A break in the rain

Yesterday was wet. Today was wet. But then at about 2pm it stopped raining (and snowing!) and brightened. A quick check at the Met Office radar page showed that it should stay dry for a few hours, so we dashed out to the wood.

On the way in we stopped to dissect the dropping form the green woodpecker we found a couple of days ago, and here it is:
As you can see, once the "skin" was split open, it was clearly full of the remains of ants! This is one of the things the green woodpecker eats, so I guess that confirms the source.

Once in the wood Tracy got on with a few chestnut stems near the tent:
and then moved on to the final bit of chestnut to the right of the ride:
which now looks like this:
While she was doing that, I dealt with four large birch trees, which were pretty straightforward to fell, but took a while to log up:
but now they are gone:
and you'll notice that there's a tree right in the middle of the above picture, just in front of the pile of birch logs, that I managed to leave undamaged. It's one of the few hornbeam in this end of our wood, so we thought we'd like to leave it for now, and perhaps pollard it next time round (in 15-20 years!).

Anyway, that's all for now. Tomorrow looks sunny, and will be our last day coppicing for this winter.

Mike