Foxgloves are flowering

A little earlier than expected, the foxgloves that started growing last year after we'd coppiced have now started flowering:

There's only a few our so far, and the size varies a lot at the moment, from the tall to the short:

The flowers are stunning though, this is the first time I've tried getting some close-up photos of them.

When this whole bank of them is flowering, it's going to look amazing:

The buttercups are out in force now as well, and this time I managed to get a picture of one without too much of the petals being overexposed:

In an earlier post I had pictures of a plant some readers thought was pignut. Well, I can confirm it is, after taking a better pic of the flowers, and also some of the leaves:

We had some visitors come to walk round and see the effects of the coppicing this weekend, and there was plenty of insect life for them to see. The Peacock butterflies are looking a bit sorry for themselves, as these are ones that have hibernated through the winter:

But there were some healthier looking Green Veined Whites around:

and a Long Horned Moth was ID'd for us:

I'm sure someone said this dragonfly was a Chaser, but I forget the exact name...

and I've no idea what this little guy is:

I'm not great on caterpillar ID either, but here's some pics anyway. I'm going on a course to learn more about caterpillars in a couple of weeks, so maybe I'll improve...

That's all for now. We'll be up in the woods again soon to see how the foxgloves are getting on...

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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SWOG Butterfly ID day

Yesterday we hosted a butterfly ID day in our wood, run by Steve Wheatley from Butterfly Conservation and attended by about 10 SWOG (Small Woodland Owners Group) members.
We started with Steve giving us a talk about butterflies, and why identifying them and keeping centralised records is important. He needs lots of people like us to note down what we see and send records to him periodically, so that they can keep track of species numbers and use the information in scientific research and also in planning permission issues and other stuff like that. He also gave us some tips on how to ID butterflies, including the differences between the various white species, and using knowledge on which months the butterflies can be seen to help narrow down the choices.
We took a walk along the wayleave and also along our wildlife corridor, stopping at various points to talk about what we were seeing.
There was patchy cloud, so it wasn't a perfect day for butterfly spotting, but we still saw quite a few. Here's the ones I got pictures of. A Peacock, looking a bit ragged:A Speckled Yellow - actually a day-flying moth rather than a butterfly:
A Brimstone - this is the first time I have ever seen one of these land so I could take a picture! A shame it wouldn't spread its wings out, but at least I now know a potential spot to go and try again.
We also saw some other interesting things as we went around, such as this bird nest up a pylon. Any ideas what it might be?
and in the wildlife corridor, where we were felling just a few months ago, as well as several butterflies we found an adder, which had probably been basking in the sun:
It didn't like the attention, and slithered off to a hole in a coppice stump - it certainly seemed to know exactly where to go and hide!
Mike

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Tree planting and more butterflies

Everything is getting very green in the woods now, the wayleave looks different even since three days ago
We got some more pictures of the "mystery tree", suggestions so far are purging buckthorn or crab apple. Comments welcome:
We did a bit of tree planting today. I know it's a bit late in the year to be doing this, but we were relocating tiny trees from places where they will never make it, like the middle of a path, so if they don't make it in their new places then there's nothing lost. We brought a few Hawthorn and Ash back from Sean and Sarah's wood, where they have thousands of them self-seeding, and we added some birch and elder from Sweep Wood. Rather than using the plastic tree guards we have, we tried making some out of brash and dead bracken:
It'll be interesting to see how effective they are against rabbits.

There were dozens of birds around in the cant we cut a year ago, more than I remember at this time last year. I wonder if this is because a year ago we'd only just finished felling there, so they hadn't claimed any territory. This year, it is full of pheasants:

Robins
and many more.

OK, on to butterflies. These were in evidence again in the wildlife corridor we created last winter, affirming the effectiveness of the plan. Peacocks were around:
and for the first time I got a good picture of a Comma, again 100m inside the wood, where we've never seen them before:
A quick update on the pond - it seriously needs digging out again, as the boar have trampled it a lot, but stuff is still growing in it regardless:

And finally, in Sweep Wood we saw more boar digging, and some droppings:
That's all for now, there's a week of work ahead, and then my parents and brother and his family are visiting for a week.

Mike

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