Alvecote Wood

Hurrah for Predators

2012-02-09T16:46:00.000Z

Predators. Killers. Humans, of course, are predators, but have lost touch with the natural cycle of killing just what we need, just enough for food. And we often have a muddled relationship with those natural predators that are so prominent at this time of year.

Predators often have many traits that we admire: cunning, strength, beauty, muscularity. We will happily give money to help save tigers, lions, jaguars, rare birds of prey in foreign lands. But, it seems, all predators are not equal.

Take the fox. To me, this is a stunningly beautiful animal. Lithe and graceful, with a beautiful rich red coat, athletic, intelligent and cunning. In the woods, the foxes are very active. The dog fox and vixen are seen together, and they are patrolling day and night, looking for prey that, at this time of year, gets less cautious in a desperate search for food. And they are successful, often caught on camera with squirrels or rabbits or birds. The foxes do us a great service: we have a lot of rabbits on our site, and they can get very destructive. By reducing the numbers of rabbits, they reduce the destruction the can cause, as well as reducing the overcrowding that can result in myxomatosis, a horrible disease that we know is in our locality, although we have never seen an affected rabbit in our woods. They also kill woodpigeons, which flock in their thousands onto local farmers' crops, as well as our own profuse crop of acorns. And grey squirrels, which can strip the bark from young trees and older branches, and sometimes cause the death of trees.

But for some reason, many people don't like foxes. Yes, they kill chickens if they aren't adequately protected (as a chicken-keeper myself, I watch out for the fox!). Yes, in towns they can be noisy during the mating season, as well as spreading rubbish around while foraging. But is this enough to want to kill them?

The fact is, we need all the predators we can get. In this country, all our top predators have become extinct - the wolf, the lynx, the wildcat (except in Scotland). Large birds of prey are not widespread, confined to small parts of the British Isles - we have buzzards and occasional red kites, and three species of owl, but no ospreys or eagles in our area. We are left with the red fox, the badger (which mainly eats earthworms), and the feral domestic cat (which eats small rodents).

The consequences of our persecution of predators are there for all to see: fields overrun with rabbits, areas of forest overrun by damaging deer (including the alien muntjac, against which we have to protect our own trees), huge flocks of woodpigeon breeding unhindered, and descending upon the fertile arable fields with gusto.

We try to replace the natural predation cycle ourselves. But we aren't very good at it; or rather we are too good at it. In a natural predator-prey relationship, the population of the one controls the population of the other - too much predation, and the prey will have more space, breed more, and make up the numbers, too little predation, and the prey gets overcrowded, suffers from disease, and breeds less. Predator numbers depend on available prey and both are regulated to the levels the ecosystem will sustain. When we try to do this, we usually kill far more than we need, and end up with an ever-escalating cycle of fast-breeding prey species and more human "control".

We also feel the need to eliminate other predators to keep the prey for ourselves, even though very few of us now hunt for our own needs. So we also kill foxes, badgers and birds of prey, because they occasionally kill animals that we consider to be "ours" - the pheasant, grouse, partridge and other game birds (most of which are introduced to an area by humans in the first place).

In our woods, we are trying to create a natural cycle of predator and prey. We know that, given time, the numbers of predators and prey will reach naturally-sustainable levels provided the predators are allowed to live, grow, breed and develop. Any human predation needs to fit into this model: small scale, using natural methods, for food only, and sustainable. We definitely don't need to be killing the very predators upon which this natural cycle depends.

So hurrah for our predators, and welcome to our foxes, badgers and buzzards. If only we could be more tolerant of these wonderful creatures, and the benefits they bring to the whole countryside, predator and prey alike.

New Year, New Opportunities, New Threats

2012-01-18T17:26:00.000Z

2012 is a new year full of opportunity for Alvecote Wood - opportunities to improve the woods, and also to help the community in many different ways. 2011 was a great year for us. It started with a bare former wheatfield, and ended with a lovely new wildlife site at Betty's Wood, complete with meadows, 5000 new trees, a new hedge and colonisation by a huge variety of plants and animals. Nature is just waiting for an opportunity, and in Betty's Wood, it saw one and took that opportunity with both hands.

So what of 2012? First of all, we have been planting again, and this provided an opportunity for a group of people from the Starfish Project in Tamworth: this project, which seeks to help people who have had misfortune in their lives, brought a group of folk to help with tree planting in Betty's Wood. We had small areas we did not complete in 2011, as well as the replacement of trees that didn't make it. We spent a beautiful Friday in the woods, planting, working and enjoying the pleasure of being outdoors, working with our hands, and doing something positive for everybody to enjoy.

Other friends, old and new, joined us the following couple of days as we created a new coppice area in Alvecote Wood, and completed the re-planting in Betty's Wood. More people will join us to enjoy coppicing over the next few weeks (we hope!).

We have also been approached by a company who train Forest School teachers: these teachers go on to teach children about nature, respect for the environment, how we are part of nature, and can work in harmony with it, and learn from it, and learn to respect ourselves, other people, and all of the species that surround us. This is a programme we whole-heartedly support, and if we can help to train people to teach children in the outdoor environment, that would be brilliant. We have also completed our CEVAS training (Countryside Educational Visit Accrediation Service) which allows schools to see that we can provide quality educational experiences in our woodland for children and adults who would like to visit and learn what we do there. We hope this will lead to more children and educational groups enjoying our woods in 2012.

We have also embarked on a series of talks to local wildlife and general interest groups about our woodlands, why we bought it and what we have been doing for the wildlife there, starting with Tamworth Wildlife Group. We hope that this will inspire more people to become interested in owning and managing wildlife sites as we tour around the local area, speaking to people, and running site visits for them when the weather warms up in the Spring.

As well as our programme of open days (last Sunday in every month from March), and open evenings (Wednesday evenings from April), we will be running more photography courses, and a meeting of the Small Woodland Owners Group to discuss landscape-scale conservation.

We are participating in, and supplying data to surveys on breeding birds, butterflies, moths, dragonflies and mammals - another opportunity for the woods to be valuable in building up a picture of what wildlife is around locally, and what changes are taking place.

Opportunities everywhere - for wildlife, for people, and for the woods to be a force for good - and we are delighted that our vision is starting to take shape and we are starting to make a difference.

So what are the threats? Well, for a start, there is HS2 (High Speed Rail 2). The route from London to Birmingham does not go anywhere near our woods, but there is a high chance that the route from London/Birmingham to Leeds will. The route has not yet been published (it was briefly made public by The Telegraph earlier in 2011, only to be withdrawn). Requests that it be made public have not been granted. The best bet is that it will go up the M42 corridor, but it could go through our woods, or very close to it. We simply don't know, and we are very concerned.

Another potential threat is the pressure being exerted on the Independent Forestry Panel by some organisations to make all woodlands open to the public at all times (under the Right to Roam legislation). Our woodlands has never been open to the public, but we are opening it up more and more, to allow groups and individuals to enjoy it, while allowing nature to take priorty most of the time. A small woodland like ours has very little of its area away from paths and places where humans (and their dogs) will wander. A larger woodland can provide plenty of sanctuary, but ours - not very much. Our experience has been that the majority of people who want to enjoy the woodland, respect it and behave well, but a minority set out to steal, poach and cause damage by riding bicycles and motorcycles and driving 4x4s.

We would love to be able to open to the public more, but we would need an on-site warden or ranger to ensure that the impact is minimised and that damage does not occur. We cannot afford this, and we hope that our efforts in making a previously-inaccessible woodland open at certain times will not be undermined. Throwing open the gates will, in reality, mean that our equipment is stolen, our firewood is stolen, our trees are stolen, vehicles, horses and bicycles damage the soil and wildlife is shot, trapped, poached and ultimately driven away from the site. We will no longer be able to provide a safe, enclosed environment for children to visit, learn and play, and for groups such as Scouts to come and camp there. The value of the site for everyone will be degraded.

But we must be optimistic, as there are huge opportunities, and we hope to work with, or around, the threats. It is a new year, we are doing new things, we hope to meet and work with new people, and most of all, we hope to see new wildlife moving in and enjoying the party. Happy New Year.

Big Corporations or Little Butterflies

2011-12-01T15:12:00.001Z

Yesterday, the Chancellor announced that he was seeking to review the way in which EU Directives on Birds and Habitats are enforced in this country. Apparently, the protections that these afford to our natural habitats are an intolerable burden on economic development, and need to be watered-down, so that development becomes easier. Along with that, organisations previously charged with protecting our habitats and environments (Natural England and Environment Agency) have been charged with promoting "sustainable" development instead.

But these Directives have already been subject to review, with the conclusion that we do not "gold plate" their implementation in the UK. These Directives provide the strongest possible protection to wildlife in the UK, and apply to habitats and species of Europe-wide importance. But the vast majority of sites of great value to wildlife in the UK do not contain species of Europe-wide, or even national importance. They are simply important for what they are - habitats in which wildlife can thrive and grow and be nurtured. National Parks, SSSI's, AONB's - all have imperfect protection, for it is still possible to develop in these areas if the benefits outweigh the environmental costs. But even these do not embrace most of the wildlife sites in the UK, many of which are completely un-protected, or carry the lowest level of protection, Local Wildlife Site. Alvecote Wood is a Local Wildlife Site. Stripping away protection in favour of development means that some of our most important habitats and coastlines can be built upon, made easier by stripping Natural England and the Environment Agency of their regulatory powers and placing the obligation to promote development upon them.

What is of more concern is that this watering-down of protection will cascade down the protection heirarchy and result in almost un-restrained development. Local Authorities can, and many will, do all they can to designate important areas and exclude these from their development plans. However national infrastructure projects can simply ignore these plans. Some ancient woodlands are already in the way of road-building projects announced this week. No longer can these be held up by important habitats, or by bat-roosts, great crested newt colonies or islands of species that should not be rare, but are, desperately clinging on to their ever-shrinking sanctuaries that are now "in the way" of economic development.

The fact is that the land to which wildlife sanctuaries cling is often the cheapest land - that is why wildlife, pushed out and marginalised, is allowed to remain on this land, because it is of low value. Protected status is all that prevents much of this land from the bulldozer. Now that protection is to be reduced, so that developers can build on cheap land and increase profit margins.

What is even more frightening is that so few people actually care. They may be a bit sad when a loved piece of scrub land is turned into a car park, or supermarket, or affordable housing. They may wonder why there are no longer any sparrows to visit their bird feeders. They may reminisce about how there were more butterflies when they were children. But ultimately, they don't really care.

But they should care. This geological era is known as the anthropocene, the era of humans. We are extinguishing species at an alarming rate - globally and in the UK. All life depends on the rich web of species on our planet. We are part of that web, we do not control it. Fail to look after our beetles, worms, amphipods, crustacea, fungi, amphibia, and the feathery and furries that attract so much attention, and it is ultimately us, and our precious economy, that will suffer. If we keep thinking that supermarkets, executive housing, roads, airports, marinas and industrial estates are worth more than a few newts, or bats, or beetles, or bees, and we will one day wake up to find that we can no longer feed ourselves because all the pollinators have gone, and with them our ability to feed ourselves, clothe ourselves, make medicines, purify water and all the other things that nature does for us and goes completely un-valued. Ignore our wildlife and we won't have an economy, because we will have destroyed the foundation upon which it is based.

Meanwhile, we will take care of the little butterflies, and try and keep the big corporations at bay.

What do poppies mean to you?

2011-11-09T11:52:00.000Z

Poppies. We had thousands of them in Betty's Wood this summer. The newly-disturbed ground was a carpet of poppies, mayweed and, a little later, the lovely blue cornflower. A few days ago we still had one persistent little poppy in flower. With all the debate in the press this morning about poppies, I took some tome to think what poppies mean to me.

First and foremost, they remind me of my Mum, because they were her favourite flower. How apt, then, that Betty's Wood, named after my wonderful Mum, should be full of them, as if she is communicating her delight at our creation of a new woodland and wildlife site in her name, in her memory, and with her help.

Then, of course, they remind me of people in my family who fought or otherwise served their country in the 20th Century wars. My father and uncle who served in the army in World War Two, and my mother's brother whose bomber was shot down over Germany and who spent much of the war as a PoW. My other uncles who mined coal in South Wales. My great uncle, a policeman, who died in the first zeppelin attack on London in the Great War. My grandfather, who thankfully returned from the trenches of the Great War, only to serve again in the Home Guard during the blitz. My aunts who served as nurses and dispatch riders. Other members of my family who served, and continue to serve, in the armed forces today, as well as the son of my closest childhood friend. Acts of self-sacrifice and bravery that we cannot comprehend in these days of luxury, plenty and easy living.

But why should remebrance stop there? You see, for me, the poppy, as well as being a beautiful flower, is a poignant reminder of all who died, and continue to die in wars throughout the World. I cannot see a field of poppies without thinking of not just our servicemen and women, but of all those who died, or whose lives were and continue to be affected by war and conflict. I think of the Germans, French, Belgians, Dutch, Austrians, Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Japanese, Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Italians, Greeks, Koreans, Vietnamese, and more recently the Bosnians, Kosovans, Argentinians, Iraquis, Libyans and Afghans. And those affected by conflicts, both external and internal, in which the UK forces have played no part - in Palestine and Israel, in Somalia and Ethiopia, in Sudan, Sri Lanka, Kashmir...the list is endless.

Why should I remember, and think about these people, people I do not know, who don't come from my own country, who are complete strangers to me? Because they are people. Every single one, a precious individual person. Poppies, to me, are about all of these people who have been affected by, and continue to be affected by conflict, largely pointless, largely irrelevant, but terribly, terribly destructive.

Is it any wonder we do not respect our beautiful world, and all the other precious living things, when we can't even respect the other members of our own species? Even if all conflict between people were to stop, we are continually at war with our own planet and its rapidly-diminishing resources. All of us are responsible for the plunder and destruction that goes on every day, without cease. Plunder of the rainforests, of land for growth of biofuels, of rivers, valleys, seas, estuaries, mountains - priceless and irreplaceable habitats for other creatures that we sweep aside and condemn to extinction, many of them before we even knew they existed.

When I see a field of poppies, I think of this too. With sadness, but also with hope. Because above all, the poppy is a beautiful and hopeful flower. Growing in the disturbed fields of France and Flanders, it signalled the hope that things would get better. In Betty's Wood, it signals hope that this once ecologically barren field will return to be a haven for wildlife. We need to remember, and look forward with hope. Remember our family, friends, strangers, and all creatures that suffer because of the destructive nature of the human species, including our fellow humans. Look forward with hope that we will one day learn to live with each other in peace, and treat our planet and the species upon it with the respect they deserve.

Familiarity breeds contempt

2011-11-02T14:52:00.000Z

We hear a lot on the news, and read a lot in magazines and newspapers, about rare and endangered species. We may even be tempted to give money to save a rare tiger in Asia, elephants on the plains of Africa, or protect a vanishing butterfly in the UK. We are worried about these rare and endangered species, but very often, attempts to conserve and protect them come too late: the damage to their habitat has become irreversible, or the needs of local people conflict too much with their needs, or their genetic diversity has dwindled below the point of survival.

But why did these species become endangered in the first place? In the vast majority of cases, these species weren't even noticed until they did become endangered. Many species are undoubtedly becoming extinct every year without ever being catalogued and noticed by science - a few local people briefly musing on where they have gone is their only memorial.

The problem is that we are indifferent. Birdwatchers are not interested in common birds, but flock in their thousands to see a rare visitor lost on these shores. Habitats are only designated for protection if they are rare, or support rare or endangered species. A little bit of scrub or woodland that supports relatively common species is not seen as valuable, and is not protected, and the species therein are greeted with indifference, or worse, in some cases, contempt. Little by little, these habitats, and the species they contain, are whittled away until somebody notices a decline, and action is taken. The problem is, we simply don't value the common, until it becomes uncommon, endangered, critically endangered or extinct.

