Wild Boar Week in Rye

Wild Boar Week is coming soon in Rye! Come and try some of the delicious food on offer...

In preparation for the week, I took a few journalists and bloggers on a tour of the woods to see where the boar live, the morning after we'd all had a great wild boar dinner at The Gallivant.

Here's one of their write-ups with a few pics from the wood, and here's another. And here's the fleeting glimpse I got of boar last December...

Mike

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Bluebells, and wild boar poo

The Bluebells in the wood are nearing their peak now, a little bit later than 2012 and a lot later than 2011, thanks to the cold Spring. Here's a few pics, click each one for options to view larger versions in Flickr if you like, or click here to go to my Flickr photostream.

There's still the odd patch of Wood Anemone lurking around as well:

The leaves on the Sweet Chestnut coppice are coming on really well now, doubling in size in less than a week:

Meanwhile, the wild boar have been busy digging:

This time they even left some droppings as a calling card!

Although the bird feeder obviously got a lot of use during winter, it then got used less as Spring arrived, but is busy again now - I'm guessing that as the adults have chicks to feed, or will do soon, they are keen to get any easy food they can! Here's a Chaffinch at our feeder - we don't see these too often in the woods.

The Chaffinch was knocking some seeds out, and this Pheasant crept up underneath the feeder to gather them up...

It's great to finally be away from winter, let's hope the jet stream behaves and we get a better summer this year...

Mike

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Logs, wild boar and a hint of Spring

I had today off work, and went to the wood to process some logs. It's still looking pretty winter-like there:

But if you look a bit more closely there are bluebell shoots coming up!

This was the job of the day, loading logs into racks and cutting them... Fairly repetitive, but very satisfying!

The highlight of the day, however, was not logs but wildlife! As I was driving in I saw some very fat-looking male Pheasants, and once I started work I saw two Greater Spotted Woodpeckers up in an oak tree. Not sure if they were arguing over territory or courting, but they were certainly making a lot of noise and not paying me much attention.

Better than that though was the wild boar! I had just walked from the wood out of our entrance into the wayleave, to take stuff to the car, and heard some noises behind me - I looked round and saw several wild boar running fast from the wayleave into the woods, just 20m away! I didn't have a camera in my hand, so no pictures, but I did see their tracks in our entrance:

Anyway, with the excitement over I covered up the log pile, which is looking much smaller now. I reckon what's left may well fit into our stores once cut up, and see us through next winter:

Compare it to what was there in October 2011!!!

Anyway, I'm done with winter now (as is our gas supply...), I could do with Spring...

Mike

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Wild boar in the woods!

Today we saw a group of 6-8 wild boar in the woods! We'd gone up to have a wander around and do a few jobs, such as making a new mallet from a single piece of birch:

As we were walking to the car, parked in the wayleave, we heard the sounds of an animal moving in the woodland on the other side, but thought nothing of it, as there are plenty of pheasants, squirrels, etc. which can make quite a bit of noise...

We got in the car and set off, when Tracy shouted to stop. Between 6 and 8 boar were only were only about 10m from the car! As we were inside the car, they weren't immediately scared of of us, but were clearly on the move, so we hurriedly got Tracy's camera out and then wound down the window and snapped some pictures. As soon as the window was down though, they started to move off, so we only had a few seconds. They were behind the trees, so the autofocus didn't do a great job, but I've cropped and enhanced the pictures a bit so you can make out the boar in them:

I jumped out of the car and ran along the wayleave with the SLR to try and get more pictures, but the pigs were too fast...

Anyway, the rest of our visit was uneventful, everything is just very wet!

Yes - that's water coming up out of a hole in the last one - this happens quite a bit in the woods, with water uphill taking an underground route for a short distance before resurfacing further down.

Mike

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Woodland bluebells 2012

With the wet weather and general busyness it's been a couple of weeks since we made it to the wood, but today I was up there with a friend and had time to check out this year's bluebells, which are looking as good as ever. Here's a selection...

I also saw some fresh evidence of wild boar digging as well:

and in Sweep Wood there are several trees that have blown over in the wind over the past few weeks. They're not obstructing anything, so that's a job for the summer I think... Might make a nice natural clearing I suppose?

Looking up the hill where we cut in 2010/11, there's a profusion of plants growing, so much so that the bluebells don't stand out as much as last year, with all the other stuff growing there:

Here's a slightly different view of the same hill a year ago for comparison:

The bluebells are all still there this year, it's just that you can't see them side-on, so they don't look as impressive as last year when there wasn't much else growing there. It'll be made up for when the foxgloves come out soon I expect...

Last of all, the dead oak at the edge of Sweep Wood really stands out now the surrounding trees have been coppiced:

It'll be interesting to see if we notice any woodpeckers or other birds having a go at it...

Mike

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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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Autumn has arrived in the woods

There's been a definite change in the woods this week, with the leaves changing colour and falling, letting more light in:

It's very different to a few months ago, and soon we'll probably be looking forward to spring... Hopefully we'll have a a bit of snow first though!

As we were walking over to our coppicing site, we spotted boar prints in the track, which is strange, as normally they follow their own tracks in the wood. It seems to be really hard to take a picture that shows their prints properly, I guess it'd need to be in 3D! Anyway, here's my best attempt, which just about shows the little toe print at the side of the foot towards the back:

The other large mammal in the wood was a horse, leaning in over the fence to get at the dead hedge we'd built from Hornbeam brash:

It wasn't afraid to dig in to find those last few leaves!

Here's the progress so far. After the two full log racks are two new ones we're filling. We think that once they're filled that might be a year's worth of home heating, leaving the surplus to sell or put to other uses.

After this winter we'll have a much better idea of exactly how much wood we need to get us through a year, and then we can cut the right amount of coppice for our own needs and a bit more for friends we supply.

Mike

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