Our wildlife corridor is working!

Yesterday was a landmark for us. We had our neighbours John and Helen up in the wood with us, and were walking along the footpath at the edge of our wood, explaining about why we'd widened it for the benefit of wildlife, when right before our eyes appeared three Peacock butterflies. These were 100 metres into the wood from the wayleave under the pylons (where they would normally be found)! They'd travelled down the path, which is now sunlit - thanks to the work we did in the winter.

Here's pictures of two of them, both looking a bit ragged - I assume they've hibernated from last year.
Not only were there butterflies, there were birds too - we saw Great Tits along the path too, and several robins that seemed to be fighting - I assume over mates or territory (I hear they fight to the death sometimes...)
It was really great to see all this activity so soon after we'd created this wildlife corridor. There's some great views of Wood Anemone as well now, I took these looking into a neighbouring wood:
There's also a lot of buds coming out on the trees now. Birch:
Sweet Chestnut (only a very few buds opening here at present):
Hornbeam:
Sycamore - this is much further on, perhaps part of the reason it's a successful invasive species (it's not a UK native):
Finally, there was one little visitor I was less pleased to see:
Yes, I know it looks cute, but it's an invasive species that humans artificially introduced to this country. Interestingly, if you trap one it's against the law to release it again. This one came and scampered around us while we were having a hot drink - I expect it's the one that was stealing the seed we'd left for the birds. I didn't have my air rifle with me, so we're not having stir-fried squirrel for dinner, and as John and Helen are vegetarian it wouldn't have been very polite to shoot it in front of them anyway. Next time...

Mike