People spend less and less time with nature: I don't mean that they spend less time in the countryside, because the evidence is that people visit the countryside or urban parks quite a lot. But these areas are increasingly becoming "experiences" which are packaged, with guided tours, interpretation boards, indoor exhibitions and multimedia shows, walks round manicured grounds and well-kept paths. People do not spend time in the wild, nor are they willing to spend time watching and learning about creatures great and small, common and rare. If you spend little time with nature, you see less, and are aware of less. You do not appreciate the wonders of the common creatures all around you.

And slowly, those common creatures become less common until they are gone. This isn't just something that has happened in other countries - the passenger pigeon, the dodo - but something that is happening right in front of our eyes. House sparrows and starlings have declined enormously in this country. We are losing our bees and butterflies - several species of the latter have become extinct in this country in my lifetime. They are declining through indifference, and a failure to appreciate that all wildlife and all wild habitats have value, not just those housing a species that has made it to our list of endangered species that we need to protect. We take everything for granted until it is too late.

Our woods are not home to any special rarities. All the trees are common. Most of the birds are very common, some even increasing in numbers, such as blue tits (although we host four red listed species: the cuckoo, lesser-spotted woodpecker, willow tit and yellowhammer). Most of the wildflowers are common, all the dragonflies are common, the bats are common, the mammals are common. But this does not make them less than precious. If we don't learn to notice, appreciate and value the common, we run the risk of losing them all. All wild habitats need to be seen as precious, and important, not just those which are rare, or decreasing, or which host endangered species. Familiarity breeds contempt - and we must learn to watch, look at, appreciate and love the familiar before we lose it.

In memory of our sycamore

2011-10-24T13:14:00.000+01:00

This weekend we killed a tree. It isn't something we are proud of, or even happy about. I don't mean we cut it down, I mean we deliberately tried to kill it and leave it standing. Why? Why on Earth would somebody who loves trees, who is a guardian to our beautiful woods, do something like this?

The answer is that the tree is a sycamore. What is wrong with sycamore? Well, sycamore is non-native - it was introduced some time in the 16th Century. It is a lovely tree: beautiful leaves that turn a glorious colour in winter and those lovely little helicopter seeds that we all played with as children. The wood is beautiful - hard, even-grained, nice to work and reasonable as firewood too. It grows quickly and can act as a good nurse tree for other species including oak. However, sycamore in the wrong place can be very destructive. And our beautiful, magnificent sycamore is in the wrong place.

In an ancient woodland, sycamore can invade. It grows more quickly than oak and shades out the oak seedlings. It is also against the southern boundary of the wood, which aids spread of seed through the wood. If we left it, in 100 or 200 or 300 years, we would have a sycamore woodland, rather than an oak woodland. And all the species that depend on oak would also be lost. We will have to deal with the seedlings for many years to come: the daughter trees are being coppiced, and we aim to cut them for wood before they are producing seed. This will give a chance for new oaks to start growing too.

Why did we leave it standing? Well, this is actually quite an old tree - could be up to 100 years old, but more likely about 60-70 years. It has lots of little crevices and a few lovely holes for nesting birds. The standing dead wood will continue to provide a habitat, and a feature in the woods too. As it gradually rots, it will be home to insects, mosses and lichens and become a small ecosystem in itself.

Was there an alternative? This is something we have asked ourselves many times. It pains us to kill a beautiful mature tree, and we have taken 4 years to reach this decision. However the problem of sycamore invasion needs tackling and we could no longer put it off. This tree is the source of the seed, and the source of our invasion problem.

Woodland management is essential in a wood like ours. It is lovely to leave woods wild, and we do this as much as possible - there are areas we are not touching as nature is doing very well. In a large wildwood, trees live, grow, die and fall, and the regeneration process moves around from place to place: a clearing appears, new trees start to grow, and finally it reverts to high forest, only for another clearing to open up elsewhere. Deer browsing new trees create natural coppice of multi-stemmed trees. A wide variety of self-sustaining habitats. A lovely, natural cycle. But these woods were huge. Ours is small, long and narrow. It is the only island of ancient woodland left over a huge area of North Warwickshire. The rest of the ancient forest around it has been cut down, leaving it without the capacity to self-heal. We have to intervene to produce a coppice habitat. We have to thin trees to give them the space to grow. Failing to make provision for regeneration of the oak trees will mean this resource is lost for all time, something we cannot let happen.

The right tree in the right place. The sycamore, a beautiful tree, was not in the right place. As it dies, it will provide new habitat and new life, and allow new life to emerge in its shadow. We give thanks to this beautiful tree, and for the pleasure it has given us. It is now time to move on.

Photography

2011-10-11T14:29:00.000+01:00

Lovers' Bridge at Dunster Castle

After the last photography workshop of the year at Alvecote Wood, I was prompted to think about why I take the images I do, and present them in the way that I do. The workshops split photography into two halves: taking the right picture and taking the picture right. The first deals with artistic and compositional elements, the second with the technical elements, such as exposure, depth of field and shutter speed. To me, the latter are the easy bit: it only takes a little bit of learning and practice to become familiar with these, and with your camera, and to take technically good images. The difficult bit is the first bit.

So, how do you decide what image to take? In many cases it is reasonably straightforward: you want a technical record of something or somewhere. The holiday snap, the picture postcard, the picture of a bird or butterfly showing its identifying features, a simple product photo for the web site. Again, that is relatively easy. What is much harder, and what motivates me, is taking an image that conveys a mood, or feeling, or vision that you had when you were in a place, or looking at something or somebody.

A feather pointing the way at Alvecote Wood

These are the images that really speak to the heart, but will rarely be published, or win competitions. Why? Because everybody has a different perception: in the same situation, your brain will concentrate on different elements of what you are seeing, you will see a different pattern of light and shade, different amounts of contrast between colours and light and dark, even a different colour cast. To some, the colours are important, to others it is the patterns of light and shade that matter - for the first, a colour image is key, for the second, black and white might convey your feelings better.

There is a lot of debate about whether you should manipulate your images using an editing programme such as Photoshop. In the old days, I used to process my own films and make my own prints in a darkroom. You used to be able to do lots of the same things: crop images, burn or dodge (darken or lighten) parts of an individual image, impart a colour cast, create a monochrome image from colour, tone or split-tone a black and white image, combine images, airbrush features out of prints, add a vignette or frame to your image, process to enhance grain or reduce grain...it just used to take a bit longer than it does now. Why did we do these things? Usually there were two reasons: either the image the camera took didn't correspond, for whatever reason, to the image the eye took, or we deliberately want to make the image into something the eye didn't see, but that conveys an emotion or feeling your experienced when you were there.

A magical woodland in Devon

It is lovely if you can take an image that is exactly what your eye has seen, and conveys immediately the emotions and feelings that you were experiencing, and thus that needs no processing. However a camera is not an eye. It records, literally, the colour and tone of the light coming into the camera on a sensor that converts it into pixels. However our eye does much more, because we don't ever see the raw image coming into our eye: it is processed by our brain well before we can see the image. And the brain does amazing things. It adjusts the colour (try looking through yellow sunglasses - you'll soon see white as white, not yellow), and allows you to see a full dynamic range. In a woodland scene, you can see the detail in the shadows and the dappled light patches simultaneously in a way that a camera cannot. The brain can even invert images. How you see something may be coloured by your previous experience, your mood on the day, what you want to see or expect to see.

So to me, there is no right or wrong way to see a scene, thing or place. We are all individual, and we all see things in an individual way. Therefore, I am content to process images to convey either what I have seen, or alternatively, what I was feeling. This is not "false" or "wrong" - it is simply personal: many may not like, or "get" some of the images, but as I improve, I hope to help people to experience the world through my eyes, as opposed to my camera. Many images need little adjustment, but some need a lot. What I try to do is adjust the images immediately so that I can recall what I was seeing at the time, or alternatively what my pre-visualisation was.

Dunster Beach in the rain

Previsualisation: when you take the picture you see the final print in your mind's eye. This helps you to get the technical aspects of your shot right in order to get that final image, and also to think more closely about how you are composing and taking the image. You will take a very different picture of a tree if you are trying to convey a technical image of tree structure, an abstract pattern of light and shade, or a feeling of "age", for example.

Photography is personal: it is a record of the world through your eyes, as well as through your lens. Getting others to share your creative eye is the challenge for photographers. I have only just begun on that journey, but I hope I can also inspire others to take up that challenge.

Please note: only one of the images here was taken at Alvecote Wood - I've used others as an example!

Who is the land for?

2011-09-28T16:50:00.001+01:00

The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) consultation is currently underway. The outcome of this consultation will determine the balance between the needs of business, communities and wildlife and natural spaces. There clearly has to be a balance: some people wish for no development and some wish for unrestrained development but the fact is that this does need to be balanced. Some people will be disappointed that they can't build wher they want, and some sites that are currently green will ultimately be built upon.

But...where should that balance lie? The NPPF is quite clear - the balance should be in favour of "sustainable development". There are many faults with this premise, not the least of which is the lack of a definition of "sustainable" - this leaves it open to interpretation, and in many places the words "sustainable" and "economic" are almost interchangeable. The message is clear: businesses must be allowed to expand and nothing should deter the building of houses. The assumption is that planning will be pro-growth.

Local Authorities can put plans in place, and they are obliged to identify land for different kinds of development, including housing, economic activity and for community use, as well as sites for mineral extraction. They can also identify Designated Green Spaces the definition of which is relatively loose, but could be spaces for either recreation or wildlife sites. All sounds good so far...but there are a lot of buts.

First of all, local businesses will be allowed to bring forward neighbourhood plans and neighbourhood development orders. Businesses, but not other local community groups. They can put together their own development plans free from constraints of additional permission. Local communities can comment but cannot block such development. They must consult with local businesses in producing a local plan, but cannot overrule them - business development takes precedence.

Second, at present there is a target for re-development of pre-used land. This will be removed. This land is expensive to both buy and develop, and with the incentive removed to do it, developers will inevitably and understandably favour green-field sites that are cheaper to buy and build on.

They also plan to exempt certain changes of use from planning constraints, including industrial, storage and business to residential. Now, flexibility is a good thing, but leaves the door open to justify building a business site on economic grounds only to see it changed to residential in future.

Green space designation looks fine and good - but it is strictly limited in scope. Essentially it refers to green spaces that are urban or peri-urban and of limited size, and which are not already included in green belt or other designated land. It really means parks, recreation grounds and small wild spaces - immensely valuable in themselves but not sufficient to protect the needs of wildlife in the wider landscape.

What about protection for wildlife? Well, it is very limited. The presumption will be against development in those areas with statutory protection under EU Biodiversity legislation, and in National Parks, AONB's and SSSI - but always with the proviso that development can happen if the benefit outweighs the cost. Ancient Woodland is promised protection, but what kind of protection, and what strength it will have, are not defined. And there is no protection at all for the immensely valuable Local Wildlife Sites - small sites such as our own which provide refuge and habitat for wildlife but which do not meet the criteria for SSSI because their value is local, not national or regional. There is no mention either of the Nature Improvement Areas - landscape-scale conservation areas envisaged in the Natural Environment White Paper as a result of collaboration between neighbouring landowners in the private, public and charitable sector. They do not have to be incorporated into the local plan, and the local plan is very much open to challenge - it is up to the Local Authority to show that a development is not sustainable before permission can be denied. Challenges are already coming in, even though this is only at the consultation stage. It seems this plan will deliver growth, if only for lawyers, as challenge seems the most likely outcome of any refusal.

Major infrastructure will also be treated differently, with the presumption that these developments will go ahead. HS2, for example, a development that is likely to affect many irreplaceable ancient woodlands, including, possibly, our own.

What will this mean for wildlife protection? The future does not look bright. Minimum statutory standards, and wildlife squeezed progressively into smaller and smaller designated areas, progressively further removed from local communities. Small, fragmented Green Spaces serving mixed purposes of recreation and wildlife conservation, with wildlife squeezed to the margins, the road and rail corridors and ever-reducing Local Wildlife Sites.

We think this needs to change. We think that there need to be key changes in the underpinning philosophy that will allow everybody to benefit: businesses, communities and wildlife. In particular

The presumption in favour of development and growth should be removed: instead, there should be a presumption only that development will be sustainable, and will balance the need of communities, business and wildlife. And sustainable should have a well-recognised definition.
Statutory protections should have teeth: there should be an extremely high threshold for building on or developing in areas with current statutory protection. There should be new statutory protection of equivalent to SSSI awarded to ancient woodland, Local Wildlife Sites and other key habitats. Nature Improvement Areas should also have such protection: development within these should be carefully considered and wildlife needs to take priority here.
Development of brownfield sites should also take priority, but with careful caveats: where such sites themselves have become valuable wildlife habitats, and with clear consideration of the need to provide green space and wild areas within cities and towns.

Nobody denies that things need to be built, and nobody wants a NIMBY charter. But unless such building is controlled, we will see wildlife, and local people, pushed to one side, marginalised, ignored, forgotten and degraded. We need a strong campaign to stand up for little wildlife areas that are so valuable. Withouth strong advocacy they will be lost forever. How tragic would that be?

For more information please see

National Planning Policy Framework
Campaign Against Sprawl
The National Trust
Sussex Wildlife Trust
Save our Woods

Why do I like Autumn?

2011-09-14T17:31:00.000+01:00

Autumn. It is definitely here, with trees changing colour, the mornings and evenings becoming chilly, the nights drawing in and the fruit ripening on the trees. A lot of people don't like Autumn and see it as a sad time. Summer is over. The weather is getting colder and wetter. Everything is dying. Life is preparing to sleep for the winter. But, here's a thing: I love Autumn. Ever since I was a child, Autumn has been my favourite time of year. This may well be connected to my birthday in Autumn, but it has always been more than that. It is at this time of year, more than any other, that I feel most connected to the natural world. So, birthday aside, why do I love Autumn so much?

First of all, there are the colours: glowing reds, oranges, yellows and browns. The warm colours of the spectrum suddenly erupt. A huge scream of colour not seen at any other time of year. My favourite colours, the warm, happy colours. In dying, leaves reveal their outstanding beauty, hidden in life by chlorophyll.

Then there is the frantic activity: little creatures bustling and hustling to store up food for the winter. The birds emerge from their late summer eclipse with new feathers, and a new purpose. Many are stocking up on food for a long migration. Swallows swoop low over our meadow, collecting the last few insects before making their way over thousands of miles, some for the first time in their lives. Fat pheasant and partridge are seen in increasing flocks. And there are arrivals too: at the seaside, the waders arrive from the artctic, in the woods, we see the first fieldfares of the season, and the finches arrive to eat thistle seeds in large numbers. Little rodents make their nests and hibernate: indeed, a little field vole made a lovely nest from chewed cardboard inside the radiator grille of our tractor!

Then there is the harvest: as a child I absolutely loved "nature study" as it was then called. Every week we had to find something to take into school to draw, and study. Autumn was the very best time of year because there was so much to see: acorns, conkers, sweet chestnuts, beech mast, sycamore seeds, ripe crab apples, rosehips and hawthorn berries, blackberries, the fruit of alder, and a never-ending supply of colourful leaves, as well as the wonderful toadstools that grew in the woods. Growing up in London, there was little evidence of the agricultural harvest, but that natural harvest was all around. Now, there is the agricultural harvest to add excitement with tractors, combines, cultivators, balers and other pieces of machinery transforming the countryside in a matter of hours. It is a very exciting time. Christmas, Easter...all very nice, but Harvest Festival was always my favourite time of year, even though we didn't get any presents.

Finally, there are the hints of renewal. Autumn is not about death, it is a celebration of life, and an abundant life that can find time and energy to make beautiful colours, create delicious fruit for humans and other animals to eat, and best of all, renew itself fresh the following year. In Autumn we see the beautiful black ash buds forming, and hazel catkins are already forming, as well as the wonderful sticky buds on horse chestnut trees.

