland to look after. There are still lots going on and every visit is different and winter is far from dead and boring at the woods. Soon I will need to get busy again with the chainsaw and continue my management plan of thinning the overstocked sycamore.

Yesterday was my latest visit. My main task was to take the fixed point photographs for my Woodland Trust volunteering role. It was also a chance to meet up with some woodland neighbours that I hadn’t seen for a few months. They kindly gave me a jar of crab apple jelly made from some of the fruit from my gnarly old tree.

First job though was to check the trail camera. Another 300+ clips in 10 days! Trawling through the dozens of squirrel and wood pigeon shots, I found some nice ones of the Tawny Owl and a Jay bathing. Sorry I haven’t posted any videos of the pond life yet but it takes a lot of time checking them all. Coming soon I hope.

The pond water was clear and cold as I scooped out handfuls of fallen beech leaves. I said before that it’s not an ideal position for that very reason but it’s not a big job. Some of the leaves have settled on the bottom covering some of the black plastic liner and helping to naturalise it’s appearance. I’m hoping some of it will break down to add nutrients for plants and small life forms in the future. Right now it’s just a watering hole but very popular. I’m looking for oxygenating plants to help but also thinking about adding a small solar powered oxygenating pump.

I’m finding lot’s more fungi now that I am a little better informed after the foraging day I attended a few weeks ago. I doubt I will try eating any though. To be honest I don’t think I have found any safe edibles apart from small puffballs. The daughter of some friends of ours is doing an undergraduate in Natural Sciences and a project on fungi. (Hi L. if you are reading this and if you can ID any please let me know.) We have swapped emails and photos of various fungi for identification which I hope is helping her but it is also helping me to keep the momentum going to learn more about the subject. It’s a massive subject and one which I can only scratch the surface of but it is making me more more observant and opening up another aspect of my woodland and it’s inhabitants. I haven’t had time to ID some of the new ones but I am posting some photos here just because they are so photogenic.  Sorry about the lack of sharpness but in a dark woodland and close up range it’s difficult.

This one is some sort of funnel mushroom growing below some hazel trees.

These tiny finger-like ones are growing on a mossy log

This young bracket fungus is growing on a dead Birch log. It looks like the horse hoof fungus (Fomes Fomentarius)  in it’s early stages. Also known as tinder fungus.

These small guys are growing on dead wood and look like Wood Ear, Jelly Ear or as they used to be known – Jews Ear. Normally they grow on dead Elder but this is a different wood.

Not sure what this chunky little mushroom is yet but if it looks quite appetizing

That’s all for now. I have a plan to stay late one day, to try cooking in the dark and see how coping with the cold and dark nights pans out in preparation for a possible overnighter. Yikes!