Woodpeckers and butterflies

When we arrived at the wood yesterday, I saw a black and white bird take off from near our camp. At first I thought it was a Magpie, as we do get them there occasionally, but when it landed in a nearby oak I realised it was a Greater Spotted Woodpecker! Sadly the light wasn't that great, but I still got some of my best photos yet of this bird, and it was great to see one down in the coppiced area by our camp - a first since we bought the wood.

Later on the sun came out, and with it the butterflies. I was pleased to get my first photo of a Red Admiral this Spring, and also this was the first time we've been able to take a photo of one at the bottom of the hill in Sweep Wood, as the coppicing has let the light in:

They're not the only things flying around though - there's swarms of St Marks Flies up the hill in Sweep Wood (thanks to Patrick Roper for help with the ID):

The dangling bits are just their legs:

Here's a male one landed:

Their name comes from the fact that they're often seen around St Mark's day - 25th April.

Also in Sweep Wood are lots of flowers, including some new ones since the coppicing. The Bluebell flowers are fading now, and the seed pods are swelling:

But they are being replaced by some white flowers:

Not sure on the ID for these, any comments welcome!

The Foxgloves are preparing to flower, though I expect we still have a few weeks to wait:

There's also this new one, which I think is a Stitchwort, but not sure about that:

The Buttercup is another new arrival, though I guess it will only last until the trees close canopy in a couple of years:

The plum tree at the top of the hill finished flowering a while ago, and a strange thing has happened - not only has it been growing fruit, it's also grown some strange pods, which are now going a bit mouldy. Any comments on what's going on here would be appreciated! Here's a pod next to a fruit:

Some fruits and a pod on their own:

and here's the inside of them:

Back in our camp, the pears on one of the fruit trees are looking more conventional:

The trees in the part of Sweep Wood we coppiced in 2009/10 are doing really well now. The trees we singled to grow on as possible future standards have a lot of side-growth, now there's more light. Here's a Sweet Chestnut and an Ash:

and even the Hazel that got chewed by rabbits last year is having another go at growing:

The whole area is really looking amazing now, a bit of a low-level jungle!

Mike

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All the trees are growing!

My parents are visiting, and yesterday we took a walk in Sweep Wood to see how it's getting on after our two winters coppicing there. And it's looking great!

All the trees we cut last winter are growing again now, here's Sweet Chestnut, Hornbeam and Alder:

The year-old trees are doing well too, here's some Ash back in leaf:

And of course, until the trees grow back to close the canopy, everything on the ground is going crazy:

Compare this to a similar bit of the wood a few years ago:

Quite a difference, eh?

Here's another one from a few years ago:

but this area doesn't look so different yet for ground flora, as we only just cut it - it'll need another year's growth to change visibly.

The bluebells have just started to pass their peak in this part of the wood now, so here's a few photos, as there may not be many more.

The ride between Sweep Wood and Chestnut Coppice is looking pretty good too:

and not far from there is some Hawthorn in bloom - a bit later than the ones you might have seen in hedgerows, as it's shaded to some extent. But once again, there's a coppicing benefit here, as this is a tree that didn't flower at all until we cut along that ride:

One final exciting thing we saw, which bodes well for the summer, was hundreds of caterpillars on our crab apple tree. I'm no good at identifying them, so any help appreciated! They did an amazing job of looking like twigs:

Though when they do it on the edge of a leaf it's probably a bit less effective as camouflage:

Anyway, that's all for now. We walked some of the High Weald Landscape Trail today, so there'll be pics from that in due course...

Mike

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This week in the woods

I've not taken enough photos for daily posts this week, so here's a round-up of the activity in the woods. We had our friend Jim come and help us drink tea:

Actually, he worked really hard, setting up and pulling ropes, splitting logs and feeding the fire! Thanks Jim, much appreciated!

Here's the rope-pulling in action:

Here's the gap left after we were done:

If you're wondering why I've left a log propped up in a strange place, it's because it's got a lot of dead wood in it, and I thought it would be nice to leave it kind of standing:

Meanwhile Tracy was busy having a 'felling frenzy', knocking over 10 trees in under two hours:

I did some more work at the same spot later in the week, slowly advancing up us the hill:

On Friday I dealt with some edge trees. We had a fairly large Sweet Chestnut stool and wanted to leave the three largest stems on it to grow on to become larger, and also an Ash with three stems that we wanted to 'single' so it could grow on as well. Here's the result:

As you can see, the base of the Ash below where I removed the other two stems is pretty chunky:

and here's the big Chestnut stool:

I'm particularly keen on the stems on it as they're starting to develop the grooves in their bark which is so rare in our wood, as there's no mature Chestnut:

The logs are certainly piling up now, ready for future home heating:

It's still been a chilly week, though it warmed up a bit on Friday. No snow, but plenty of misty mornings:

The Pheasants are out in force in the woods now. I know a lot just live around the woods, but I wonder if some are released for a shoot in the area, and end up in our wood.

This one managed to land in our dead hedge, only to find that twigs weren't really strong enough for him to stay there:

And of course the Robins have got accustomed to us working again, and follow us around looking for bugs we might have disturbed:

If I can find some time on a brighter day, I hope to get some better bird photos at our feeder. I've been experimenting with attaching my cameras to the smaller of my two telescopes. I've used them with the big telescope before for astrophotography, getting pictures like these of Saturn, the Moon and the Orion Nebula:

However, that telescope is a bit big to take to the woods, so I finally got around to seeing how well the cameras worked with the small telescope, which could be taken to the woods. The SLR can only be fitted to the telescope in prime focus mode, which basically means no lens on the camera and no eyepiece in the telescope, and the results were a bit disappointing, as you can see in this picture of a starling, admittedly taken at about 50m:

This is probably because the level of magnification is just way too high, resulting in a washed-out image. Might be worth a go in better light though...

Anyway, the other method is afocal, which means you have an eyepiece in the telescope and use an adaptor to clamp the camera onto the eyepiece. This won't work with the SLR, and it'd probably be too heavy, so it's only for the compact. However, because there's an eyepiece, the magnification can be much lower, so I got some better pictures. A Collared Dove at 50m:

and a Sparrow at 15m:

I still need to play around with the settings some more, but if I can find the time on a sunny day, I might get some good pics, especially going into the Spring.

Mike

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