First frost in the woods

Yesterday was the first proper frost in the woods. I know it's been cold in more northerly parts of the UK already, but it's a bit warmer where we are. The grass and leaves were crispy with ice, and the soil had mostly frozen solid.

In the shade, the frost actually stayed all day, so I expect it will build up over the coming week, as it looks like the weather will stay cold.

Anyway, this kind of weather is great for working in the woods, as you don't get too hot, the ground is firm underfoot, and it's often sunny. Here's the view as I arrived not too long after sunrise:

My first job was to fill the bird feeder. I also had to refill it seven hours later when I left, as they'd eaten this much in that time:

I did of course stop to get some pictures before starting work, as the birds arrived as soon as I'd filled it. Mostly Coal Tits, with one Blue Tit:

I also tried getting some fast shutter photos of birds in flight, but as the sun wasn't up very far I had to do them at ISO1600, so they were a bit noisy, but here's the results anyway:

I need to be there nearer to midday to have another go...

I heard some rustling noises nearby, and saw a pheasant trying to be inconspicuous with its white, red and blue/green head...

Coincidentally, Tracy saw a Reeves's Pheasant a few miles from the wood today. Would be interesting to get a picture of one if they spread over to us...

On to the work... as I was there on my own yesterday, rather than tackle too many big trees, I worked on some awkward Hazel stools along the edge, as these take quite a bit of time but there's not much to go wrong. I've cleared a nice gap here:

and another one here, though a few stems have been left as I need a rope on them to pull them back into the wood:

There was also some windblown Chestnut that I finished dealing with. The stool is still alive, so perhaps it will recover...

In the meantime, it made a neat vantage point to take a photo from:

Here's a view from the reference point at the bottom, followed by one from before we started:

It really does feel like the end is in sight, though there's a few more weeks to do yet, especially roping the edge trees back in.

Mike

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No sign of batman...

But we do have Robin, and this week he posed for some action shots!
Some of them have a bit of blurring, even at a shutter speed of 1/640, ISO800 and not much zoom - I'll try again on a sunnier day for more, but here's the pics I have for now:
I also got several where he was about to leap into flight, but the noise of the camera shutter made him pause:
After all that hard work, he wanted something in return.
and he got it, of course:
Mike

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Sean and Sarah's wood

Yesterday we went to visit our friends Sean and Sarah in their wood in West Sussex, about 60 miles from us. It's a very different wood from ours, mostly hazel coppice with dense oak standards and self-seeded ash.They've done some coppicing but haven't started thinning the standards yet, though they've been talking to the Forestry Commission to get advice on this.

Their woodland has much more clay than ours, and is a lot wetter. As a result there are many more flowers, including orchids:
violets:and primroses:
They've been making charcoal with some of the hazel they've coppiced, selling it in a local shop. Sean explained how the kilns worked
and showed us the results of the latest burn in the small kiln:There were loads of birds in their wood, and quite a bit of nest-making activity right near where we were having lunch:
They have a bird feeder up too:
which gave some great opportunities for photos of birds flying. If only the sun had been out I'd have been able to use a faster shutter and avoided the wings blurring...

Sean suggested our mystery tree might be a crab apple. This isn't something I'd considered as I'd assumed I'd have noticed the fruit. But perhaps not, so we'll keep an eye one it.

Mike

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On the beach

Well, it might have been a wet bank holiday weekend for some parts of the UK, but with Rye being, on average, in the sunniest corner of the country, the Saturday and Sunday were actually very good! We went down to Pett Level beach on Sunday afternoon, just to sit in the sunshine and take a few pictures:
More follows in the rest of the post, including pictures of birds, boats and an autogyro...They seem to like nesting on the cliff:
or just hanging around watching the humans down on the beach:
I like this shot, looking up at the cliff:
Birds weren't the only flying thing down there, there was an autogyro too:
and a jet ski:
and a rescue boat:
which came to give a warning to a group of boys playing on the rocks - they got taken away in the boat!

As we left there were hints of the rain due to come that night:
Mike

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