Tame pheasants and a new shelter roof

I've posted photos of the tame pheasants in our woodland before:

But recently I also made a video of them so you can see how they behave - I took this using my mobile phone, so that gives you an idea of how close they are, no zoom lens involved:

The coppicing is generally proceeding according to plan, at least on the few days with nice weather! Here's a couple of shots of the progress so far:

As we've progressed through this area, we've discovered a new wallow the wild boar are using:

I gather from people who've lived here longer than us that there has been a spring here for some time, so it seems the boar have located it and turned it into bathing facilities!

Meanwhile, on a day when it was too windy to fell trees safely, I decided it was finally time to repair the roof of a shelter we built back in 2008. Although it's not used to actually store anything, and only has a roof, not walls, it's still useful on camping trips and when Tracy has her class up there, to shelter stuff from the rain or the sun. The sticks I'd nailed on to make a roof in 2008 had started to rot, so the first step was to get all of them off:

The new roof was going to be made using sweet chestnut offcuts from Rich's sawmill:

First though, I peeled the bark off them to improve durability, and used a chainsaw to cut them to length and taper the ends a bit where necessary:

Then it was a case of drilling holes and nailing the offcuts onto the frame to form a new roof:

I think you'll agree that this finished product:

looks a lot better than the original one did in 2008:

The final step was to reinstall the tarp to keep the rain out:

Now it's ready to serve campers and schoolchildren alike next summer!

Mike

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Clearing up after the storm, October 2013

As you might expect, we had a bit of storm damage in the woods after the 'St Jude's Day Storm', which hit the UK in the early hours of Monday 28 October. Nothing too major fortunately, some coppice stools and one oak that kind of broke in half...

Quite a few coppice stools are leaning, and will be dealt with in the next few days:

Some have come right down:

while others had a 'domino' effect:

Note - this is why you have to be TWO tree-lengths away from a person felling a tree...

Some of the stools I cleared up yesterday, after the wind had died down:

There was also a branch in the path by Sweep Wood:

it had come from this oak tree:

Here's a quick video of me using a chainsaw to clear the fallen branch and also a coppice stem that was leaning over a path, taken using a chest-mounted GoPro camera:

The oak tree that split up the middle was up the top of the hill in Chestnut Coppice:

It's made a bit of a mess and I need to go back up there to sort it out with a winch...

Still, could have been much worse, we're thankful this is all that fell!

Mike

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Close-up chainsawing, GoPro HD

While processing some of next winter's firewood a few days ago, I thought it was time to make some new GoPro video, so I decided to see what it looked like close to the chainsaw! Enjoy...

It was a baking hot day, so I just worked in the morning, and on the way out stopped in the wayleave, which is especially hot due to the hard ground on the track.

The plants there are growing like mad...

Bees all over the brambles, and butterflies too.

Lots of ragwort growing as well, which seems to be popular with the insects.

Mike

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Chainsaw videos blog

Just a quick note to say I've started a new blog in addition to this one, gathering together a mix of my favourite chainsaw-realted videos, include my own and others from YouTube. Take a look:

chainsawvideos.blogspot.co.uk

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Ever seen a duck chase a dog?

Our friend Carl took this video on their smallholding, where their duck (called Crispy) chases their dog (Jackson). Why Jackson doesn't eat Cripsy Duck I don't know, but it makes for hilarious viewing! Take a look:

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Greater spotted woodpecker video

"The best size camera is the one you use most". Well, this was certainly true yesterday, when Tracy used her pocket-sized Canon SX220 to capture our best video yet of a Greater Spotted Woodpecker:

I did actually do some software image stabilisation to get rid of the camera shake that's unavoidable at 14x zoom, using the excellent Deshaker plugin for VirtualDub. If you want to see how how the video looked before stabilisation, check this out:

Here's a still picture:

We did get a bit of work done too... There's a ride that still needs opening up, to link the work we did in 2008/9 to the area that was coppiced last winter:

I got to work with the chainsaw on the slightly larger trees at the end...

...while Tracy worked on some Hazel. She was saving bits like this:

to make bits like this:

They will eventually be coat hooks, once the upright bit is split - we'll do a video at some point...

I produced a nice pile of logs for a few hours work too:

Back up there again soon...

Mike

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Cockatiel videos

Tracy's been having great fun with hew new camera (a Canon SX220), here's some videos of our pet cockatiels up to their daily mischief...

She's looking forward to using it in the woods soon!

Mike

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100,000 views on my chainsaw video!

