A colder week in the wood

It was great to have some colder weather this week in the wood - makes a nice change from the wind and rain of a few weeks ago! Included in this post are a couple of videos of birds, a video of firewood processing, and various pics of the work we've been doing.

Let's start with the frost (we've not had much snow here yet, despite the rest of the southeast getting plenty). Because parts of the wood are in permanent shade at this time of year the frost just accumulates for days on end.
We took advantage of the frost to go and get a load of firewood for one of our customers - the ground was rock hard, making getting in and out of the wood easy. On the way up the wayleave we encountered these two pheasants, who didn't seem too worried by the land rover, giving me plenty of time to photograph them:
Note - that isn't snow on the grass in the track, just accumulated frost! With the cold weather we thought we ought to set up our bird feeder in the same place we did last year. It's hung on a chain to prevent the squirrels getting it out of the tree:
Next was the firewood. Here's the video I promised - I made a similar one some time ago, but this time it's of one of the new large log stacks and using the 28" bar on the chainsaw:

Back in Sweep Wood the coppicing is carrying on OK. I spent most of this week catching up on splitting logs, which is basically turning piles like this:
into this:
This will let them season, ready for burning in a year's time. I also made a stool for a friend at work to use as a present for someone. The recently felled Chestnut had small splits inside it, so I cut a chunk off an Ash tree that blew down some time ago, so has had chance to dry out. I'm hoping to get an update in a year or so to see if the stool developed any splits!
Meanwhile, Tracy's been working hard further down the hill, and has cleared a fair sized gap in the Chestnut and Sycamore down there:
We had some good opportunities to photograph and video birds as well this week. The Robin is tamer than ever - here he is eating some dried chestnuts that I chopped up for him:
This time I got a video of him as well:

I also got a video of a male and female Blackbird, but they're not as tame so it's just a short one:

There were lots of small birds in the trees at the edges of the wood, such as this Nuthatch on a bit of dead Cherry:
Up at the top of a birch tree were several Blue Tits:
and in this picture another bird as well - I thought it might be a young Goldcrest, but I'm not sure now:
Anyway, that's this week in the wood. IF we get any significant snow I'll be sure to get some pictures. All we have at present down near our house is this:Mike