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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More Bluebells in the wood!

We went to the woods again yesterday, and saw that the Bluebells are steadily increasing in numbers.

Experimenting with the camera again here - which do you prefer, background more or less blurred? The one with it less blurred used a smaller aperture (higher F number) and slower shutter speed, giving a greater depth of field so more of the Bluebells are in focus:

The trees have come on a long way in just a week. Here's how the Hornbeam looks now:

And here's some Sweet Chestnut:

Also, here's a coppiced Sweet Chestnut just putting out its first shoots to recover from being cut a few months ago:

The Crab Apple near our camp is starting to flower:

and the Hawthorn is greening up nicely:

This is a tree (Alder, perhaps?) we cut some years ago, but it's been chewed by rabbits. It's still going to have another go at growing though:

Just for comparison, so you can see the increasing greenery, here's a photo from a week ago and one from yesterday:

We also saw our first Orange Tip butterfly yesterday:

Of course, we couldn't visit the wood without doing a job of some sort. This time we took up a trailer load of pallets we'd collected from a local shop, to make a floor for our new firewood store:

Tracy's been busy back at home too, planting out seeds:

and preparing a plot for them to go into later:

That's all for now. Hopefully the next post will have some pics of newborn lambs... more on that later!

Mike

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Clearing up from the weekend

We had a very busy weekend, with all kinds of visitors to the wood. Although I've done a few posts, there's still some odds and ends I'd like to mention. I'll start with yet another bluebells photo though, this time form the top end of our wood, where I'd not been since the bluebells came out:OK, on to other stuff. I already mentioned the SWOG butterfly ID day, but what I hadn't mentioned was that our friends Rich and Penny camped in the wood the night before, as they live a fair distance away. I was very impressed that they didn't use a normal tent, they used a mosquito net tent, and rigged a tarpaulin over that - and a good job too, as it rained! Rich proved to be a natural with the air rifle:
and Penny hit the target first time too, but I'm not allowed to post the photo of her as she's pulling a funny face! :-)

As you probably already know, Tracy found a WW2 bullet casing in the woods, but there was plenty of digging for other stuff with our friends Dave & Anna and Greg & Amy, who came for the day on Monday:Nothing yet in this hole - it's a strong signal, but must be deep, so it could be something big. Hope it's not a live WW2 bomb!

While we were walking round we saw this pheasant's egg, I assume a chick hatched from it:
and also saw another that someone had left on top of this stump. Looks like something attacked it, and it's not going to hatch now...
The pond is looking very green again
and I was pleased to see this hawthorn growing nicely. The spray of fresh shoots are coming out where I damaged a branch during felling in the winter. I'd cut the branch of cleanly after this, so I'm pleased to see that this has worked:
The same happened to a young oak last winter, and I was very annoyed, having missed it with at least ten trees and then hit it with the last one. Anyway, I'd pollarded it, hoping that it would regrow and that the shoots would be out of reach of the rabbits:
so I was delighted to see this on the side of it:
It's much slower growing than the chestnut or birch, but we're going to keep cutting them along the sides of the path every few years, so this oak should get enough light to keep growing. Who knows, as a pollard it may grow to be an interestingly shaped tree one day? I'll keep an eye on it.

Mike

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