A damp visit to the wood

It's been pretty murky weather for days now, but as we were both feeling a bit better, we decided to drive up the wood and take a walk around anyway. It was worth it to get this photo!
It only lasted for 10 seconds, then 5 or 6 Coal Tits came down to chase the Robin, although they ended sharing the food we'd put out amicably after that. I'm not sure what's up with the Coal Tit's eye, it looks like it has something stuck there, or else a growth of some kind - poor thing! We've put up a new bird feeder there now, which is more squirrel proof:
although the birds that can get in have to do some contortions:
Some of them prefer to perch on the nearby pile of sticks, hopping down to the ground to get the food we spilled.
We walked around the wood a bit, and found large areas up the hill where the boar have been rustling through the leaves looking for food. It may not look like much in the picture below, but there is actually quite a lot of disturbance:
Not sure if we'll go up tomorrow, we'll have to see what the weather's like...

Mike

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Spring is here!

We went up to the wood on Sunday afternoon, and finished coppicing one stool we'd left part-done by the pond. While we were there, we saw a sign of spring coming - catkins on this Hazel tree:
There's a good bit of sky above the pond now, it'll be interesting to see how it does in the summer, though we need to dig it out a bit more.
The little animals, possibly squirrels, are still gnawing at the holly:
This has been done to all of the young holly trees along the path between Sweep Wood and Grist Wood. I'm really beginning to dislike squirrels....

And rabbits too for that matter, as they did this to a chestnut stool:
Fortunately this is near the pond, where we want to keep a clearing anyway. In the main part of the wood very few chestnut stools have been attacked.

Last week, while I was away, Tracy had been up and found the squirrels had gnawed through the rope to get the bird feeder down. Until we manage to reduce their population and increase our supply of meat I've gone a step further to keep the bird feeder up:I know they can climb the chain, but as long as it stays up in the air they can only get at limited amounts of the food - it's when they get it down on the ground and roll it around that all the seed comes out. We'll visit again in a few days and see what's happened...

The final thing we had to do as we left was help one of our woodland neighbours who'd skidded off the track on the wayleave. It was good that we had the winch and rope handy, and nice to be able to help out.

Mike

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Feeding the birds, and problems with squirrels

This post is mostly about birds in our wood:
but first let me digress onto squirrel damage...

Here's a young holly tree that's been gnawed, which we saw as we walked between Sweep and Grist wood:
This was too high off the ground to be a rabbit, so it was deer or squirrel I guess.

The following was certainly from squirrels though:
So much for squirrel proof! I guess they didn't know the squirrels would be able to unscrew the hook from the top of the bird feeder so it falls to the ground and lets them in...

And here's some more evidence - squirrel droppings:
So, we set about putting the feeders back up in places where it might be harder for the squirrels to get to them. We want the birds to be able to get some food during the current cold weather.
We'll see how we go. If the squirrels get them again, I'll be back with the air rifle next time and we'll be having squirrel for dinner (I'm not joking).

Anyway, the birds in our wood are either fearless or very hungry, because no sooner had we got the food out than they came down to eat it, even while we were still bustling around. Here's a Coal Tit scavenging for seeds dropped on the ground:
A Robin came straight to the usual place he hangs out on a dead wood pile, where we'd put some fat:
and a Great Tit found the seeds we'd put under a piece of wood leaning against a tree (we knew they liked going into this gap already). By the way, the rest of the photos are ones Tracy took.
Some Blue Tits also came, and found the hanging fat rings to their liking:
Within just a few minutes the birds were back at one of the feeders, so they must have been using it before the squirrels got to it:
Then a new arrival turned up - a Nuthatch. As if to prove his tree climbing abilities he came in via the rope:
He did get to eat, but before long a bossy Great Tit flew in, and so he had to fly out:
Last of all, the Coal Tit decided to come to the feeder as well:
and once the Great Tit had got out of the way, he was able to come down and feed:
Here's the Coal Tit making his escape - we did well with in-flight photos today!
And finally, the next couple of pictures aren't great, but I wanted to include them as it's a bird we've not seen in the wood before - a Treecreeper, creeping around on a tree, as you might expect:
That's all for now. I'm travelling around the UK for work for the next week, so I hope the snow doesn't cause any more chaos...

Mike

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