It seems to me that Autumn is saying "this has been a great year, but just look what I'm going to do next year!" To me, Autumn is a time of great bounty, great beauty and great hope. That is probably why I love it so much.

Nature's Harvest

2011-09-10T16:46:00.000+01:00

The price of food has gone up: not just the monetary price, but the price that is paid by the planet for its ever-intensive production, and the price paid by farmers who often grow at a loss so that big buyers can make an ever-increasing profit. But this time of year is a reminder of what is provided by nature, free of charge, if we are willing to take the time to learn what is there, and how to use it. As well as that, any food that we grow for ourselves is a massive bonus: fresh, local and free.

So few people seem to be aware that this bounty exists, much less be willing to forage, harvest, preserve and enjoy. On our last open day, we offered free containers to visitors so that they could pick the huge crop of blackberries at the woods: there were no takers. Blackberries are ripening in the hedgerows along the road, along footpaths, by schools and churches, and in waste ground. In the small park near our house the brambles are heaving with berries, but there is no evidence that any have been picked. Apples in the community orchard fall to the floor, uneaten.

I have spent the last few weeks digging and foraging and picking. We have racks of apples grown at the woods. We have many jars of bramble, crab apple and hedgerow jelly. Sloes are due to be picked for sloe gin. I have over 30 jars of tomato chutney on the shelf for our own use, as well as for gifts, and there is more to come. I have sacks of potatoes. I have large pumpkins ready to eat and for making jam. Our crab apple tree is being raided for their brilliant properties in making jams and jellies. We look forward to the forthcoming crop of parasol mushrooms. We are preparing to plant some of our garlic to give another crop next year.

The sad fact is that many people really don't know where food comes from, and are suspicious of any food that doesn't come with a label telling us what it is, and a use-by date. Do people eat toast and jam any more? Do people really prefer eating chemical-laden ketchup in favour of fresh, unadulterated and much-more-delicious chutney? Are people unsure of their ability to identify a blackberry, never mind what to do with it once picked? Do people know how to make jam or preserve fruit to last the year round? Do they need to, given that we can get any fruit all year round, freighted in from around the World.

Nature's harvest is an annual miracle. Most of it is a matter of life and death for the birds, insects, spiders and mammals who depend on it, and we leave most of it for them to enjoy. But we also rejoice in taking a small, sustainable quantity for ourselves. This food IS free - no price has been paid by farmers forced to sell at a loss, by workers in developing counties living on subsistence wages, or by the environment suffering intensive use of chemicals to allow intensive cultivation. It is free and it is beautiful. We hope we are not the last generation to enjoy it.

Stuff, Tribalism and Nature

2011-08-16T12:04:00.000+01:00

We didn’t have any riots at Alvecote Wood, but we all watched them on TV. Since then there has been a great deal of theory floating around as to why they happened, and a lot of unpleasant language too, full of hate.

So how could people want to destroy their own neighbourhoods, and take stuff from shops?

First of all, there is stuff. People from all walks of life are brought up with the mindset that stuff is what they should have, is what will make them happy, and is what they are in some way entitled to. The way in which people acquire stuff varies. Some people work hard to get money to pay for stuff. Others make money by illegal means, such as dealing drugs. Others steal stuff directly, or steal the money to buy it. Yet others acquire money without working for it, using the money markets which have long since ceased to be the means of raising money to back a business.

And along with the imperative to get more stuff comes the feeling that your stuff must be better than anybody else’s, and thus there is an element of competition: you are entitled to have more, better stuff than anybody else. And of course, when you don’t you are disappointed, and tempted to use slightly less than honest means to acquire it: fiddling expenses, short-selling on stock markets, scamming people by e-mail, shoplifting, picking pockets. They all amount to the same thing: needing to have more and better stuff than anybody else, and using any means at your disposal to get it.

Then there is language. The language that has been used in recent days is that of tribalism: gangs, chavs, looters, thugs on the one hand, and out-of-touch Etonian toffs on the other. None of these terms is helpful. None is healing. None is constructive. Tribalism manifests itself in many ways in society: supporting or joining a sports club is one way of expressing the need to belong to a group, or tribe, but there are others, one of which is joining a gang, or the Masons, or any number of other organisations with reputations for good, or bad. But in joining, and becoming more connected with, one group of people, everybody else in some way becomes an “outsider”. We all do this. We all have our own social circle, but it is easy to see in some situations how outsiders can become isolated, hated and reviled. Gangs hate other gangs, gangs all hate the police, working people hate those on benefits; there is hate between ethnic groups, between different religions, between residents and immigrants, between the haves and have-nots. And with hate comes blame: other people, or groups of people, are to blame for the fact that we can’t get better stuff - we hate people who have more stuff than us, while despising those with less. Disadvantage is an excuse for stealing because it is everybody's right to have more stuff.

So, we become disconnected from each other and ceased to care about each other. Blame is contagious. Everybody wants more at the expense of everybody else.

But of course we haven’t just become disconnected from each other, we have become disconnected from stuff too. And this is the heart of the problem. We get stuff without understanding where it comes from, and even more importantly, we get stuff without any consequence other than, perhaps, having to part with some money. Stuff has become almost effort-free. We no longer know where our food comes from, our clothes come from, how our homes are built, where our electricity comes from. Traders on the stock markets no longer invest in companies and then see how they perform: investments are now bets on the future value of something without actually owning anything, or money changing hands, or anybody having an interest in seeing the people behind ventures succeed. Disconnection from each other, and from where stuff comes from, is a fundamental problem, so how do we start to tackle it?

Well, the woods are a great place to start (I bet you were wondering when I’d get round to mentioning woods!). In the woods you have almost everything you need to live. You have materials to make a shelter or home. You have materials to make fire and cook. You have materials to hunt your supper. You have food available to forage. Everything you do has a consequence: if you cut down too much wood one year, you won’t have enough the next, if you harvest too much of one thing it won’t set seed and won’t be there next year, if you kill too many rabbits one year, you won’t have enough left to eat the next, if you fail to save seed from your plants, you won’t have a harvest next year. Nature’s cycles are obvious and apparent, something from which we are now completely divorced in our quest for stuff.

Getting back to the woods and the land is key: learning where things come from, how they are made, how we ensure there is enough for next year, and years to come; learning about ecology, how living things mesh together in complex inter-dependent webs; learning about where food comes from and how it gets to where we buy it; learning about how clothing is made. It is not just children who need to learn this – everybody needs to see nature in a new light, and by doing so, will see each other in a new light too. We are part of nature, and by wanting stuff at the expense of everybody, and everything else, we are ultimately destroying our means of acquiring that same stuff that we scramble to get. Everybody, from all backgrounds, and all walks of life needs to understand this. We don’t all have to grow food, or live on the land, or become hunter-gatherers again. But learning to live by our own efforts, and see the consequences of our actions is vital.

Change won’t happen overnight. But if we all grew a bit, just a bit, of our own food, and if we all had the chance to learn in a natural environment, then maybe, just maybe, change will happen. Forest Schools, the Access to Farms initiative, Outward Bounds courses, Duke of Edinburgh Awards, Scouts, Guides, city farms, community food-growing schemes, school farms and gardens all have a part to play and everybody needs to have the opportunity to participate in these initiatives. Connecting to nature, and through that to each other. Then, maybe, we can stop hating each other, no matter how much, or how little stuff we have, and start to care about each other, and start to care about nature too.

Butterflies

2011-08-03T17:14:00.000+01:00

This year has been an amazing year for butterflies. I have to confess to being a butterfly enthusiast, bordering on a butterfly nerd. Growing up, as I did, in the South East of England, I was spoilt during my formative years. Trips to Box Hill in Surrey gave us the most diverse range of butterflies seen almost anywhere in the UK. Moving to the midlands, the variety seemed rather limited.

When we got the opportunity to buy our field and create Betty's Wood, butterflies were very much on our mind. We were careful to plant butterfly-friendly plants (for nectar but also for the caterpillars), put in bare patches of earth on which butterflies could bask, and try and provide a new site for local butterflies seeking to expand their range.

What we did not expect was for everything to change so quickly. Almost before any significant plants had emerged on our site, we got brown argus butterflies moving in. Common blues and brown argus are now present in profusion in our new meadow. On most warm evenings, there are clouds of butterflies over the meadow: common blue, brown argus, small copper, meadow brown, gatekeeper, ringlet, small white, large white, green-veined white, brimstone, small tortoiseshell, peacock, red admiral, comma, painted lady and speckled wood are seen in the woods and meadow, and the delightful little purple hairstreak stick tantalisingly to the treetops. Holly blues emerge two or three times a year. Large, small and Essex skippers are seen, well, skipping across the meadow. Day-flying burnet and cinnabar moths are also in evidence.

Although we have not yet seen dingy skipper on our meadow, we are hopeful of attracting it, and other species to our site. If we can make so much progress in a single year, we are pretty confident that in years to come, as trees mature, we will attract other species and add to those recorded on site.

Butterflies are pretty, nobody really doubts that. But they are also an indicator of the diversity and health of the ecosystem. Even in this parched year, the diversity of butterflies gives us a clue that we are on the right track with our woods. More habitats means more species of butterfly, but this means we have more species of plants, and more insects of other types too. On the basis of those plants and insects come other species too: birds, bats, and the predators that feed on them.

Pretty butterflies to see and a healthy and diverse ecosystem. If we have managed to go some way to creating that at Alvecote Wood, we will be pleased.

Doing our bit

2011-07-12T15:08:00.000+01:00

Solar panels being installed. Our chicken run is on the left

We've got to do our bit. Just a little bit, to help save the planet. But what, exactly, should we do, and how useful is it? Everybody is happy to do a little bit so long as that little bit results in no actual change in lifestyle and doesn't cost much money. We will do the easy things: putting stuff in the recycling instead of the bin, popping a few quid in the wildlife charity box, buying stuff that has an "Eco" label, buying the odd bit of organic veg. But is this enough?

The answer is, of course, that a little bit will only help a little bit. But does every little bit help? Well, yes and no. Clearly the collective little bits added together can reduce carbon emissions, or waste going into landfill, or whatever you are trying to reduce by a large figure. But actually we need to make a massive difference in what we are doing in order to make the kind of changes that are required. And this means changing behaviour, and will cost us money.

So our bit needs to become our lot, and it is easy to become discouraged from doing your bit when you realise the scale of the task ahead. And it is hard to do a lot when we there are so many excuses not to.

First of all, we have to reduce consumption of energy: in the form of heat, light, electricity, transport and most importantly in the form of the stuff we buy and discard in ever-increasing quantities. Then we have to switch the remaining energy consumption to sources that do not pollute, particularly with carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases. None of this is easy, convenient or cheap.

It is, perhaps, easier for somebody like me to turn down thermostats and wear pullovers indoors because I grew up in a house without central heating. I would wake up in a bedroom with frost on the inside of the window. In order to get hot water we had to light the coal-fired boiler, sometimes digging snow away from the coal bunker before we could do so. Showers had not become popular, and duvets had not arrived in the UK. My uncles had an outside toilet and no bathroom, heating water for a tub in the kitchen for their bath. Wearing summer clothes all year round was not an option. Having experienced this, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility to return to it. But many people have never experienced life like this, and it is unrealistic and would be politically very unpopular to expect people to do so.

There are other things that, at present, have no realistic alternative. We need a 4 x 4 vehicle that can pull a loaded 1 tonne trailer through mud in order to manage our woods. We would love a low emission electric vehicle to do this, but such a vehicle is not available, and when it becomes available, will not be within our budget.

Tomatoes ripening in our greenhouse

So we have to be content with doing our bit: having a wood-burning stove, turning down the thermostat and wearing pullovers indoors, driving less, walking more, consuming less, recycling more, growing our own, keeping chickens for our own eggs, buying local, buying organic. And last week we did quite a big bit by having solar panels installed on our house. Linked to the national grid, we are now generating the power for our own needs during the day and exporting power to the houses around us. Small changes in lifestyle, such as putting the dishwasher on during the day, mean we can be self-sufficient in electricity during the daytime.

As well as owning and managing the wood, planting new trees to capture carbon, and to make a lovely haven for wildlife in the meantime.

Our bit is not enough. Using the Worldwide Fund for Nature footprint calculator, we are using 2 planets of resources (http://footprint.wwf.org.uk/). But this is less than the UK average of 3 planets, and this calculation does not take into account the solar power we generate, or the carbon we have offset by planting trees. Getting to one planet is within our sights. We have reduced our consumption to 2 planets in less than 4 years. We have done this by taking small steps, not by doing small things. Doing a few small things helps in a small way. But if they are seen as steps along a road to reducing your impact on the planet, and you continue to take steps, then you will start on a journey, rather than imagine you have completed it by putting the beer bottles into the recycling. By doing this, doing our bit is gradually becoming doing a lot...but we all need to do more.

Perfect Imperfection

2011-07-12T14:26:00.000+01:00

Pristine new flowers, beautiful newly-emerged butterflies, perfect new leaves unfolding. It is easy to be drawn to the fresh and the new. This year, thanks to the dry spring and hot weather, summer seems to be fading early, and many of the flowers in our meadows are dying back. The poppies have more-or-less finished. The mayweed is dying back. The grass seeds are drying early. It is almost time to mow.

But it isn't all bad. There is such beauty in the fading flowers, the poppy seed heads ripening, the grass seeds drying. A foretaste of Autumn maybe, even as early as July.

Faded beauty in a world where we seek perfection. We worship the young, the flawless, the perfect and regard with disdain the old, the faded, the crooked, the wrinkled. Not just in nature, but in society too: we seem to idolise pretty things and ignore the rest.

Only with trees do we start to value the old, the crooked, the quirky and the broken. Ancient trees have character and support a startling variety of life and living things. Our oaks, between 100 and 200 years old, have nooks and crannies. Many are hollow. Some have multiple holes supporting bats, owls, woodpeckers, nuthatches, blue and great tits, and treecreepers, sometimes several of these in one tree. Fungi grow at the base. Insects thrive in the bark. Bees nest in abandoned nest holes. There is so much energy about these old and gnarled trees.

If we can value these veteran trees, why not value other things that are less than perfect? Too often I see public open spaces tidied to the point of becoming sterile. Rows and rows of perfect blooms in flower beds. Lawns cut and re-cut without any room for plants to grow, mature and set seed. Verges strimmed. Hedges manicured. This is often welcomed by the people living nearby. We seem to want tidy open spaces, nature parks for humans, rather than nature, designer gardens on a landscape scale. And so we miss out. We miss out on the beauty in seed heads and fading flowers, the beauty in a small patch of wild meadow, and the beauty in the insects, birds, mammals and bats absent from over-manicured parks, gardens and public spaces.

I am certain that our obsession with tidiness is one of the reasons I often hear the phrase "You don't see [insert name of species] around much these days." We want wildlife but we don't want the rough places upon which wildlife thrives, at least not near our homes. We cannot have it both ways. Our obsession with tidiness and perfection will drive wildlife away from where we live, and once it has gone, we will gradually lose the connection we have with it. Wildlife needs places like ours, but it also needs places to live in the towns, the cities, the villages and industrial estates. Imperfect verges. Overgrown scrub. Fading blooms. Seeds and weeds. Imperfection is perfect for wildlife. Let's try and get used to it!

The Simple Little Things

2011-07-04T15:01:00.000+01:00

How often do we walk past things without really noticing them? Little tiny "weeds" in grass verges. A spider's nest. A small resting butterfly or moth. The answer is that most of the time we don't even notice that these things are there. By not noticing we run the risk of two things: first, that by not noticing that they are there, we also won't notice when they are gone; second, that we miss out on a huge amount of beauty available to everybody who is willing to take the time to look, listen and appreciate.

