Spring trees

It's not just flowers, butterflies and birds, the trees are waking up now as well. Birch always seems to be first off the mark:

But Hawthorn is catching up fast:

Hornbeam is a bit slower, but is now coming out, with the characteristic pink around its new leaves:

Hazel seems to be in different stages, for example the stools that were coppiced a year ago are just opening their buds:

while the more mature specimens are coming into leaf:

Sweet Chestnut is much slower that the others, but is starting to come out now:

But having talked about the trees, I really should mention the Wood Anemones again, which are building up to their peak now:

There should be some interesting developments in the patch of woodland next to ours soon. There's been some fairly major coppicing operations going on there for a few years now, so there's a big area with 0-3 years regrowth in it now. It looks quite drastic as it's a much larger area than we cut each year, but this is what the ecosystem here is used to, and depends on, so I'm expecting it will look great in the coming years:

Finally, the wild boar have once again decided that our 'pond' is a great mud bath:

Though they don't seem to be looking after the dam which is needed to keep it there:

It's mean to be wet today, as it's a Bank Holiday, but we do need the rain...

Mike

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Springtime flowers and wildlife

At last, the wood anemones are in full bloom!
That picture's from our friend's wood on the other side of the wayleave. Here's one from ours, near the pond, where we coppiced just over a year ago - there's new flowers arrived - dandelions:
There's other promising developments too, like lots of thistles, seeded from the single thistle we had last year I assume.
And a mystery plant we haven't identified yet. We'll probably have to wait for it to flower, unless anyone knows it straight away?
The area we coppiced in 2007/8 is beginning to look green again:
although there were still plenty of dead leaves from the autumn to camouflage this Purple Thorn moth while it rested:
Butterflies were busy in the same part of our wood too, including several Peacocks:
There's other insects out as well now:
and with the insects come the birds that eat them, such as this Treecreeper:
and this Great Tit
A surprise in the wayleave was to see some Sparrows hiding in the brambles, as they're normally living nearer to people.
Back to insect-eaters, we saw this lizard near our camp as well. You'll see it's in the process of shedding its skin:

And finally, how are the trees getting on? Here's some Hazel:
Some Willow:
and some Birch:
Just inside our entrance we found a few self-seeded Birch that have been growing since we coppiced there. Very please to see this natural regeneration going on:
That's all for now. Hopefully we'll visit again this weekend as things are changing so fast in the wood right now!

Mike

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Butterlies and log stacks

Yesterday I popped up the wood on my own for a few hours before the forecast rain arrived. My main intention was to stack some logs in a rack to accelerate their drying and have them ready to process later in the year. But first I was distracted by some butterflies, like this Peacock:
I waited a minute and it opened it's wings fully, letting me get an even better picture:
There were also still a lot of Painted Ladies around, both in the wayleave and in clearings inside the wood:
I also spotted a butterfly I've not seen before, or at least not identified. It's a Ringlet. Not rare, but still nice to see:
Anyway, I eventually got down to some work, building a rack to put some birch logs in. The smaller logs went straight into the rack after striping, and the bigger ones are waiting on the path to be split:
The striping is important, as it breaks the waterproof bark of the birch, allowing it to dry out quickly. You just skim the chainsaw (carefully!) along the sides of the log, leaving them like this:
The bigger logs can be split with the maul and wedges, though birch doesn't cleave as neatly as chestnut. Still, I didn't do a bad job on some of the logs:
They'll all now dry out very rapidly, and there's still room in the rack for some more:
One last thing - we had thunderstorms here on Thursday night, and it was pretty windy too. As a result this branch came down between the public footpath and our main ride:It's not in a dangerous place though, so we'll leave it for the moment and see if it can become a bit of dead wood habitat.

Mike

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Logging in the rain

Fortunately the rain didn't get heavy until lunchtime today, so we only got a little bit wet doing the logging. Paul came in his 4x4 (with proper off-road tyres) pulling Dave's trailer, and we got it parked near the logs.
With four people, four chainsaws, two pairs of lifting tongs and two mauls (splitting axes) it was a pretty quick job.
and before long we had a trailer full of birch for Paul's fire:
On the wayleave some strange orange stuff caught my eye:
I think it's Orange Peel Fungus (Aleuria aurantia), but tell me if you know better, I'm no expert in these things!

Mike

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Start of coppicing!

We're much more organised this year, starting coppicing just before the beginning of October, rather than December like we did last year! But before I get onto that, here's a few pictures of some creatures that still think it's summer. A peacock butterfly and a dragonfly, both sunning themselves in the afternoon:
The robin however was busy shouting, perhaps marking his territory for the coming winter? He took great interest in the work I was doing, which was making stakes ready for log stores (this was on Sunday).
The rabbits are still out and about in the wayleave, as I expect they will be all through the winter:
The fungi, however, are clear that it is time to be fruiting...
This one's growing on a chestnut coppice stool:
These are fly agaric, but almost finished and have changed in colour dramatically from how they look when fresh,
Anyway, I had today off work, and Tracy had a bit of time free late morning, so we went up the wood and started on the coppicing. This year we're cutting a few metres on either side of all the rides and paths that border or run through Chestnut Coppice and Sweep Wood. As we're working nearer to the public we've taken out third party insurance, though today not a single person walked down the public footpath!

The reason for cutting these areas is to create wide "corridors" with more light, which will allow a greater diversity of plant and animal life, as well as yielding some useful wood for us to sell. Butterflies and birds in particular should benefit from this work, as some of them don't fly through dark woods, so the corridors will form routes they can follow to get to other parts of the wood.

Here's how the public footpath looked before we started, it'll be interesting to compare this photo to one when we've finished...
The area we started on today was where the footpath meets the wayleave:
On either side were some birch, some of which had already been coppiced once before:
Having learnt from last year's work we're taking a different approach this year. The trees will be felled, then if we know the final use they will be processed where they land, and stored at the side of the ride ready for extraction in the spring. This should minimise unnecessary carrying around of wood, and also ensure our firewood is thoroughly dry.

For the birch we were felling today, this strategy meant cutting them into short logs as they were felled. We're planning to save up all the splitting work until the weekend, so we can minimise chainsaw noise for the neighbours.

While I was doing the logging, I came up with a neat way of holding a log firmly to be sawn up:
Tracy felled a few trees further up the path (as we worked two tree-lengths apart for safety), but then had to go to work at WoodNet, and I carried on near the stile. I felled about 10 trees, plus a lot of smaller birch out in the wayleave, to make a clear path for the wildlife to make its way in. The extra light getting in was immediately apparent:
I was left with a few neat piles of logs ready for splitting:
and was particularly pleased to have been able to avoid cutting this honeysuckle, which I managed to drape over the fence and a tree that we won't be felling.
There are still a couple of birch stems to fell in this spot, but time ran out. We'll be up there again on Thursday or Friday to carry on, and on Saturday we're hosting a Fungi ID event, as the wood it should have been held in has no fungi right now, while ours has loads.

Mike

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