Management planning and a fox.

We had a meeting today in the woods. Steve Wheatley came to advise us and some of the other woodland owners on management of the woods for biodiversity. Steve's particular focus is on butterflies, but he knows about other wildlife too, as he's trained in conservation, ecology and other useful things! We had people from Grist Wood and Fantail Wood, and we were representing my parents as well as our own wood.

Steve gave us lots of useful advice on designing a management plan that will work for parts of the wood and the wood as a whole - we have some work to do now...

One thing that's clear now is our plan for this winter's work - we'll be coppicing a few metres at the edge of the rides and footpaths that run along and through our wood, creating "scalloped" areas at intervals as mini-clearings and to break up any wind-tunnel effect. We'll also be avoiding damage to the occasional interesting trees along the way, such as a few youngish oaks (very pleased to see these!), hornbeam and holly - simply because they're different to everything else growing there, so add to the diversity. We may also find a few chestnut stems we can leave to grow on as standards, maybe increasing their nut production...

After everyone had gone, I wandered off on my own with the camera. The wood is still full of birds and stuff, you just can't see them as easily because of the leaves. I managed to get a couple of shots of a blue tit though:
I saw a coal tit too, plenty of different butterflies and a huge dragonfly, though it wouldn't sit still for a picture! It's amazing how much you see when you stop and stand still for a few minutes...

Most exciting though was getting to the style from the wayleave onto the public footpath and seeing a fox! It was nearly 100 metres away and about to disappear round the bend in the path, so I didn't have time to get a good photo as I had the camera set up for the sunny wayleave, not the shady wood, but here's a blurry cropped image of the fox:
We thought they were in the wood, but this is the first one we've seen. Cool!

Anyway, got to go, there's a lot to do, as we've just rented a garage out the back of our flats (sharing with a neighbour), so there's stuff to be sorted and moved...

Mike