It is very easy to be drawn to the showy, the colourful and the rare. We are all guilty of that, myself included. I have got excited and taken hundreds of pictures of the showy orchids in our wet meadow, but failed to notice or appreciate the beauty in much more common wildflowers, such as vetches, clovers and trefoils. We are happy to spot the bright-coloured peacock butterflies, the comma butterflies, and the red admirals, but dismiss the large and green-veined whites as common, and run the risk of missing large and small skippers completely, as they make their unobtrusive way through the meadows. Ringlet butterflies, and meadow browns, are much less showy, but seriously beautiful in a much more subtle way.

In larger landscapes, too, it is the little details that make the difference. Our new ponds in Betty's Wood look lovely, but how much more lovely do they look with the first growth of spearwort, and the mayweed growing round the edge?

So this weekend I made an effort to notice, and record, the little details that make a place so special; those small unsung things that have such great beauty if you take the time to notice and appreciate. Common things, like birdsfoot trefoil, grass grains, small skippers and spearwort.

When you start to notice these details, you realise how much of nature passes you by. It is easy to get emotional about saving tigers, pandas, huge ancient trees and majestic birds-of-prey. But it is much less easy to get excited about saving pieces of grassland, or ancient woodland, or hedgerows that can be home to important, if overlooked plants. And in turn they support important if overlooked insects, upon which a whole food chain of birds and mammals depend.

If you don't see, and don't appreciate, it is easy to destroy without even knowing what you have destroyed. Easy to "tidy up" verges, easy to clear up patches of waste land, and easy to put developments onto areas that support nothing showy, spectacular or rare. Until, of course, they become rare because we have already destroyed most of their habitats.

So please, notice the simple little things when you are out and about. Notice the flowers in the un-cut verges, and the insects feeding upon them. Notice the beauty of common flowers and little brown butterflies. The simple little things are the foundation upon which everything else is built. We forget that at our peril.

Connections: Words and Teeth

2011-06-21T15:04:00.000+01:00

Connections. Essential for the preservation and expansion of habitats and protection of wildlife, allowing species to move between locations, and giving them a lifeline if things go wrong in one area. Connections between wildlife sites are what we are trying to establish by planting Betty's Wood. Building connections between wildlife sites, as well as increasing their size, number and quality, was a keystone of the Making Space for Nature review of 2010 to which the Natural Environment White Paper is the Government response.

Lots of ideas with a great deal of potential are outlined: Local Nature Partnerships made up of local authorities, charities, voluntary organisations and private sector to look after natural spaces in local areas, crossing administrative boundaries. Nature Improvement Areas for landscape-scale natural space protection and enhancement, made up of groups of LNP's. Designated Local Green Areas in urban settings. Natural Value Ambassadors to help make planners understand the value of the natural resource.

So much potential, such lovely words, but does this have any teeth? So much of the potential of this white paper seems to be bound up in good will and voluntary compliance. LNP's and NIA's may be great, but if local authorities are not obliged to incorporate their recommendations into local plans, and into their planning framework, how will these designations stand up in practice. Will they only escape development if they are not deemed to affect the needs of housing, jobs and industry? Will there be a presumption in favour of sustainable development? Will nature yet again be squeezed to the areas that people don't want, or that are not profitable?

Then there is biodiversity offsetting: developers who damage habitats can voluntarily offset or mitigate this by investing in habitat improvement or enlargement. Nice idea, but will the habitats enhanced and replaced be of the same type, same value and in the same area as those destroyed or damaged? Or will people be gradually distanced from valuable natural habitats and certain habitats win out at the expense of others that are more easily and cheaply expanded and improved?

There are targets for increasing the proportion of priority sites in having improving or favourable status. But effectively this is about SSSI. Not all valuable habitats are SSSI. Connections are important - little pieces of natural habitat not sufficiently extraordinary to be SSSI are still vital. Protection is envisaged for ancient semi-natural woodland such as ours, as well as plantations on ancient woodland sites, but there is little here about the degree of protection, or to what extent that protection can be swept aside for competing economic, social and development needs.

There are lots of other potentially good things: joining up the English Woodland Grant Scheme from the Forestry Commission with the Stewardship Schemes run by Natural England. Logical, and making connections between habitats and landscape-scale change and improvement easier to achieve. Also the commitment to remove barriers to outdoor education for children, about which I have written before.

But it seems to me that the the ball is in the air: there are opportunities here to make things much better, but without teeth to grasp it, the potential benefits are likely to slip away. I am left with the feeling that too much is left to volunteers, without specifying how they will be trained, how professional advice will be delivered, and how the outcomes of their actions will be monitored. Too much is left to voluntary schemes and good will, and that without teeth to back it up, nature is not placed at the heart of our ecosystem, but remains something to be fitted in where it can, in places that nobody else wants. Connections are important, but will only work if they are not repeatedly cut. Words are important, but teeth are too: will this have sufficient teeth to deliver?

The full text of my thoughts on the Natural Environment White Paper is Here (Word Document)

Poppies Everyhwere

2011-06-15T17:06:00.000+01:00

Betty's Wood is named in memory of my Mum, and she loved poppies. Not the big oriental poppies, or the showy garden varieties, but the good old-fashioned red field poppies that crop up among the wheat and barley and rape in our fields each year, despite the best efforts of the agrochemical industry. Outrageously red, undeniably cheerful, but for her generation, a tinge of sadness, a reminder of the Uncles who did not return from Flanders' fields in the Great War.

We wanted poppies in our new meadows, but didn't include them in the basic meadow mix that we sowed - the reason being that we were trying to establish a perennial meadow, and annuals would be added in good time. I took the plunge and sowed just a few, a small packet of poppy seed, in the Spring, with the hope that a few dozen poppies would come up at the edges of our new meadows.

Little were we to know that after years of cultivation, there were thousands and thousands of poppy seeds in the soil of our new field. In amongst the hedge mustard, leftover rape and wheat, shepherd's purse and scentless mayweed have emerged an absolute mass of poppies, some of the best I have ever seen. Not a monoculture, for below them, there are some other key plants, including the vetches, clovers, scarlet pimpernels, cranesbill, yarrow and ox-eye daisies. But a carpet, nonetheless. A beautiful memorial for my Mum, and perhaps a sign that she is pleased with our efforts.

Not just poppies, but other great signs that the meadow and new wood are transforming things for wildlife: southern marsh orchids in the damp patch that could not be ploughed for a few years, lovely large thistles to provide nectar for bees and butterflies, butterflies of all kinds including brown argus, common blue, meadow brown and large skipper, as well as small tortoiseshell, peacock and the four common whites (small, large, green veined and orange tip). Moths including the cinnabar and five spot burnet. Bumblebees and honeybees and hoverflies in clouds above the wildflowers. Partridge and pheasant among the tall plants. Hundreds of beautiful damselflies and dragonflies hovering around our ponds. A living landscape indeed.

Will the poppies come again next year? I hope so, but for now I'm happy to see their smiling faces, and enjoy them for what they are. The meadow will evolve, and that is part of the beauty of lanscape-scale transformations. I had not expected it to be so dramatic. I had not expected to see poppies everywhere.

The World Shrinks

2011-06-13T16:45:00.000+01:00

Anybody who follows us may notice I haven't posted for a while. Unfortunately I have been ill and in hospital. Trapped inside a small room in an urban hospital, you really get to appreciate the great outdoors, but it is also very disorientating when you finally leave your little room and venture back out into the great wide world again. This got me thinking how people must feel when experiencing natural environments for the very first time.

When you live in an enclosed space, your world shrinks. Your whole world becomes the size of the little hospital room in which you are living. Slowly, your perception of the world alters until it becomes the size of your room. Even venturing out into the hospital corridor for a test or investigation becomes rather disorientating. A walk down the corridor becomes quite an adventure. And when you are finally discharged home, the hospital car park seems rather intimidating and large, and I felt grateful for the smaller space inside the car, much more akin to that which I had been occupying.

The house seems large. The garden seems huge. A shopping trip makes your head spin.

This got me to thinking: lots of people live their lives in small spaces. A small house, a small room, a small office, a small pub or restaurant, a small car, a crowded night club. If this is all you experience, then the great outdoors, at least when you are outside the confines of a nice comforting car, must seem very disorientating, and probably quite frightening. Your perception of the world is challenged because you are confronted with something much larger than your normal range of experiences, and without apparent boundaries.

If a child grows up experiencing only a small classroom, a small garden, a small house, and a small playground, then this feeling of disorientation that took only a week to develop in me, must be all the more apparent, and probably quite terrifying. No wonder, then, that so few people venture more than a few yards into the outdoors, just a few safe yards from their car. Nature, and wild spaces, are something seen on the TV, and therefore an alien experience. And something that is alien, and a bit frightening, cannot really be appreciated, valued and thus protected.

It is absolutely essential that exploration of truly rural wild spaces is an opportunity given to everybody. Without the appreciation of the true size of natural spaces, the true unpredictability of that environment, and the true beauty of truly wild places, there can be no connection with them, and without that connection, their importance passes people by. Until, of course, they are no longer there to be experienced at all.

My experience of the shrinking world has certainly given me a perspective on how people must feel venturing out into the wild for the first time. And redoubled my importance to ensure that people experience an expanding, rather than shrinking, perception of the world.

What is Being Green?

2011-05-10T12:36:00.001+01:00

I got to wondering about this after meeting so many great people who think we’re really “green” at Alvecote Wood, and because of the debates going on about “green government” and the “green economy”. So what does the word “green” mean (apart from a colour between yellow and blue in the light spectrum)? What does “eco” mean? And are we green or eco because of what we do, or what we think, or how we live?

The term “green” can mean so many things, and conjure up many images of which these are only a few

A political party with a philosophy of sustainable living and social justice
Living the Good Life – smallholding and growing your own
Living a low energy, off-grid sort of lifestyle, short on home comforts but big on self-satisfaction.
Attempting to minimise your impact on the planet.
Making gestures, such as putting out your recycling, buying recycled goods, planting a few trees or a wildlife area in your garden, buying a lower energy TV.
Dropping out of society and living in a yurt, wearing hemp trousers and smoking mind-altering substances (apologies for the stereotype!)
Putting turf on your roof.
Riding a bicycle instead of using the car.

To me, the term “green” or “eco” is complicated. We do many things that are not “green”. We drive a vehicle. We live in a house in a town. We buy stuff, probably stuff that we don’t always need, and quite probably stuff that at least some of the time isn’t ethically produced or “eco”. We use chemicals sometimes. We use tools powered by fossil fuels to maintain the woods. I have to take a lot of medication because, like it or not, herbs and natural remedies will not cure my inherited condition (cystic fibrosis).

However we also do a lot of things that would be considered “green”. We own a wood and manage it for wildlife. We plant trees and care for them. We even talk to them. We keep chickens. We grow some of our own food. We have a log-burning stove. We use solar power, at least some of the time. We buy old stuff and restore, re-use or recycle where we can. We work from home and don’t commute (although that wasn’t always the case). We use a renewable electricity plan. We support wildlife and environmental charities.

So are we “green” people? My view is that “green” is a way of thinking, rather than a series of actions. Green means that you are mindful of the consequences of your actions for other people, for other species, and for the planet. You may consider your actions and still choose those that have an adverse impact, but at least you have done so with a thought for what those consequences might be. Also, the choices may be more complicated than you originally thought.

So, it seems a no-brainer to buy local, seasonal, organic food. But in order to do so, you have to drive quite a number of miles to get to a farm shop, and usually, to get all the things you require, you have to visit several of these. And most of the stuff stocked there isn’t organic. So is it better to use an online delivery service (less transport impact) and choose seasonal UK-grown food from them instead? And what if the organic option comes from overseas, but there are local non-organic options available instead? I don’t know the answer, but the thought process is there each time I do my shopping.

And what about the woods? Should we maintain it without using chainsaws and brushcutters and a tractor? Ideally, yes, but the fact is that we simply can’t do that in the time we have available. Should we avoid the use of herbicides? Yes, of course we should. But how, realistically, can we keep the competitive weeds from smothering our new trees in their first few years? Manual weeding? Of 5000 trees (4000 in Betty’s Wood and another 1000 in the rest of the wood)? Or mulch mats which would be prohibitively expensive? Should we leave the trees to their fate and suffer losses of 50% or badly compromise their growth? Or do we want a healthy woodland that is fixing carbon effectively for many years to come, but at the expense of using something that is manifestly, neither “eco” nor “green”? These choices are not straightforward, and we have made choices we would have considered to be wrong when we set out, and which we might consider to be wrong again in the future, but which have become right when faced with a task to be done and a goal to be achieved.

I think the important thing, the thing that makes somebody “green”, is that the individual considers these choices mindful of the impact that they have. And I think that being green does not need to mean accepting a poorer, or harder, or less comfortable quality of life. Nor does it mean reducing your expectations for the woods, or accepting a poorer outcome. However it does mean you may have to be smarter, or use smarter technology, or accept compromises to achieve it with a lower impact.

I don’t think we’re particularly “green”. But we are mindful, in everything we do, of the impact we have. On people. On other species. On ecosystems. On the planet. If we can leave a small footprint and a large positive legacy, then I think we are a little bit “green”.

Small Woodland Owners Group Meeting

2011-05-09T15:08:00.000+01:00

This weekend we were excited and privileged to welcome the Small Woodland Owners Group to Alvecote Wood. This is a wonderful group of people from all walks of life who own or manage small woodlands, and which gives owners the opportunity to learn from each other, solve practical problems, learn from professionals and experts, and best of all, visit each others' woods.

A lovely place to camp

There is a certain amount of trepidation involved in getting ready for one of these meetings and we found ourselves asking a lot of questions. Will the wood look OK? How do we cater for everybody? Will we have the camping area ready? Will people actually turn up? What will the experts think of what we are doing? So we got on with the preparations, while still trying to water our little trees.

We needn't have worried - everybody who came was very friendly. We had seven people camping overnight, including ourselves, and the the main clearing made an excellent camping venue. Dinner in the local pub was very convivial and quite a lot of beer was consumed. It was wonderful and enlightening to spend the evening in the company of real woodland experts, including those responsible for looking after some of the major forests in Wales. After months of drought, the rains finally came, and the heavens opened on those walking the half mile back to the woods. Thankfully, we all made it, and all tents remained watertight - we certainly slept well knowing we had respite from tree-watering, at least for a while.

The rain and wind was too much for our gazebo, however, which turned itself into scrap metal overnight and thwarted our plans for an alfresco breakfast. So it was we took to the building and rustled up a fry-up of bacon, eggs from our chickens, sausages, black pudding and bread.

The building was then turned into an impromptu lecture theatre - it isn't every day that you get to sit on a tractor and watch an expert presentation. And what a brilliant presentation it was - from Alistair Yeomans of the Sylva Foundation. This organisation is responsible for the MyForest web site, which provides a range of web tools for woodland owners and managers, including a neat way of producing an inventory and management plan for your woodland based on the Forestry Commission template. But it isn't only the geographical and inventory tools that are potentially useful - small woodland owners can market any spare produce ranging from a few beanpoles, a small quantity of firewood, a single log or pieces of wood for wood-turning and crafts right up to commercial quantities of timber and coppice products.

An unusual lecture theatre

After coffee and biscuits, Alistair took us into the woods and demonstrated the use of the MyForest inventory tools. This included how to survey stocking density, recognise tree species, measure diameter at breast height (DBH) (which does involve some tree-hugging) and use a clinometer to estimate height. We looked at different areas in the wood and how we could use the tools, as well as studying individual trees to see how we could use the tools to record the "form" of the tree.

Alistair, demonstrating the use of a clinometer

I see no ships!

We did a lot of walking and looking at trees

Tree-hugging is not compulsory - measuring DBH

We try and decide on what "form" to record for this grand old hazel

Let them eat cake

Lunch was al fresco and involved eating a certain amount of cake. Stephen then led a walk and talk around the woods, discussing what we had done since taking ownership to manage the woodlands, maintain and improve habitats and introduce new ones. As well as discussing drainage and ponds, we also looked at the coppice, and had a walk round Betty's Wood to see what we had achieved by planting 4000 trees during the winter of 2010/11.

