Sunrise at Rye Harbour

Earlier this week I dropped Tracy's car off for it's MOT in Rye Harbour, and walked back home. As it was sunny and -6C, I thought I'd take the route along the edge of the nature reserve to get some photos of the sunrise. So here they are...

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

In the woods before sunrise

I've been waiting ages for it to be frosty enough to drive into the woods and collect logs without making mud, so when I woke up yesterday and saw from our weather monitor that it was -6C in the garden, I got dressed immediately, de-iced the car and set off for the woods, arriving well before sunrise:

The ground was rock hard from the frost:

Just over half an hour later, I was ready to head back home again:

But as the sun was now just glinting through the trees...

I paused to get some photos of the finished drainage ditch. Last time I posted pictures of it, it was just a pipe in a ditch that was slowly filling with water. Well, on a subsequent visit I was pleased to see the ditch had filled to the point of draining out of the low end:

So I'd extended the end of it:

allowing it to drain out:

A lot of digging later, it finally looked like it did yesterday:

Here's the outflow:

And here's a ditch on the uphill side to collect water - we'll extend this further when we have time:

Anyway, it held up nicely with the car and trailer of logs going over it, so hopefully that's the job done, and the mud can now start to dry out, once it's thawed.

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Summer camping in the woods

Well, the British Summer has been wetter than usual, but this week we managed to get a couple of days off to coincide with some sunshine, and went to camp in the woods for a night...

This was the first time we'd both been camping there since I got a new phone, so we took advantage of it to set up a solar-powered woodland wifi hotspot, so Tracy could use her ipod and keep up to date on facebook!

We had a great dinner, cooked mostly on the BBQ:

Using our own charcoal of course

Here's the end result, including sweetcorn, chicken kebabs and halloumi cheese!

Of course, for taking photos of food I should really be using a new iPhone 5... :-)

After dinner we settled down around the fire for the evening...

As usual on a first night sleeping in the woods, we woke up early. As it was sunny, I wandered around getting some photos of the sun coming up...

Later in the morning we went to watch the wildlife. There were several flocks of a variety of small birds moving through the wood, though it's hard to get photos of them at this time of year, due to the leaves on the trees. I managed to catch this Robin briefly:

and then got several of a Treecreeper preening:

I also got these pictures, which at first I had thought were of the treecreeper too, but on closer examination I think they might be something else, though I'm not sure what...

Lots of insects around too, like this Red Admiral butterfly:

A Small White:

A Silver Y moth (thanks to Heather for the ID)

Loads of dragonflies:

and lots of bumble bees too:

When we were packing up the tent, we also rescued this cricket(?) from getting squashed:

and I found this weird insect, which looks like a bit of algae off a tree, trying to eat me:

And finally, insects are of course food for spiders...

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Frosty morning in the woods

Last weekend I went to the woods early on a morning, and found that for the first time this winter it was actually properly frosty there, with the ground rock hard! Although I was there to do a job, here's a few photos...

Another couple of photos that might be of interest are from the bottom of the hill in Sweep Wood. Here's one from a year ago, just after we finished coppicing - note how bare the ground is:

Here's the same place a couple of weeks ago:

And this is in January, with green leaves still showing after last summer's growth! I think it's going to look great this summer....

And finally, another sunrise timelapse, taken yesterday morning. I still want to do a couple more over the winter, as I'm in the process of figuring out the best camera settings to account for the huge change in light levels through the sequence.

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.