Tree planting

For a long time now we've been wanting to increase the diversity of trees in the wood, and we've finally got round to it. This week we planted 15 assorted native fruit and nut trees (sorry, no chocolate trees to go with them...), scattered through the area we coppiced two years ago. Here's the packages as they arrived, and the wire mesh fence we bought to protect them from marauding rabbits and deer:
Each package had to be opened carefully, although the trees were pretty well packed with straw and shredded paper.
Inside, the roots were individually bagged to keep them moist:
We've chosen sites that get a good amount of sunlight to put them in, and we'll keep the coppice cut frequently near them. For each one we had to dig a hole:
and then get the tree out of its bag and plant it quickly - you mustn't let the roots dry out. Once the tree was in the ground, we spread some of the packaging straw around the base to help keep the soil from drying out, and hopefully slow down the growth of any other plants right near the tree:
While Tracy was doing most of the planting, I got busy with the chainsaw and felled a few trees to make stakes. We needed 60 in total, and although we'd made some a few weeks earlier, we still needed another 30 or so. I felled a few chestnut of an appropriate size, and made lots of piles of four stakes:
We then used the post driver to put the stakes into the ground and fastened the wire fence round them:
This will hopefully keep out rabbits and the worst of the deer. The wood looks slightly odd now with all these little cages in it, and also the adapted milk bottles sheltering self-seeded oak:
Hopefully in a few years we'll be getting some food from them, which we will of course share with the wildlife in the wood - I don't think we get a choice in that!

Autumn is clearly well under way when you look at the trees:
although we haven't had a frost yet - as soon as we do I expect the few remaining leaves will drop off. Autumn has also brought wind and rain, with results like this:
The nearer stool was dead, but as it fell it hit a live one and combined with the force of the wind pushed it over too. We'll fell them both over this winter, and allow the root plate of the live one to settle back into the ground, where it will hopefully recover.

Despite the heavy rain over the past few weeks, the seasonal streams in the wood are still not flowing - this time last year there was a waterfall going into the culvert under our main ride! I guess the ground is so dry from the lack of rain this summer that it is still acting like a sponge...

I'm back to one day a week for my desk job now, and my Dad's coming down to help for a few days next week, so we should be getting a lot done - I just hope the weather isn't too bad!

Mike

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Wild boar - lots of them this time!

As I said, we put our trail camera back near the mud bath the boar like to use, and we were rewarded with some results! In this video you can see four boar together at one point. At the end of the video is a single boar on its own - this was actually taken the next evening. This makes me think the big boar at the end might have been a mature male, roaming on his own, while the group could be females and adolescents. Anyway, watch the video and see what you think:

We didn't just get a boar, we also got a rabbit as well. OK, not as exciting, but here's the video anyway:

Mike

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Rabbit stew

I went out last night with Paul from church to shoot rabbits. He has a firearms licence, so we took his .22 rifle and went to a friend's farm. After Paul gave me a safety talk, we walked round the fields a bit and took a few shots, but the real action came after the sun had gone down.

We drove round the fields in Paul's 4x4, using the headlights to illuminate the field. Every time we saw a rabbit we stopped, I leapt and and took a shot through the open window, resting on the door to help me aim. I was a bit slow, it being my first time, but I managed to shoot four. Paul got a couple that I felt were too far away for me to hit accurately in the head, which is the only humane way to kill them.

We left two behind, one because I'd had to shoot it twice (my first shot hadn't done the job), and the other because it had a weird growth in it when we gutted it. So I had two to bring home. We gutted them in the field, and then skinned them back at Paul's place.

And now, Tracy and I have just eaten one of them in a stew, including potatoes from the allotment, and the meat from the other one is in the freezer. It feels a bit weird eating something that was running round a field less than 24 hours ago, but I guess we'll get used to it. It's certainly more sustainable than eating meat that's been farmed in terms of environmental impacts.

Mike

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Rabbits and badgers

Here's what we saw on Tuesday before dusk - the moths will come in a later post, as I'm waiting for a list of them so I can ID all the ones I got photos of (there are a lot, and apparently 102 species were recorded that night!).

Down at the bottom of the wayleave we spied a rabbit through the brambles:
It was really not very afraid of us, perhaps it hasn't learned yet that humans might be dangerous...
As it got towards 8pm we went over to the badger sett to watch. Badgers have very poor eyesight, but a very good sense of smell, so as long as you sit downwind and keep fairly quiet you can get within 10 metres! While we were waiting I got a couple of photos of the scene, where you can see the disturbed earth around the sett:
We waited for about 15 minutes before we heard a rustling, and it got closer VERY slowly. After another 15 minutes a badger plodded into view, snuffling around in the undergrowth looking for food. We tried to get a photo, but the shutter noise made it wary, and it disappeared into the sett. We waited though, and it came out again a couple more times. After talking to David from Scrag Copse we've learned that we should wait until we've watched them a few times before trying to photograph them, so they can get used to our presence. Also, we need to go earlier, as we saw the badger coming back to the sett, not coming out!

We're going up this evening to do a bit more work on the shelter, so after that we might wander over again and see what we see...

Mike

UPDATE: we got a video of the badgers, see it here.

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Assorted woodland photos

There's a few odds and ends collected over the weekend, and also yesterday evening, when we popped up to the wood for a walk around at sunset.

A birch trying to grow as fast as it can after we pollarded it a couple of months ago:

more follows, including oak apples, a rabbit, a beetle and where some of our woodland produce has gone...

and a coppiced chestnut doing the same:
An "oak apple" we found lying on the ground under one of the oaks. These aren't apples at all, but are a mutation of the the oak leaf cause by chemicals injected by the larvae of a gall wasp, according to Wikipedia. The wasp matures inside the "apple", and apparently is good fishing bait and even survival food!
A rabbit and a beetle on the wayleave:
sunset through the trees:
a gibbous moon:
and the track between Sweep Wood and Grist Wood looking rather dark!
and finally, some of our produce in use. First, bean poles at a neighbouring allotment patch:
and a trailer load of oak sawdust, which has gone to a friend who plans to build something to smoke the game he shoots.
Mike

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Rye Harbour Nature Reserve - kestrels

Last weekend we went for a walk through the nature reserve that's near our house. It's an area that used to be sea; this castle was built to defend the coast, but fell out of use when the cannons couldn't reach the sea any more:
and you can see that there's shingle under the soil wherever it's been dug up:
The nature reserve is largely set up for birds, as you can see:
Though there are rabbits too:
We saw plenty of wildlife of the flying (or swimming) sort:
But the real treat was seeing a pair of kestrels. We didn't get very close, so I apologise in advance for the quality of the photos. They were perched on this building on the edge of the reserve:
the male:
the female:
We also saw these, but I don't think they're native...
Mike

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