Looking up at trees - we did a lot of this - this time in this year's coppice

How to tell your greater duckweed from your lesser

Marching through the late bluebells

Discussing the planting of Betty's Wood

Looking at the new wildlife ponds

It was THIS big - Stephen talks about the planting plan

In glorious sunshine, the meeting ended, and we struck camp. It was brilliant to have met so many wonderful people, who had travelled so far to visit us, including Rich from Kent and Nigel and Elaine from Somerset. At the end of it we sat, exhilarated and exhausted, drinking tea and reflecting on a wonderful weekend.

The newly-constructed TreeBog, complete with tasteful Engaged sign

And as a slight post-script - our alfresco TreeBog, constructed especially for the weekend from pallets, available timber and a tarpaulin, seemed to be much appreciated by all.

We hope we can host another meeting in the future, and in the meantime, are looking forward to keeping in touch with all our new friends.

Butterflies

2011-05-06T14:42:00.000+01:00

There's something about butterflies that I have always loved. Ever since I was a teenager, I have been interested in butterflies, and I tried, often unsuccessfully, to photograph them in their natural habitat. I was lucky enough to live near Box Hill in Surrey, where many of the UK species are found. With that abundance, you get spoiled, and forget just how precarious and tenuous the hold is for many of our native butterflies. Moving to the Staffordshire/Warwickshire border has made me much more aware of butterflies thanks to their relative scarcity when compared with leafy Surrey.

Many butterflies, with their complex life cycle, rely on the presence of a whole habitat, rather than the presence of one plant. Nectar-producing plants that we put into our gardens to attract colourful butterflies such as Peacock, Red Admiral, Comma, Small Tortoiseshell and Painted Lady are only part of the story, important though they are. Key to the survival of butterflies are the often less-glamorous foodplants onto which their eggs are laid, and on which their caterpillars feed. These plants are often not very showy, seen as weeds, and even tided up to make verges and hedgerows tidier.

Green-veined white

At Alvecote Wood we have been trying to help butterflies over the past four years, not just by providing plants with abundant nectar (although these occur naturally in large amounts, particularly bramble flowers), but also by providing foodplants. Establishing foodplants on ground already colonised by grasses is not easy, but we have had some success in establishing them on areas disturbed by pond-digging, track-construction and other activities that bring subsoil to the surface, since many of these plants thrive on soil with lower levels of fertility.

Butterfly Conservation have also recently visited and given us some advice on what we can do to attract other species, in particular those that are close to us, but which haven't yet made it to Alvecote Wood. These include Brown Argus and Dingy Skippers.


Jack by the hedge

This week's abundance of butterflies has given us some encouragement. So far this Spring we have welcomed Brimstone, Small White, Large White, Orange Tip, Green-veined White, Holly Blue, Red Admiral, Small Tortoiseshell, Comma, Speckled Wood and Peacock to our woods. This week saw the first of the Small Copper butterflies in Betty's Wood. Last year we welcomed Common Blues for the first time, along with an abundance of Ringlet, Gatekeeper, Meadow Brown, Small and Large Skippers and the wonderful Purple Hairstreak.

Betty's Wood has provided the opportunity to put in foodplants for a number of species, including the Brown Argus. And not just meadow flowers, but trees too - alder, black poplar and others. And we will add Alder buckthorn this winter for brimstone butterflies.

As well as their beauty, butterflies are an indicator of the overall diversity and health of the ecosystem on which they live. We hope that we can improve things for local butterflies, allow them to spread from other locations, and thus to reduce their vulnerability to habitat change or loss. Common and taken for granted until we notice their absence, butteflies need all the help they can get. And when I see the first of a particular species in a year, I certainly get butterflies in my stomach.

Nocturnal activities

2011-04-28T11:55:00.000+01:00

Moths are often seen as the less glamorous cousins of butterflies. The dull, drab, brown creatures with suicidal tendencies that flutter into the lights when we’re having a barbecue, or the annoying little creatures that eat our cashmere sweaters.

Although familiar with some of the day-flying moths, many of which are quite as beautiful as butterflies, night-flying moths have been a bit of a closed book to me.

As a long-term enthusiast for butterflies, I was keen to get involved with the oft-neglected other half of the order Lepidoptera – indeed, there are many more moth species than butterflies in the UK.

After a visit to Alvecote Wood to advise on improvements in habitat to encourage butterflies, the Warwickshire branch of Butterfly Conservation arranged for a night-time moth-trapping session to attempt to establish a seasonal baseline for the woods, so we can chart the effect of any changes in management.

So it was we found ourselves on a warm, but rapidly-cooling night, walking around the wood with torches, moth traps, generators, lamps and cameras to see just what we had. And we were very lucky indeed in having Alan and Val, two extremely knowledgeable moth experts to do this survey, as well as Keith and Heather from Butterfly Conservation Warwickshire.

Three traps were quickly sited in three areas of woodland, selected to provide different habitats and therefore hopefully to get a wide range of moth species. Then we settled down to a cup of tea, thoughtfully provided by Val, and a biscuit and chat, listening to the first bats come out to play, before heading off for the first count.

Moths – nocturnal and drab? Not a bit of it. Some of the tiny little moths were quite restrained in their colouring, but even they had a delicate beauty. And there were some large and spectacular moths too, some with amazing names. Common Quaker, Angle Shades, Purple Thorn, Lunar Marbled Brown, Hebrew Character, Lesser Swallow Prominent, White Ermine and many more.

We learned a fantastic amount about moths from a real expert, as we were doing the rounds of the traps. We did not know, for example, that moths come out at a certain time after dark. Some species are always the first to be caught, others come out later, so you need to keep looking until these later species appear – in our case we were looking for the Brindled Beauty. When she appears, we can pack up and go home, knowing that no more species will appear that night.

What was also impressive was the perfection of the camouflage that some moths have developed. Many of us know about moths such as the buff-tip which looks like a broken twig, but some of the really beautifully-coloured moths are less easy to envisage. However if, like Alan, you know where they roost, you can then see how they disappear into the background. The Lesser Swallow Prominent, for example, sits on birch bark. Quite vivid in the trap, you would not see it at all on a silver birch trunk.

And so it was, as time went on, different species began to emerge and appear in the traps, and we drank more tea and ate more biscuits. We had contacted the police in advance to warn them that there might be lights in the wood (in case they decided we were poachers). However we hadn’t told the Parish Council, and as one Councillor was driving past and noticed the lights, she kindly phoned us to warn us.

Despite the tropical daytime temperatures, the night-time was cold, and the log-burner provided us with some warmth in between forays to the traps until finally, at just after 3am, the Brindled Beauty put in an appearance, and Alan and Val could pack up and go home, and we could climb into our sleeping bags and try to warm up and get some sleep.

I found the whole thing fascinating, particularly to watch an expert at work. Moths all have a four digit number code, and Alan knows every one of these codes. Many are remarkably similar, with only tiny differences between species, and to have someone at hand to point these differences out is a learning experience not to be missed.

We have already scheduled another session in July to catch the summer moths. 33 species were recorded on our site, which is very good for April. Predictions are that over the course of the year we may get up to 200 species of moth. Let’s hope so!

The Weather

2011-04-27T10:46:00.000+01:00

Owning a wood can produce a whole mixture of emotions in the course of a few hours, let alone a few days, and this was the case with our lovely wood over the Easter holidays.

The woods are looking beautiful, the bluebells are out in force, and the trees are all in full leaf, with the exception of the tardy ash trees, still lagging behind the oaks. Unfortunately the phrase “oak before ash, we’re in for a splash” seems to be more than true for us. Indeed, not even a splash of rain has fallen since the start of March. This is wonderful news if you are trying to promote the woods for outdoor activities and enjoyment, but not such wonderful news for newly-planted trees.

Betty’s Wood has 4500 new trees, planted in February 2011. The trees didn’t have the best start. Initially, planting was delayed due to prolonged frozen weather which meant the ground was like concrete. Then it turned into a quagmire, making the planting difficult and completion of our wet woodland area an impossibility. But at the end of February, the rain stopped, things warmed up a bit and the trees started to come into leaf.

And then the rain stopped. Completely. By Easter, although about 1/3 of the area is still OK, presumably due to permeable subsoil and groundwater, the remaining 2/3 was drying up. The wet species, in particular the alder, were now in dried mud that was like concrete, and struggling. Many of the oaks (we planted 800) looked distinctly dead, and we stood to lose as many as 2500 trees, or more.

But how to water 9 acres and 4500 trees? We managed to cobble together an arrangement with a tank, a bowser, an ancient Honda pump, and extracting some water from our new ponds, thankfully fed by groundwater so resilient to extraction, at least for now. We were very grateful that we had planted the trees in curvy rows that were wide enough to get a Land Rover down, as we could tow the bowser into position, and pump out the water through a hose, directing the hose to the roots, and thus watering the trees without waste. Still, watering 200 trees took nearly 2 hours, and so far we have only managed to water about 1100 of the worst-affected trees. They need doing again, but we still have some that haven’t been watered at all. No rain is forecast until the end of May at least (apart from the odd shower which isn’t enough – we need real wet rain for days to make a difference).

The hedge, and upper part of the new wood looks in better shape: in the lower part of the woods I guess we’ve lost about 2/3 of the oaks, but in the upper part we’ve lost only about 20%, and most of the other trees are doing OK here. The ash are proving very resilient, and if we do need to re-plant, we might consider using ash as replacement, at least for some of the oaks.

Although the hedge is looking good, it is now missing another 6 trees thanks to the actions of more thieves. This time they took 8 trees with canes and guards, and left 2 of them in the farmer’s field, where I rescued them and put them in a bucket of water to see if they can be saved. One spindle and one field maple tree now hang in the balance.

The warm weather has had compensations: we have had the most successful series of open days ever over Easter, starting with 15 visitors on Tuesday evening, then 15 on Easter Sunday and 40 on Easter Monday, when an Easter Egg hunt complete with quiz about trees and plants coupled with warm sunshine brought out the crowds. It is wonderful to see so many people coming to the woods and learning about trees while having fun.

So we mustn’t grumble if we have to keep carting tonnes of water to keep our little trees alive. Indeed, we now know how much our efforts are appreciated, and this keeps us more motivated to succeed in spite of the best efforts of the weather.

The Progression of Spring

2011-04-13T16:51:00.000+01:00

Spring is such an exciting time at the woods. Although it happens every year, it is also just a little bit different every year too. This year is no exception, indeed it is particularly exciting because of all the changes we have made during the winter: more coppicing, planting Betty's Wood with trees and hedgerow, and installing 5 more new wildlife ponds, taking the total up to eleven.

In the past week the woods have changed out of all recognition. A month ago the ground was waterlogged, like a clay quagmire. There were no leaves on the trees, and you could see right through the woods to the M42 and its relentless procession of Eddie Stobart's finest. Last weekend, it was beginning to change, and yesterday you could not see the M42 at all, unless you were right at the edge of the wood.

The elder scrub is now in full leaf, and some of the oak trees too, are threatening to be in full leaf in the next three or four days. The snakeshead fritillary has been and gone, and we are delighted to report that we now have seven colonies of this lovely plant, so rare in the wild, in our woods. One is the original colony, which has returned after two years of absence. One is a colony that we planted when we thought the original colony had disappeared. The rest have come along all on their own, presumably seeded from the original or planted colonies. As well as snakeshead fritillary, we have several wonderful flourishing patches of lesser celandine, a massive patch of red campion in one of our wildflower meadow areas, a growing patch of wild primrose under the trees together with a new self-set plant near the building, and a thriving and growing patch of cowslip.

There are more changes too, in the trees in Betty's Wood - many of them are now in leaf - the hazel, field maple, hawthorn, spindle, blackthorn, guelder rose, dog rose, sweet chestnut, birch, willow, alder, aspen and poplar, crab apple, wild cherry and rowan are all in leaf. Some of the ash, too, are in leaf remarkably early, although the oak is lagging behind and a few of them are not looking as healthy as they might. What is wonderful is that so many young trees are thriving, considering the dreadful conditions under which some were planted, and the lack of rain since then.

The meadow is also struggling along, hampered by the lack of rain. It cannot be good to go from frozen to quagmire (and trampled quagmire at that) to drought. What is remarkable is that despite this, there are a lot of wildflowers coming through including speedwell in flower, and cranesbill, buttercup, heartsease, clover and almost certainly some of the birdsfoot trefoil, so important for butterflies.

The coppice we cut last year is already in leaf, and new shoots are emerging from this year's coppiced trees. The coppice is full of life, and it is wonderful to see some ground flora developing here.

Another major benefit of managing the wood and letting in the light are the bluebells. They are appearing everywhere. When we took ownership 3 1/2 years ago, the bluebells were confined to two places. Now they are popping up everywhere we have cleared the bramble and reduced the scrub or where trees have been felled or have fallen naturally. They are late this year, not yet in flower except in one or two little patches, but they are promising to provide the best display ever.

Birds, too, are migrating: arrivals include swallows, blackcap and chiffchaff. The lesser spotted woodpecker is definitely calling and we have at least two pairs of great spotted woodpecker nesting, as well as green woodpecker. We have three male chiffchaff calling. A goshawk has been seen over the wood as was a rare black kite on its migration, although this appears now to have moved on. The fieldfares have gone, but the song thrush and mistle thrush are with us, and jackdaw have moved into a tree near the canal. Everywhere is the sound of birdsong and it is quite breathtaking.

The bats, too, have come out of hibernation and are feeding again at the wood - pipistrelle and noctule bats were heard last weekend, and we hope there are more to come. Butterflies are emerging - peacock, small tortoiseshell and red admiral from hibernation, and newly-emerged orange-tip, brimstone, holly blue, small white, green-veined white and speckled wood.

What a difference a week makes! Spring progresses rapidly at Alvecote Wood and it is wonderful to behold.

Words of Wisdom

2011-04-12T11:15:00.000+01:00

Chris Packham, in an article for the Radio Times this week, said that "the rarest thing in the countryside is not a lapwing or a skylark, it is a child". This very sad, but unfortunately very true comment got me thinking about our experiences at the wood.

The sad fact is that unless we have a specific event for children, such as the Scouts or a Forest School, almost all our visitors are adults. And not only are they adults, but older adults too, the majority over 40 years of age. The children who do come are usually children of fellow wildlife enthusiasts or farmers - rural children. Children from the towns are conspicuous by their absence. Children are, indeed, endangered species in the countryside.

So why is that? Why don't they come and enjoy the outdoors any more? The Easter Holidays have started, and it is a sunny morning, yet outside our house there are no children playing - not in the street, not in the park. I have been for a 5 mile walk on a glorious sunny day and seen maybe 10 adults but only one child, and that child was playing on the footpath just outside her house. The parks, open spaces, football pitches and goals, extensive and expensive adventure play equipment all stand empty. And these open spaces are within yards of many homes, with no special journey required to enjoy them. In the countryside there are few people, fewer skylarks, but almost no children at all - just the very occasional girl riding a pony.

I think there are a number of reasons. First of all is the oft-cited fear of "molesters" - people who wish children harm. Undoubtedly there are people like this now, as there have always been, but the perceived risk and actual risk are further apart now than they have ever been and in consequence it is almost seen as neglect to allow a child to play unsupervised. Bad people were around when I grew up too, but I was allowed and encouraged to play on open ground and in woods behind our house, going out for the whole day with a sandwich and drink to explore and learn, and returning with specimen jars of pond weed, beetles, fish, tadpoles and flowers.

Then there is the generation effect - the parents of young children did not explore the countryside as youngsters, and in consequence don't feel comfortable allowing their own children to do likewise. Young parents are unfamiliar with nature, have irrational fears of bugs and stinging nettles, and cannot answer the questions their naturally-curious children ask of them. Trees are a decoration, not essential to our ecosystems: they must be tidied, pruned, controlled and cut down when they get "too big" which is often before they have even reached maturity. The few remaining wild areas in cities and towns are where youths congregate, and therefore are somehow a bad place. The countryside is unfamiliar, a bit scary, probably full of hazards, and certainly somewhere they don't feel comfortable. And if parents don't feel comfortable, then neither will their children.

