Spring 2012 is here!

The wild plum tree at the top of Sweep Wood is flowering, so Spring is definitely here!

Just next to it, Dog's Mercury is carpeting the ground:

Elder is also coming into leaf:

As is the Honeysuckle that's winding its way up the coppice regrowth:

Looks like we're in line for some more Foxgloves in the same area again this summer too:

Deeper inside the wood, Lords and Ladies plants are well advanced:

and Bluebells are making progress, though the flowers are some weeks away yet...

There are some flowers out already though, like this Primrose:

and the first few Wood Anemones are opening:

It's going to be interesting to see what happens to the bare patches where we had logs stored until last summer amongst the regrowth - they're going to be a year behind the rest of the area:

Likewise there's different stuff growing where we'd had small fires to burn up brash, thus sterilising small patches of ground. Moss has been the first to move in:

The trees are busy too, though no leaves yet. There's buds opening on the Willow in the Wayleave:

and the Hazel trees are covered with Catkins:

We found the remains of an egg (possibly from a Pigeon?), but I suspect it must be from months ago by the look of it.

Plenty of other bird activity though, with several Robins:

a Song Thrush, which is rare in our woods, though where we saw it was near gardens in Sweep Wood. They're actually on the RSPB Red List at the moment...

Best of all, we saw a Great Tit making a nest in a hollow in an old Cherry tree on a field boundary - we knew to look there, as one nested there last year too:

And finally, here's a nice video Tracy got near home in Rye, of a Little Egret:

That's all for now...

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

The weekend's work, and lots of wildlife

The highlight of the weekend for Tracy was that she discovered she can split logs with a maul! I think she'd just assumed she couldn't before - it's one of those things that if you try it in a half-hearted way it doesn't work - you have to really mean it!
While Tracy was splitting logs, I was loading longer ones into drying racks. There's still a few more racks to do, and we want to get them loaded up soon to make the most of the summer weather for drying:There were jobs to do back at camp as well, like making some kindling while dinner was cooking - it's always useful to have a pile of ready-chopped and dry small bits of wood
The summer wildlife is beginning to come out now, like this lizard:
the beetles:
And this hornet. Before you think it's just a wasp, compare it to the size of the dry chestnut leaves, or the honeysuckle leaves!
Despite it's fearsome looks, the European Hornet is apparently quite docile.

There are loads of birds around, but with the leaves on the trees it's much harder to get pictures of them. It took us 10 minutes to get this mediocre picture of a Song Thrush, but I was still pleased as this is the first one we have of this bird in the woods - they're fairly shy.
I managed to get one of a Robin too:One bird that's different is the Blackbird - now that there's some ground cover coming up, he seems happy to roam around the woodland floor near our camp:The trees are growing at an incredible rate. The buds on the coppiced Sweet Chestnut only started opening at the beginning of April, and six weeks on, each bud has become a shoot six inches long or more:
Another tree growing like mad is a Birch in the wildlife corridor that we deliberately ring-barked in the winter to create some standing dead wood. You can see how it has put out new shoots just below where I cut the bark:and the top of the tree has only a few leaves (compare it to the other Birch behind it):
On the other hand, bits are falling out of some trees - this oak branch came down in the wind:
but at other places there are young oak just starting out in life, and we've built little fences round them to hide them from marauding rabbits:
That's all for now. I'm off to Leeds this weekend for a stag party, including outdoor kart racing and clay pigeon shooting! I think Tracy may well go to the woods though.

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Progress on the shed, and another oil record

Another day, another oil price record ($117.76 peak, $117.48 settle) - at least that's what seems to be happening this April. BBC reporting on it here. Why? Because we've on the plateau, production can't go higher, but demand is there. Just think how much fuel's going to cost when we hit the decline!

Anyway, that's what's going on the big wide world. In our little world in Rye, the shed is making progress, as part of our preparations for a post-peak-oil world...

We went down early evening, before dinner, and set about fitting the roof. this thrush was very interested, and watched us from a nearby shed, singing his little heart out. Tracy was able to get very close for a picture - I guess the birds are quite tame around the allotment, bring used to seeing people working

As the shed is old and somewhat warped, and rotten in places, things didn't quite fit together like new, and a little trimming was required...But before too long it was coming together:
The next step is to put the felt onto the roof, which will cover the gap you can see in the above picture.

We're hoping to get the shed finished in the evenings this week, so on Saturday we can get up to the wood and make some more progress on brash burning, log stacking and making piles of dead wood to leave for wildlife.

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.