I made this video to illustrate felling using a 'boring cut', having learned it on my chainsaw training. For some reason people seem to like it, and today it passed 100,000 views on YouTube! Enjoy (and ignore the cheesy shot of me stood by the logs at the end...):

Mike

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Spring is on the way...

It really is! Look, bluebells coming up where we've just finished coppicing:

and Lords and Ladies (or Wild Arum or Cuckoo Pint, depending on what you call it) too:

Dog's Mercury as well:

and also Honeysuckle:

with even the most dead-looking vines are coming to life:

Now the coppicing is all done, I've turned the photos I took most days we were there into a short time-lapse video of the coppicing. It's weird to watch, as the wood has changed so much as we cut the trees down. If I can remember to take enough, maybe I'll make another time lapse video of it all growing back...

Mike

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Felling leaning Sycamore with a Tirfor winch and chainsaw

Yesterday we did one of our last couple of jobs in the wood this winter. A year ago we'd had to leave some heavily leaning trees, but now we have a decent Tirfor winch, we decided to finish them off. Here's the trees:

We used the winch and a steel rope to do the pulling, but also had another rope attached to help control the tree as it fell. Here's a video of the first one coming down, including our neighbour Francis helping out with his pole saw:

The other ones didn't come down quite so neatly, heading off sideways, but thanks to the rope that was attached in addition to the winch cable there was no damage done. This is one of the problems with Sycamore - the hinge is extremely weak and separates when the tree moves just a small amount. Here's the view afterwards:

There's one more job to be done during January - the two large Sycamore on the edge, further down the hill. Our friend Tim will be felling them for us, and we'll do the rest of the work once they're down.

Mike

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Forestry machinery videos

A few assorted videos taken of the past couple of weeks, including chainsaw sculpture, a hydraulic log splitter and electric secateurs.

This chainsaw sculpture demo was taken at Weald Woodfair, where a guy made a link chain out of a single log:

Here's a hydraulic log splitter in action, also at the Woodfair:

And here's a demonstration of electric secateurs, taken at the 2010 south east Coppice Conference. These are normally used for pruning in orchards or vineyards, but the sales guy was demonstrating that they worked on Hazel too:

Mike

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Ashden Awards 2010 ceremony video

Many of you know I work for the Ashden Awards. Well, here's a short video of what our work led to in the 2010 Awards Ceremony. Featured are Louis Theroux, Neil MacGregor, Shami Chakrabarti, Anna Ford and Sir David Attenborough.


Mike

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A colder week in the wood

It was great to have some colder weather this week in the wood - makes a nice change from the wind and rain of a few weeks ago! Included in this post are a couple of videos of birds, a video of firewood processing, and various pics of the work we've been doing.

Let's start with the frost (we've not had much snow here yet, despite the rest of the southeast getting plenty). Because parts of the wood are in permanent shade at this time of year the frost just accumulates for days on end.
We took advantage of the frost to go and get a load of firewood for one of our customers - the ground was rock hard, making getting in and out of the wood easy. On the way up the wayleave we encountered these two pheasants, who didn't seem too worried by the land rover, giving me plenty of time to photograph them:
Note - that isn't snow on the grass in the track, just accumulated frost! With the cold weather we thought we ought to set up our bird feeder in the same place we did last year. It's hung on a chain to prevent the squirrels getting it out of the tree:
Next was the firewood. Here's the video I promised - I made a similar one some time ago, but this time it's of one of the new large log stacks and using the 28" bar on the chainsaw:

Back in Sweep Wood the coppicing is carrying on OK. I spent most of this week catching up on splitting logs, which is basically turning piles like this:
into this:
This will let them season, ready for burning in a year's time. I also made a stool for a friend at work to use as a present for someone. The recently felled Chestnut had small splits inside it, so I cut a chunk off an Ash tree that blew down some time ago, so has had chance to dry out. I'm hoping to get an update in a year or so to see if the stool developed any splits!
Meanwhile, Tracy's been working hard further down the hill, and has cleared a fair sized gap in the Chestnut and Sycamore down there:
We had some good opportunities to photograph and video birds as well this week. The Robin is tamer than ever - here he is eating some dried chestnuts that I chopped up for him:
This time I got a video of him as well:

I also got a video of a male and female Blackbird, but they're not as tame so it's just a short one:

There were lots of small birds in the trees at the edges of the wood, such as this Nuthatch on a bit of dead Cherry:
Up at the top of a birch tree were several Blue Tits:
and in this picture another bird as well - I thought it might be a young Goldcrest, but I'm not sure now:
Anyway, that's this week in the wood. IF we get any significant snow I'll be sure to get some pictures. All we have at present down near our house is this:Mike

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