Finally there is the way in which leisure as a whole has become a product that has to be packaged and sold. Interest is not something you create for yourself, it is something that is put on for you, and for which you must travel and pay. The countryside is not valued for what it is, but for the attractions that are put on there. A visit to the country park means a visit to the playground, visitor centre and shop, perhaps taking in the display of birds of prey, a donkey ride, a train ride or whatever other attraction is on offer. Children are very rarely seen further than a hundred yards from the car park, playground, bouncy castle or other attraction. The countryside is where you go to do stuff, not a place you visit for what it is.

Or it is somewhere where you go with the school in a carefully martialled group: in hi-viz vests, children are herded to safe pond-dipping platforms, encouraged not to touch or feel anything in case it is dangerous, led around pre-defined trails then herded back to school. They do not learn anything of the true adventure that is possible in our wonderful countryside: lifting a log to see the beetles, pond dipping and getting your socks wet because your wellies are too short, getting stung by a nettle and rubbing it with a dock leaf, tripping over a bramble and scraping your knee, learning the wonderful names we have for our wild flowers (jack-under-the-hedge, good-king-henry, forget-me-not, cuckoo-flower), finding out that the beautiful trilling song in the bushes is made by a robin. "Nature Study" is done in the classroom.

There are wonderful exceptions to this, such as Forest Schools, that foster independent learning and self-directed exploration, but so few children have this opportunity, and many that do experience it in the confines of the school ground or a local park, rather than a true wild rural setting. Without that experience, how will our wonderful countryside, and the wildlife it contains, ever be appreciated or valued, particularly by urban children who will become the politicians and decision-makers of the future? And without being valued, how easy for it to be lost forever, buried under housing, agri-industrial units, roads, railways, quarries, open-cast mines and countryside theme parks.

When children, particularly smaller children, visit our woods they are overcome with curiosity and interest. They want to run, play, hide, explore, question and learn. How sad that so few actually get that opportunity. Words of wisdom, indeed Mr Packham. All we can do is try our hardest to reverse the inexorable trend, encourage children to visit and learn, and hope that some, at least, will come to appreciate the countryside, and come to be its guardians in years to come.

Misconceptions and Disconnections

2011-04-04T15:45:00.000+01:00

We don't often go out to smart do's these days - we seem to spend more time in our mucky clothes working at the woods. But we did go out last Friday and it was a very enjoyable evening for the retirement of a former colleague. Naturally we got to discussing the woods, and were asked some interesting questions.

It seemed that there was a general assumption that we owned the woods as "Lords of the Manor" and employed people to work there for us. "Who do you get to do the work for you?" was a question asked more than once. When we were talking about planting 4000 trees, one listener commented "Oh, well I suppose you can get a machine to do that for you?" to which we replied "Yes, it is called the Mark One Spade".

These misconceptions got me thinking. We love working at the woods, but why? And why do people think that woods are something you get other people to look after for you? It seems to me that many people have lost the connection with the natural world that comes from being intimately involved with it, and working closely with it. The beauty of working in the woods yourself is the great feeling you get for the place. You get to know not just each tree, but the feeling of each part of the woods - the microclimate, the subtle changes in the flora and fauna, the small signs left behind by mammals and birds passing through. If you do your own coppicing work, you can stand and think about the trees - which ones will be left to become standards, how can you best cut the trees to let in light.

If you paid contractors to do the work, you would get trees cut down competently (maybe even more competently than if you did it). But you would not learn because you would not be at the sharp end of the operations. And they would not learn because they would not come back to see the consequences of their work.

More than that, it is immensely satisfying to see the fruits of your labour. If you don't do the work, you don't sit and eat your sandwich on a newly-felled log, and watch the little vole scurrying about the new brash pile, or see the robin checking out availability of food on the disturbed ground. You don't feel the change in the microclimate, or perceive the difference in the behaviour of the birds and other creatures around you. If you take responsibility for doing the work, you take responsibility for the consequences, and you become much more connected with the land, the plants, the trees, the birds and the other creatures around you.

To me, nature is not a theme park. It is not something created by others for you to walk around and enjoy in a sanitised fashion. But nature is increasingly presented as a theme park. Nature is a car park, a visitor centre, a multimedia slide show, a properly-surfaced signposted footpath with interpretation boards at key points, followed by a cream tea. Nature is packaged and sold as a commodity. Nature is santised and tidied up. The work is something other people do, so that nature can be enjoyed as a themed experience.

There is no question that the people I was talking to are intelligent, and almost certainly they all enjoy the countryside. A few years ago I might have felt the same. But working on the woods gives you a new perspective and a closeness and intimacy with the natural world that you cannot get from a brief visit, from a footpath, from a pond-dipping platform or from a permanent bird-hide. We do not own woods as an investment, waiting for land values to appreciate, or some kind of large garden in which you employ a gardener to make it pretty and tidy. We wish to make an investment, yes, but the investment is in the future of the woods, and the people who might enjoy it, and most important of all, the wildlife that will live there, we hope for generations to come. To do the best for that wildlife, you need to get your hands dirty, use the Mark One Spade, get in there and connect with the nature you are trying to help.

Watch the Birdie

2011-03-28T17:43:00.000+01:00

Willow Tit

Birds are quite amazing creatures and this is certainly the time of year for people who love birds, those adorable little flying dinosaurs singing their hearts out to welcome in the spring. Alvecote Wood certainly has its share of birds, and they have been much in evidence over the last couple of weeks, with the arrival of chiffchaffs, the calling and drumming of woodpeckers, and the frantic nest-building activities of blue tits, robins and others.

The question we often ask ourselves is whether we have been successful in improving the habitat for birds over the past 3 years. We can only really answer this with objective surveys, and we complete both BTO BirdTrack and Warwickshire Wildlife Trust breeding bird survey protocols. Subjectively, though, the answer is clear - if you measure success on the diversity of bird species attracted to the woods, then we have been successful.

Yellowhammer

Another measure of success is whether we are helping to save those species that are red-listed and which have therefore seen a sharp decline in numbers over the past decades. Some formerly common species, such as house sparrow and starling, are now red-listed, but there are also some less well-known ones that we have been trying to attract.

So have we been successful? Well...to some extent, yes. We have certainly got lesser spotted woodpecker calling in the woods. We have one yellowhammer visiting our seed feeders regularly and another pair of yellowhammer on the far hedge in Betty's Wood, although the latter is unlikely to be due to our intervention. We also have a pair of willow tit visiting our feeders regularly.

Blue-tit

Coal tit

Reed bunting

What of the more common birds? Are we helping them too? Well, we certainly have a few green woodpecker calling, and several greater spotted woodpecker drumming. We are providing homes for blue tits, great tits, coal tits, long-tailed tits as well as the willow tit. We have mallard on our ponds again this year - both in Alvecote Wood and in Betty's Wood. There are numerous dunnock, wrens, robins, blackbirds, song-thrushes, nuthatch, treecreeper and goldfinches. We have reed bunting visiting the feeders as well as inhabiting the area next to the canal. Pheasant are wandering around in respectable numbers. Tawny owl pellets show them to be feeding on both small rodents and other birds. Jays are screeching. The buzzards and sparrowhawk are in evidence. Woodpigeon and fieldfares roost in the woods. Carrion crows and jackdaws too, make a contribution to the cacophany. Chiffchaff have arrived and we await the willow warblers and blackcap with bated breath. Skylark are singing in adjacent fields. Our first breeding bird survey logged 28 species on our transect walk.

Nuthatch

So, overall, we seem to be having some success at Alvecote Wood. We are hoping that lots of people will come to our birdwatching evening on Tuesday 5th April 6-8pm - the more eyes and pairs of binoculars there are out and about, the more we are likely to find out about something we haven't spotted yet. What is so good is that at last we feel that inviting birdwatchers to the wood is worthwhile, that we actually have something for folks to see. Watch the birdie - yes indeed. Let's hope we get more of them, and lots of nice surprises.

The Good and the Bad

2011-03-21T10:30:00.000Z

Reed bunting

Sometimes things are wonderful, sometimes not so good. This week has been a real mixture. Getting the bad out of the way first, the theft of a fence post reported last time was not so innocent as it first seemed. Our initial impression was that it was stolen in the hope that we wouldn't repair the fence properly, making it easy for poachers to get in and out. What we didn't notice, until Sunday, was that 21 trees along with canes and guards, had been stolen from the new planting in Betty's Wood. It had been done cleverly. We planted trees in curving rows with variable spacing so the whole plantation looks natural when it grows up, while maintaining gaps for access by machinery if required. Removing one row would not actually stand out very well, particularly if it is a little way away from the fence and hedge.

So it was that we spent a while repairing the fence, and still didn't notice they were gone, partly as we had to drive down there in order to get the fencing tools and new post into position. We only noticed the theft on Sunday when we walked along and realised that one of the gaps was much larger than it should be.

So, this was pre-meditated theft by people skilled in covering their tracks. We have upped our defences, and hope they don't come back.

Another concern is the continued presence of two red deer stags in the area: not just in the area. On Saturday we spotted them heading away from the woods and we hoped they would find their way to a better home. But on Sunday while having lunch, something startled them and they ran across the clearing in the wood, jumped the fence, crossed the road and disappeared. There was something so magnificent and primeval about these creatures - the size of small horses - running gracefully across the clearing. But they could do untold damage to the woods and in particular our young trees - indeed, they could destroy all of them very quickly. We hope they will not do this, and there is currently an abundance of food for them to eat, as they are grazing on the farm crops. But if they stay in the area, there could be trouble in the coming winter.

Now the good news! Red listed bird species are those which have suffered major declines in the last 30 or so years. Some formerly-common birds, such as house sparrows are now in that category, and we are pleased to have seen them come back to our garden, helped by regular feeding. At the woods, we are delighted to have a number of red-listed species. A single yellowhammer continues to visit our feeders, but even better, there are also a pair of yellowhammer in a different part of the wood. A reed bunting (amber listed) has been visiting our feeders too. And a lesser-spotted woodpecker was heard in the woods for the first time this weekend, joining its greater-spotted and green cousins. There are more green woodpecker this year too - several calling in and around the area. Nuthatch numbers seem to be up. We have buzzards and sparrowhawks in regular attendance. The willow tit is back on our feeders too although seems to be rather camera shy. And our wild primroses are in flower.

A chance enounter with a birdwatching enthusiast this weekend gave us encouragement. It is nice to have independent corroboration that since we took over ownership and management of the wood, there has been an increase in the variety of species and number of birds within species living there. We thought that too, but how lovely to have it confirmed. In a few short years we have been able to make a difference. There may be bad stuff happening, but there are also good outcomes. Let's hope we can continue to make a difference.

An eventful week

2011-03-18T18:04:00.000Z

The conifer woods at Lake Vyrnwy

We deserved a break, and what a wonderful break we had, looking at beautiful trees, but trees that weren't our own at Lake Vyrnwy in Wales. It is very refreshing to look at different woods as when you return you are able to see your own in a different light. It is possible to get very hung up on the imperfections, or little jobs that you really should have done but haven't had time to complete. Then you see that there are other woodlands with different structures, different types of trees, and different issues - but still those little jobs to be done!

Little beech tree under the conifer canopy
Lake Vyrnwy

I had always been a bit disappointed in conifer woodlands - a bleak understorey and a tiny canopy many metres up on a straight trunk without any side branches. However the conifer woodlands around Lake Vyrnwy took on a real beauty in the spring sunshine, and are not devoid of understory either - there is enough light coming through for little saplings to grow, and catch the light, and flourish. We also managed to visit Gaer Fawr near Welshpool, an ancient woodland with overstood coppice flourishing on the site of an Iron Age hillfort with spectacular views across the River Severn - worth the rather steep uphill walk to see the views.

Lake Vyrnwy is spectacular too, and we were really lucky with the weather - unlike when we were planting our own woodlands - with flat water and beautiful reflections in the sunshine.

Perfect reflection Lake Vrynwy

On our return, we hoped for the relaxation to continue, but that was not to be. One major outstanding job was our breeding bird survey to be completed - ideally we should have done this at the start of March, but there was no time with all the planting and coppicing to be completed. So I really needed to get on with this before it all gets more complicated with the arrival of the spring migrants - chiffchaffs, willow warblers and blackcaps.

What a superb day it was too - the sun came out in fits and starts, and I noted 28 species of birds during my two-hour wander. Particularly exciting was the finding of TWO pairs of mallard - one on our upper ponds and one on our lower ponds. And the sight of a yellowhammer feeding under one of our feeders - we had heard one while planting, but this was the first sight. We also definitely have at least two calling green woodpeckers. The fieldfares have not yet departed and were visible in large numbers in our trees, and the buzzards are choosing their nest site - either our wood or the copse adjacent to Betty's Wood, which they will probably choose as it is slightly less well visited by humans. We are really looking forward to camping there in our newer, slightly more luxurious tent, and listening for owls and bats and the dawn chorus - once the weather gets a little bit warmer.

Blue tit at Alvecote Wood

Other signs of spring abound: we have shoots coming on the ash, birch, hawthorn, rose and spindle in the hedge and main compartment at Betty's Wood, despite some of these only having been in the ground for 5 or 6 weeks. We have shoots coming on the wild garlic and our patches of fritillaria (re-established with some difficulty after they were disturbed while making our paths and building). The wild daffs and the patches of naturalised daffs are flowering and the bluebells are promising a fantastic show again this year.

But of course it can't all be good: While we were away, somebody cut through our new fence at Betty's Wood and stole a fence post (why, I have no idea). This means instead of doing productive stuff this weekend, we'll be having to repair the fence and make it secure again, as our bodged repair will only be OK for a little while. Why people do such damage I can't think - well, unfortunately I can, because it makes access for poaching and harming wildlife much easier. That can be the only motivation - there is nothing there to steal!

We have also had a visitation from two red deer stags: they have been in the field adjacent to our woods, having been previously spotted in Tamworth earlier in the week. Where they have come from, I have no idea, but we have alerted the authorities to their whereabouts: The last thing we want to happen is for the nice weather and weekend to bring out men with guns at night-time, and for these magnificent creatures to be killed. We hope they can be relocated to a safe home if their original home cannot be found. There is no way that these are native to this area and much as they are beautiful, they would also be very destructive to our new wood and our lovely ancient trees so it is better that they are located somewhere else.

An eventful week indeed! Roll on another week and our first Open Day on Sunday 27th March - let's hope the fine weather holds and everybody comes to enjoy the woods and appreciate what it has to offer.

Achieving the Impossible - Finished and Exhausted

2011-03-07T15:55:00.000Z

We have been going non stop since December, a fact to which my aching muscles will testify. It seems such a long time ago since we started the winter work, and it is nice to reflect on its completion.

First of all came the fence - fencing the boundary to Betty's Wood and repairing some gaps in our main fence. Then came the snow, which held up the work until just before Christmas. However we managed to get in 700 trees to make a new hedgerow along the fence and connect our piece of ancient woodland with another small copse.

While there was a frustrating wait for our Forestry Commission woodland creation grant to be approved, we got on with this year's coppicing. We love trees and don't like cutting them down, but this isn't just cutting trees down. This is part of active management of the wood that will actually prolong the life of the trees you have cut, as well as provide a sustainable source of wood, and a brilliant new habitat for everything from ground flora to insects to birds and mammals. Last year's coppice has already grown 8 feet and provides that lovely dense bushy habitat that some birds love, together with improvement in the condition of the young oaks that we have selected as future standards.

We had to break off the coppicing in order to plant the trees when the paperwork came through. This weekend we planted another 325 mixed trees to finish off Betty's Wood, and also cloned another 80 or so willow into the wet area by the first of our new ponds. We started at the end of January with the tree planting and the pond digging, and now we have over 4500 trees (including those in the hedge) as well as five beautiful new ponds.

