Visitors, signs of spring, and badgers!

On Saturday we took a break from moving house to cook lunch in the wood, as our friends Dave and Anna were visiting. (Some of the photos below are from them, mixed in with our own)
As usual we had a play with the rifle, shooting at a tin can.
There's still the odd small tree we need to fell to finish off the corridors we've been creating, saved up for days like this...
From the look of the last picture, I wonder if I over-emphasised the "retreat once the tree starts to fall" bit of the safety talk! ;-)

Rather than subject them to using the bowsaw to clean off the stump I did that with the chainsaw.OK, on to signs of spring. Wood Anemones are now coming out in force in Sweep Wood, though not in Chestnut Coppice yet.The hornbeam we saved a year ago during coppicing has buds just starting to open now:
The floor of the wood is getting much greener, with moss and various other stuff, including bluebells:
The insect life is waking up too:
And now for the badger poo. I noticed some fresh digging, surprisingly close to a track we often use:and on close inspection found a badger's toilet, which had been used twice:
We'll have to keep an eye on this, there may be a chance to watch them there if we're careful. The puzzling thing is that there's only one entrance at the moment - you'd expect several normally.

And finally, some arty shots from Dave and Anna, taken in the wood and at a beah near our house:Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Badger video!

We went badger watching again this evening, after doing a bit more work on the shelter. This time, rather than use the SLR with it's somewhat noisy shutter, I used our compact camera and took a video instead. Here you go:


Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Badgers and firewood

I had my friend Alex visiting today. We cycled down to the beach in the morning, and then took lunch up to the wood, where I sawed up a couple of birch logs and then Alex tried out the maul - I think he'll be buying one!
We filled the wheelbarrow and then emptied it into Alex's car - he'll be burning it this winter (the wood, not the car). Then we went off on a walk around the woods to look at the wildlife...

Plenty of butterflies in the wayleave, even though it was cloudy. I got a picture of this Small White (I think):
Over in Sweep Wood we saw an old badger sett:

but what caught my attention was the new digging, it looks the badgers have moved back in:
They weren't the only things digging - there were moles too (apologies for the flash photo):
It might be interesting to go out and spy on the badgers one evening...

We're not at the wood tomorrow - out all day at the SWOG meeting.

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.