Sunny Saturday!

Well, today was beautifully sunny! Just to prove we got up early, here's the view from the small bedroom window this morning:
It was still frosty when we got to the wood, shortly after 8am:
and there was mist drifting around:
I thought the oak trees look a bit lonely now, with the chestnut felled around them:
Inspired by a neighbours recent bird photos, I went to spy on one of his bird feeders, and managed to catch a great tit feeding:
OK, so it's not perfect, but I didn't have a tripod, was quite a way off on 12x zoom, and only had the patience to wait for two minutes... I got some more bird pictures later though, see below...

After getting that pic, the next job was to light the fire, and as it was a pretty calm day, we had the usual side effect of strange patches of smoke lingering around:
Before long Richard turned up to give us a hand, and after a cup of tea we put him to work!
There were quickly some trees on the ground and all kinds of sawing and lopping going on:

We also had a visit from Zoe Cormier, a journalist writing an article on people buying English woodland, for the Toronto Star. We'll post a link when its published. She was really into environmental and energy issues, so we all had a good chat, in between posing for photos!

On top of that, Richard brought his mother back after lunch to say hello (we'd met her at the church near our wood a few months ago), and the owners of Grist Wood, which is down the hill from ours, also turned up. Tracy had been in touch with them through her work for woodlands.co.uk, and they were coming to see the coppicing we were doing. They also have plans to work their wood, so we are hoping to see some possibilities for future cooperation.

As you can imagine, we ended up with quite a crowd, as at one point they were all there at once! However, we still got a lot a done, largely die to the help we had from Richard!

Now, for those bird photos I promised. After Richard left for lunch, and while Tracy was going to pick up Zoe from the station, all was quiet in the wood, and I noticed a crowd (yes, lots of them!) of blue tits hopping and fluttering around at the edge of the area we have cleared.
I have no idea what this one was doing, he's hanging upside-down from a stick!
They were also spending a lot of time on the ground:
although this one was high up a tree:
I think they were probably males fighting over females, or something like that. I took a video of them to give you an idea. Apologies for it being a bit shaky, but I was at 12x zoom with no tripod. If the camera didn't have an image stabiliser I think it would be much worse!

We're planning to go up again tomorrow, and Richard may join us again if he can.

Mike