Then in a race against time, we completed the coppice this weekend: felling three hawthorns (one of which we had started a few months ago), cutting the logs, piling the brash and then putting deer fencing or tree shelters around all the coppiced stools.

Looking forward in November it seemed we had an impossible job: just the two of us with whichever volunteers came along on the day. And come along they did - we nearly always had one helper, at least for part of the day, and sometimes up to eight. They turned out in bad weather, and I think we had pretty bad weather - it seems to have been raining for the whole of February at least. They turned out in their own time, fuelled by home-made cake and the knowledge that they were changing the landscape and helping wildlife.

Looking back now from March, it still seems like we achieved the impossible. I thought it would take us years before we really noticed the difference, but yesterday I noticed a robin exploring one of the brash piles as a potential nesting site (as well as perching on the chainsaw and eyeing us up). Best of all, a pair of mallard flew in onto one of our new ponds - there isn't anything for them there yet, it is just a huge muddy puddle. But they dabbled around, and had a swim, and this gives me great hope for the future - in a couple of years when the ground is colonised by reeds and grasses, and the pond is full of life, this will be brilliant habitat for water birds, ground-nesting birds and waders alike.

Achieving the impossible? We hope we did. Now we are going to have a little rest!

Changing the Landscape - Ponds and the Final Push

2011-03-01T12:20:00.000Z

Would we do it again? Well, yes..but it has been very hard work. You can think about 4000 trees, you can dream about 4000 trees, you can talk about 4000 trees, but it doesn't give you any notion of how many trees that actually is, or how much your back might hurt when planting them.

Since December 2010 we have planted 4000 trees, more than 3000 of them in the last five weeks. We could never have done this without our stalwart volunteers who have turned out in the freezing cold, the rain, the wind and even the all-too-occasional sunshine. Nevertheless, a lot of work has fallen on our shoulders, backs, legs and arms.

First of all, you can't just put trees in willy-nilly. You have to plan their planting quite carefully. First of all, unless you are planning to grow conifers for a rapid profit, you can't really plant them in rows. Instinctively, you know that the butterflies, bees, insects, flowers, mosses, liverworts, fungi, birds and mammals don't mind that the trees are in rows, so long as they are there at all. But Betty's Wood is quite prominent in the landscape - visible from the M42, from the Coventry Canal and from the top of Pooley Mound. This being the case, we want the landscape to look as natural as possible.

This has meant plotting out curvy lines that permit you to get down with a tractor or mower if needed to maintain the ground flora in the early years, but from most points of view, looks like a randomly-planted woodland. Connecting curves is less easy than connecting straight lines, so this is easy to say, but hard to do.

Then you have to ensure there is open space in which flowers and meadows may thrive, and that includes making sure that the meadows are not going to be permanently shaded out by trees in the future. As well as open space, it is helpful to provide variable densities of trees - planting them at different separations - so the wildlife can benefit from clumps and thickets, singleton "specimen" trees and everything in between.

Then you have to take account of the type of soil and ground. Betty's Wood has some lovely clay loam soil, some awful stony ground, a very noticeable frost hollow, and an extremely wet section that at present resembles a paddy field rather than a woodland. Put trees in frozen ground and they won't like it. Put the wrong kind of trees in ground that gets readily waterlogged and they won't thrive.

The best laid plans, put down on paper, have to be modified as you get a feel for the ground you are standing on, and the conditions into which you are planting, and planning changes within the constraints of what you have told the Forestry Commission you will do is not easy.

Changing the landscape is also not just about trees: ponds are a really rapid way of increasing the diversity of habitats available. In the last two weeks, we have had Bill Sammons along with his digger to create five ponds, some of which are large, bordering on lakes, to provide habitat for a very wide range of creatures. Thanks to advice from Pond Conservation, we have planned these to maximise the habitats available with the emphasis on a wide draw-down zone, lots of variable depth areas, and pond complexes rather than single large ponds. Bill has done an excellent job with great skill. The area looks like the Somme at the moment, but we can picture this in our heads with rushes, reeds, sedges, grasses, irises and pond plants, with waders and waterfowl lurking in the cover provided, and with willow and alder growing around the edges. In a few years time we hope this will be a major new habitat addition for the area.

We have one weekend to go with tree planting and then we will have to stop for the season. Stop because the trees are almost bursting their buds, and stop because after six weeks of this, we are actually very tired. 325 final trees will go in to complete the rows, and profile curving paths. There will be a bit more to do next year - gapping up, filling gaps in the regeneration area, planting between the ponds after the ground has settled - but with this final push we will have a new woodland. We will miss the cameraderie of our valiant groups of volunteers, we will miss sploshing and slipping around in the mud, and we will miss tea and cake in the woods. We will not miss the aching muscles, the sore joints and the feeling of being permanently wet and cold.

Would we do it again? Yes..but we need a bit of a holiday first!

The Future of Woodlands

2011-02-17T14:37:00.000Z

To all of us involved in woodlands and woodland management, the last few months have been a time of great uncertainty. First of all we had uncertainty over the future of the Forestry Commission and its relationship to other public bodies. Was it going to remain or be abolished? And what would its future functions be?

Then we had the planned sale of publicly-owned woodland that was to include not only the large timber plantations, but also woodland of huge value for biodiversity and wildlife, and woodlands around the country enjoyed by very large numbers of people and which provide an opportunity to enjoy the countryside to many from towns and cities around the UK. A consultation was launched, but this seemed to focus only on the criteria for the sale, rather than whether the sale should take place at all. This caused a huge outcry, not the least from the very charitable and conservation bodies who were expected to take over the management of these important habitats, as well as countless members of the public who felt that their access rights would be restricted, and the habitat value allowed to decline.

Then we had an announcement that a planned sale for this year was to be halted pending the results of the above consultation. Finally we had an announcement that the consultation itself was to be halted, along with the sale, and the legal provisions to allow sales of more than 15% of the estate were to be withdrawn and the establishment of a new panel to look at the future of all woodlands and forests, not just those in public ownership.

So where does that put the future of forests, woodlands, and the role of the Forestry Commission now?

The most important thing about this episode is that people around the country have become really engaged in, and supportive of, their local woodlands. This seems like a great opportunity to have a proper debate about the future of woodlands, and indeed all important wildlife habitats, in the UK.

To me it seems that there are a number of important issues that need to be addressed.

It is quite clear that we need an integrated plan for not just woodlands, but the environment and biodiversity to cover all types of land, not just that in public ownership. The vast majority of woodland and forests that people enjoy on a daily basis, and that provide important habitat for wildlife, are not in public ownership – they are owned by a number of different individuals, companies and bodies including local councils and private landowners, some who manage the land well, other who do not.

The question of who owns what therefore seems much less important than who does what – in other words, how the woodland and habitat is managed rather than whose name is on the deeds at the Land Registry. Public woodland is already well-managed by the Forestry Commission, but what about the huge estate that is owned and managed, or mismanaged, by others? How can that woodland be better managed for biodiversity, and better access secured for people.

The landscape of the UK has been managed for thousands of years, and countless species rely on human management for the survival of their habitat. Woodland needs management, as do other habitats, or they will gradually decline, and biodiversity will decline along with it. Lack of management is a huge threat to woodlands and other wildlife habitats across the UK. Alongside this is the fact even where woodlands and wildlife habitats are managed, this is not necessarily integrated, even between adjoining sites.

Our own woodland, for example, is supported by the Forestry Commission. Adjoining arable land is managed under stewardship schemes via Natural England. Across the canal is a SSSI managed in part by Warwickshire Wildlife Trust and in part by Warwickshire County Council. It adjoins farmland on both sides of the canal managed by a variety of owners, and land being managed to encourage wildlife by Polesworth Abbey. But this is not joined-up. Money comes from different pots, and those behind the different pots have different agendas.

The question is, therefore, how do we make sure that the countryside is managed appropriately, so that it can provide the food we need, the wood we need, the recreational opportunities we need and the habitat and biodiversity that we must protect? This cannot rely on publicly-owned woodland, or the national parks, important though they are. It has to take a wider view. Management for habitat and biodiversity costs money to whoever owns the land: money for equipment, personnel, time, money to cover damage, vandalism and theft, and sometimes for lost production while the land is converted to different use – trees take a long time to grow and generate income.

There are local projects, such as the Tame Valley Partnership, that draw together a wide range of organisations and landowners. But what we really need is a proper countryside and wildlife service that covers all habitats including woodland and forests, to ensure that the support that is given for habitat and biodiversity management is integrated, consistent, and includes advice, grants and training.

It has been clear from the recent campaign to save our woodlands that public access to the countryside is valued. However public access is not simply a question of removing fences and letting people get on with it. Fences may be there for a good reason (exclusion of deer, for example). Some areas may need staff on site to provide first aid, maps, and assistance. Owners need to prevent theft and vandalism and unauthorised use by motorcycles and 4 x 4 vehicles, or unauthorised occupation by travellers. Parking facilities may need to be provided. Control of dogs may be important for livestock. Prevention of unauthorised shooting or poaching can be a problem for those seeking to protect wildlife. Access means maintaining fences, stiles, wheelchair surfaces, tracks, bridges, pond dipping platforms and pathways. Some sensitive wildlife may require exclusion of people or CCTV monitoring to prevent disturbance, or theft of eggs. All this costs money and requires staff too, whether the land is publicly or privately-owned. We cannot open our own wood all the time without somebody on site – so we have scheduled, and well-supported, open days, evening walks, and activities for community groups throughout the year, but not open access 24/7/365. Owners who want to provide access need support to make it possible, so that woodland and countryside outside the public ownership domain can be made accessible to all.

We have found the Forestry Commission to be extremely helpful in the provision of advice, and grants, to support our work in getting our woodland back into management and to develop it for wildlife and as a community resource. But all around us we see un-managed or under-managed woodland that is slowly deteriorating. A future role of a countryside and wildlife service must be to get this woodland back under management, whoever owns it. It also needs to ensure that management with a primary objective of timber production is sensitive to the needs of wildlife, just as there is a need to ensure that farming is done in a way that minimises impact on wildlife and improves biodiversity, while maintaining the ability to generate an income for the farmers concerned. Finally, it needs to ensure that owners are supported to provide and maintain access, and that needs to include proper investigation and management of rural and wildlife crime without which, people will not open up their land.

The recent publicity generated by the woodland sale issue is a big opportunity to ensure that the future of the countryside environment is protected for everybody, regardless of who owns the land – public, local councils, charities, private landowners. But we do not know how many of the campaigning bodies will be represented on the new advisory panel, and recommendations may be compromised by job cuts at the Forestry Commission itself and budget cuts at DEFRA in general. And woodlands don’t exist in isolation, but as part of a rich tapestry of habitats. A wider debate is needed across all ownership groups, and all types of habitat, or the opportunity will be lost.

Ponds Old and New

2011-02-15T17:20:00.000Z

Alvecote Wood was blessed with just a single pond when we took over ownership in 2007. But if you want to improve biodiversity and create new habitat, then ponds are a fantastic way to go about it. During 2008 we created 5 more ponds: three near our building in the boggy area of meadow, and two more terraced ponds in the silted-up remains of the original pond. At the time we took advice from Pond Conservation - and very good advice it was too.

Instead of putting in one huge pond, we put in several ponds, of different shapes, sizes and depths, with different sources of water: rainwater, groundwater and ditchwater. Some areas were designed to dry out during the Summer and some to stay wet all year round. Scalloped sloping edges were designed to give access to animals and birds for drinking, and to allow amphibians to exit the ponds, as well as provide varied pond margin habitat.

We started the ponds off with a few native pond plants that we bought in, and also transported some plants from our single existing pond to help populate the new ponds. Then we sat and waited...

With the acquisition of Betty's Wood, our arable field adjacent to Alvecote Wood, putting in ponds and wet woodland was the obvious choice in the damper areas of the field. Indeed, there were areas waterlogged even during a drought in this field, so ponds were the ideal solution to this waterlogging.

Today, afer a number of months of planning, and discussion, and waiting for planning permission, we were finally able to start digging the ponds. Jeremy Biggs from Pond Conservation visited us, and helped advise on the shape, location, size and depth of the ponds to be created. With a large area unconstrained by existing trees, we were able to plan two large 30m x 10m ponds, and a few smaller ones as well. On a cold, windy and rainy day, it was exciting to see the digger making its mark, and the new ponds starting their new life.

We didn't stop with the new ponds though - while Bill and his digger were changing the landscape, we visited our older ponds and did conductivity tests and some pond dipping. Even in the rain and wind, pond dipping is huge fun. We were delighted that our plan of stacking our ponds resulted in the gradual removal of contaminants as you worked down the hill towards the lower end of the stack.

The pond dipping was also excellent: a whole host of different types of snails (including ramshorn snails) were found, along with a variety of dragonfly and damselfly larvae, some amazing caddis fly larvae, mayfly larvae, water-boatmen and back-swimmers, pond skater larvae and flatworms. We were surprised to find a pair of smooth newt in the pond most susceptible to drying out. Best of all was the huge diving beetle nearly 5cm long that we found in Pond One.

As well as the creatures, the flora are also developing nicely, with a number of species arriving of their own accord, including watercress. All of this bodes well for the development of the new ponds, which we will be following closely over the coming months and years. There is nothing more wonderful than a pond alive with dragonflies in the summer. We hope that this new habitat will significantly improve the diversity of the area, bring in new species, extend the options for existing species and provide endless enjoyment. And we hope for lots, lots more pond-dipping opportunities!

First Signs of Spring!

2011-02-10T14:15:00.000Z

You know it's coming, it does every year, but there is still something so exciting about spotting the first signs of spring in the woods.

Today I had an opportunity that doesn't come around very often: I could potter around the woods just watching and listening, instead of photographing, working or doing exercise classes. And there was a lot to see and listen to.

The seed feeders are alive with birds. It is fascinating to watch the little conveyor belt of great tits and blue tits, and to see just how far they are travelling for their free meal. As well as the more common birds, we also had coal tits, nuthatches, a willow tit, chaffinches, dunnocks, robins and a great spotted woodpecker visiting the seed feeders this morning. The birds are definitely starting to sing out their territory. A blue tit was spotted going in and out of nest box number 13 (of 31). Nesting season is fast approaching.

The ponds show signs of life too: the sedges and yellow flag iris are pressing up new shoots. On the paths and in the glades the first tiny tips of the bluebells are poking through the ground. In our car park area, the naturalised daffodils are making such good progress it is likely they will flower for St David's Day. In the warmer, quieter parts of the wood, the elder buds have just burst.

It is still winter, of course. It can and probably will still freeze or snow again. We still have an alarming amount of work to be done before spring gets underway. But the signs of spring are there. It shouldn't come as a surprise, but there is something so uplifting about the sight and sound of a bird singing his song, and of the first shoots of the bluebells. Uplifting, exciting, and still very slightly surprising!

Changing the Landscape - Part Two

2011-02-08T18:17:00.000Z

Another weekend and we have now planted about half the number of trees we had planned to plant in Betty's Wood. We could not have done this without the army of volunteers who have turned up in the most inclement of weather to help make a huge difference.

The wind did its utmost to blow us away, along with the trees, bags, canes, tree-guards and everything else at the weekend and threatened to change the landscape by redistributing everything into the canal. Not what we wanted at all, and only averted by staking everything down to the ground.

Despite the best efforts of the weather, we got all our trees in by lunchtime on Sunday, and also managed to plant some of the willow clones that we had prepared for the wetter area at the lower end of the field.

Today was the most beautiful day. Sunshine, no wind, no frost, some real warmth in the sun. In the woods, we had the usual stream of blue, great, coal and willow tits to our feeders, but other things are happening too. The blue tits are already seeking out the nest boxes that we cleaned out last week. The great spotted woodpeckers are drumming. The fieldfares are gathering for their migration north. The buzzards are chasing away last year's chick, who is still trying to cadge food from its parents. The first tiny shoots of bluebells are peeking through the soil, and our naturalised daffodils are making very good progress. One solitary ladybird was seen by our ponds. Spring has not come (we don't want it to yet - not until the trees are all planted), but it is thinking about arriving soon.

