A couple of weeks ago I was wandering down the wayleave, photographing butterflies and flowers, when something made me stop and go back a few steps to look along a path. I'm glad I did, as this was what I saw:
After this initial look of alarm, the first fox cub trotted along
and the second one followed, not really paying me much attention
I know we see urban foxes all over the place, but I don't see them in the woods so often, so it was nice to see these two young ones. Hopefully they will take their food in the woods, and not stray into nearby farms...
Despite the hot weather and at least a month without rain, the woodland is looking great, while everyone's lawns are turning brown. I guess that's the difference between a functioning ecosystem and a typical garden!
Most of the insects don't seem to mind the heat, here's a White Admiral and Meadow Brown butterfly, followed by what I'm going to call 'dragonflies' in the absence of any expertise identifying them!
The flowers are all looking good too, here's a selection of what's sprouting up along the wayleave:
The Sweet Chestnut trees are flowering too:
And Hazel nuts are growing, though the squirrels will get these before we do I expect:
Where we were coppicing last winter, the regrowth has got going:
The Alder is much quicker off the mark than the Sweet Chestnut though:
Next door to that coupe is one we cut two years earlier, which has some nice foxgloves now, some in their first year of growth:
and others in their second year and flowering:
Finally, I've got a new toy - a Husqvarna 536LiXP battery chainsaw!
It's been doing well so far, half a battery charge is enough to process this trailer of logs:
I'll do a proper review on the chainsaw when I've been using it for a while...
Mike
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