I took a walk along to Pooley mound and from the top of the mound I could see our wood, and the field into which we are planting Betty's Wood. The photo was taken with my phone, not my proper camera, but there is now a little forest of canes and tree guards, spreading down the hill towards the canal, as well as the fence and hedge clearly visible from the top. People are stopping on the canal towpath and commenting on what we are doing, and looking at the developments.

The landscape is changing and people are noticing! The canal, too, is taking on the feel of spring - just a few tiny shoots in the canal and our ponds of sedges, reeds and yellow flag iris. Pairs of mallard were floating around on the water that recently was frozen for nearly a month. No sign of the kingfisher, but you just feel it ought to be there.

Today was a perfect day: it showed how we, by our efforts and that of our team of helpers, are changing the landscape, but it also showed how the landscape is starting to change once more with the seasons. And of course the changes that come through nature are much more startling and powerful than those that man can achieve - but we are doing our little bit, and that little bit can now be seen from far and wide.

Bring on another weekend, and another 800 trees!

Changing the Landscape

2011-02-03T11:26:00.000Z

It is a real privilege. Something most people never get to do in their lifetime. But thanks to my Mum's legacy, and a lot of hard work from lots of wonderful and helpful people, we have that privilege. We are making a visible change to the landscape and in doing so we hope that we will leave a beautiful woodland for people and wildlife to enjoy many years into the future.

After months of waiting the contract is signed, and our woodland creation project is underway: Betty's Wood is being planted. Throughout February we are taking delivery of around 650 to 700 trees each weekend, and planting them to form the new woodland, together with wildflower meadows, rides, glades and ponds. It is so exciting to see the spots on the ground, the first new trees going in, and the landscape changing before your very eyes.

It is hard to imagine exactly what it is going to be like, but even while standing in a muddy, cold field in the middle of winter, my mind is drawn to the image of what it might be like in this, and subsequent summers. The little trees gradually taking root and gaining height, the wildflower meadows developing their own characteristics, buzzing with insects in the summer. The ponds brimming with frogs, insects, dragonflies and being used as drinking points by pheasants, rabbits, deer, badgers, hares and foxes. Small birds gradually moving into the scrub as it develops and thickens. Ground-nesting birds using the edge of the meadows - skylarks, maybe, as well as pheasant and possibly woodcock and snipe. The buzzards screeching overhead. Butterflies starting to move along the rides, paths and woodland edge. Little blue butterflies on the vetches and grasses in the meadows. The hedgerow springing to life with flowers, fruit, insects and birds. In the evenings, the bats swooping down after insects.

If Betty's Wood achieves a fraction of that, I will be delighted. We have to make it happen and now we have the opportunity. So..if anybody would like to join in and have the privilege of altering the landscape and making the World a better place...come along during the weekends in February. We need your help to succeed.

Winter in the Woods

2011-01-07T12:20:00.000Z

Winter can be a frustrating time in the woods. There is so much to be done in the dormant phase between November and March, but then a lot can get in the way of doing it. This year has been no exception. First of all, we had the weather that froze the ground and made planting all but impossible, and other work very cold and unpleasant. Then we have had frustrating waits for planning permission to start making our new ponds, and for the paperwork to filter through in order to get approval to start planting the main phase of Betty's Wood.

Weather - we are obsessed with it in this country, but for a good reason. The coldest December since records began, transformed the wood into a place of sheer beauty and magic. Snow lying on the ground was complimented by the most beautiful frost coating of the trees in the freezing fog. We could see tracks everywhere: foxes, rabbits, hares, stoats, squirrels, pheasant and deer. We could see clearly where a fox had jumped over our new fence. New birds came into the woods seeking food and shelter including snipe and willow tit. The whole landscape was transformed into something the like of which we have never seen in our three years as owners of the wood.

But with the beauty came frustration: the ground was frozen solid, and even when the surface thawed, the ground underneath resembled permafrost, and was certainly not suitable to plant young trees. 700 trees for form our hedge arrived just in time for the big freeze and on the day of planting the ground was solid: not even a pickaxe could make a suitable hole. We had to heel the trees into our vegetable patch, that we had fortunately prepared just a few weeks beforehand. The area was sheltered, and slightly warmer thanks to a liberal application of rotting compost and chicken poo. This meant we could dig trenches and heel in the trees.

Fortunately, just before Christmas, we had a window of a few days to dig them up again and plant them as the surface thawed. A lot of very hard work by us and our stalwart volunteers meant that all 700 little trees are now in their permanent home, and the hedge is complete. We just hope that the trees have survived their less than perfect introduction to life, and the hedge sprouts come the spring.

In the absence of the relevant pieces of paper saying we can go ahead with the ponds or main planting of the remaining 3300 trees, we have started our work in the coppice. There is another area to be cut this year, and we have made a good start on this over new year weekend, with about one third of the work completed, and some useful hazel poles and pea sticks created for sale in the spring. We have also cut about 200 willow sticks for planting in the hope that we can clone some of our own willow into our newly created woodland. We were encouraged to see lots of self-set hazel seedlings growing at the edge of the coppiced area, and now they have more light they should do very well. Unfortunately Stephen's chainsaw broke at the end of the day, and we are now awaiting a part before we can do more work. More frustration!

The cold weather has also led us to suspend our nest box survey until it is warmer: the boxes are often used as roosts for small birds in extreme weather, and we don't want to disturb them or put at risk their survival. It will need to be completed soon, though, as birds are beginning to sing their territories, and will soon be building new nests.

In the meantime we continue to enjoy the winter beauty, and hope that we can complete our ponds and tree planting before the end of February.

...or perhaps not

2010-11-29T19:47:00.000Z


Not ideal weather for tree-planting

Well, it can't always go to plan. We had the trees, and lots of helpers lined up, but the weather intervened to frustrate our attempts to get our hedgerow planted. We were all prepared. The week beforehand our new fence had been completed across the field. This really made us feel the land was ours at last! We spent the Friday marking the ground with multi-coloured spots (orange for hawthorn, yellow for hazel and other colours for other species), so the trees would be planted appropriately spaced and reasonably well mixed up.

Betty's wood from the canal

Sadly, the coldest November weather for many years intervened to turn the ground into something resembling concrete, with a dusting of light snow to boot! Attempts were made to break the soil with a pickaxe, but it became clear that we would not be able to get the roots of the trees properly bedded in, even if we could make holes in which to plant them.

Fence and Alvecote Wood

Fortunately, we had an area of ground in the main woodland already prepared for potato-planting in the spring: rotavated and adequately laced with used chicken bedding, this was in a sheltered spot and it was possible to dig trenches using narrow planting spades. So we had to heel-in the 700 little trees to cover their roots and make sure they didn't dry out, as well as erecting some temporary anti-deer fencing to prevent them from being eaten before they ever make it to Betty's Wood. This provided our stalwart helpers with sufficient exercise to keep warm, together with the home-made cakes and biscuits on offer.

Frozen fields

The fence

Unable to plant, I managed to take some photos of the magical, if frustrating, winter landscape. We also managed to fell and cut up a very rotten crab-apple tree along the line of our soon-to-be-repaired fence at the south side of the woods. This provided me with good chainsaw practice after my training day last weekend, and provided us with plenty of brash for dead-hedging to fill in areas where the fencing is less robust. We also have some very splendid spalted wood that will be good for turning in due course.

Our new woods will have to wait a little while, but there are always jobs to do in the wood, no matter what the weather. But it would be really nice if it doesn't stay at -7 Celsius for too long.

It's finally happening

2010-11-18T15:17:00.000Z

So it begins - the creation of Betty's Wood. We can't start the main tree planting until we have confirmation of funding from the Forestry Commission. This depends on paperwork and that is progressing at geological pace, but we are allowed to plant a hedge as this is not covered by the Forestry Commission grant.

We own the land, we have sown it with meadow grass and wildflower mix, the fence is going up next week, and now we can start planting trees. Nationa Tree Week takes place during the last week of November each year, and we think it fit that we start planting our trees that week too.

So, we will be planting 700 native broadleaved trees to form a hedge. This will connect Alvecote Wood with a little copse on the other side of Betty's Wood field. As well as forming a boundary, this will also be an important wildlife corridor, and will form a rapid connection between two ancient woodland sites.

The trees are on order, the planning is done, and we hope lots of people will turn up to help us during the weekend of 27th/28th November. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help transform the landscape and make a real difference to wildlife. The new hedge will be visible from the top of Pooley mound, as well as from the Coventry Canal towpath.

So, if anybody would like to come along....please do give us a shout, and we'll do our best to make you welcome!

Betty's Wood

2010-10-13T16:12:00.000+01:00

This blog has been very quiet over the past few weeks, but this is not because nothing has been going on. Rather, it has been because lots has been going on behind the scenes that I haven't been able to reveal - until now!

A few months ago, we idly mentioned to the farmer who owned the field next to our wood that if he ever thought of selling any land, we'd like to know. We had an idle dream that we would like to link our wood with another small spinney of woodland on the far side of his field. However we didn't really think that dream would come true.

Until a few weeks ago! Out of the blue we got a phone call from the farmer, asking if we would like to buy part of his field. After picking ourselves up off the floor, and many meetings, phone calls and negotiations later, we have now finally signed a contract for the purchase of 9.3 acres of field. This will allow us to link our wood with the little spinney, and create a large area of new woodland, ponds and wildflower meadows adjoining both our woods and the Coventry Canal.

Best of all, this will create a wildlife corridor, forming the last piece in a jigsaw. Wildlife corridors are important because they allow wildlife to move from one piece of habitat to another: isolated pieces of habitat are vulnerable to damage, as the wildlife has nowhere to go if they cease to exist. Now the wildlife on the western bank of the Canal will have a long strip of woodland from Alvecote Wood through to Pooley Country Park, via an area in Higher Level Stewardship. On the other bank of the Canal is Pooley Fields SSSI and Alvecote Pools SSSI, so the whole area is now a rich tapestry of habitats, to which we will be adding Betty's Wood.

We have already started work on the site with the permission of the vendor, as there are some things you have to do in season. After the wheat crop was harvested, we have been round and protected over 400 little oak seedlings growing naturally in the field margin. The central area has been cultivated and seeded with grass and wildflower mix. This will form the basis of our wildflower meadows as well as a base into which we plan to plant 3500 trees.

The trees will be planted in several different compartments: adjacent to the wood, we are allowing as much natural regeneration as possible, aided by direct seeding, and also the growing of some acorns under cover. We will also clone some local willow. At the lower end of the field, the ground is very damp, and we will be planting wet woodland: alder, hazel, willow. We will also create seasonal and permanent ponds. Higher up, where the ground is dry, we will be planting mixed broadleaved native woodlands, particularly oak, ash, willow, hazel, rowan, wild cherry. Scattered among this will be areas left to develop as meadow.

Finally, we will put in a hedge that will connect our wood with the spinney and hedgerow beyond, and form an immediate and important wildlife connection between the two sites.

The whole thing has been so exciting, so scary, and so radical. It is wonderful to think that we will have the opportunity to change the landscape for the better, making a wonderful set of new habitats for wildlife, and creating a place of beauty.

Why Betty's Wood? Betty was my Mum. She passed away in 2007 after a lifelong fight with multiple sclerosis. She always loved the countryside, despite finding it progressively more difficult to visit the outdoors. She was a lifelong supporter of the Woodland Trust. I know she would have loved Alvecote Wood, and money from her estate is now being used to purchse this new piece of land. Betty's Wood will form a fitting and permanent memorial to her. So here's to Betty's Wood!

And, of course, if anybody would like to help us plant a lot of trees...

Barbecues and Butterflies

2010-07-24T18:26:00.004+01:00

The woods have seen a busy few weeks, with our first camping event for friends, together with a camp fire and barbecue, as well as a lot of activity on the wildlife front.

This has really been our first opportunity to enjoy the woods with a group of friends in such a hospitable way. A whole bunch of folks drawn together by the common interest of keeping chickens, we all assembled at the woods, with tents, chairs, and contributions of food. Pretty soon the woods were alive with the sound of chatter, laughter, and the weather held up extremely well, allowing us to enjoy both the campfire and barbecue. Sharing the woods with our friends is extremely important to us, and this really brought the wood alive. Everybody appreciated and respected the wildlife, and despite 28 visitors with 18 camping, there was very little disturbance. The evening was spent cooking damper on the camp-fire, talking, laughing, drinking wine and enjoying the appearance of common pipistrelle and noctule bats. Brilliant.

But people have not been the only species in abundance at the woods this month. We have seen the emergence of many dragonflies, including the brown hawker, emerald damselfly and common darter. In addition, the butterflies have been emerging in numbers, enjoying the meadow area along with hoverflies, scorpion flies (pictured) and an abundance of other insects. We have in particular been really pleased to see more common blue butterflies there this year, thanks to planting more of their caterpillar foodplants, as well as green-veined whites, large and small skippers, meadow browns, ringlets and gatekeepers, peacocks, red admirals and comma butterflies. As well, of course, as the wonderful purple hairstreaks that live in the oak canopy.

As well as insects, the lower coppice, and all our newly-planted trees, are growing extremely well - the willow in the coppice is nearly 6 feet high! We will have some stems for making baskets in the winter, as well as plenty for development into poles for sustainable harvesting. The rain has been very welcome although our meadows are still pretty dry!

We have an open day planned for tomorrow, and another on 22nd August, when we hope to have a demonstration of hawking and of the skills of trained working dogs. Barbecues and butterflies - July has been a good month for Alvecote Wood.

Wildflower Meadows

2010-06-07T15:13:00.003+01:00

Wildflower meadows would seem, on the face of it, to be simple. Chuck down a bit of seed and wait for the flowers to grow. However, our experience is that they are pretty difficult to establish. So we are very delighted to report that at last our wildflower meadow areas are doing well. We have a variety of different grasses, and many flower species coming up including vetches, clover, tares, yellow rattle, white and red campion, forget-me-not, mayweeds, ox-eye daisies, wild pansies, sorrel, hemp nettle and, of course, poppies.

Last year, we decided to try and establish wild flowers in several parts of our large clearing - particularly those areas that are not dominated by the large wet/damp area in the centre. We thought we had done really well by mowing it, then scarifying the surface, sowing seed and rolling it in.

Except that we grew a large crop of dock, and not much else. There were two main problems with this approach: first, the dock was in the soil, and was going to germinate more or less whatever we did, and second, we didn't sow any grass with the flowers, figuring this would come back of its own accord. We don't want to use weedkiller on our site, but were forced to choose between round-up used selectively to kill the dock, or ploughing, which we can't do because of the trees.

At our second attempt, we rotavated the soil properly, scarified and scuffled it, and planted a wildflower and grass mix, together with added poppies. We also had another area where we had placed a land drain - this was back-filled with rather poor subsoil, without a lot of topsoil. This is just the sort of soil that wildflowers like - fertile soil is too kind to nettles and these dominate the meadow flowers. So we seeded this with the same mix.

What is now interesting is that the two areas of meadow, although seeded with the same mix, are growing different things: the more fertile area has a lot of hemp nettle and sorrel, and quite a good mix of grasses, the less fertile area has more poppies, rattle, vetch and clover. Both are very promising.

Another thing that we have noticed, as the meadow comes to life, is the huge number of insects that have been attracted to it - bugs, flies, cranefly, dragonflies, butterflies and moths are all visible in clouds on hot sunny days. In particular, common blue butterflies have been seen at the wood for the first time. This is exciting stuff, because it is the insects that will attract other animals to feed (including birds and bats), and so we are providing a much richer habitat than otherwise would have been present. It is also great that the two areas are developing differently - again, more habitats means more opportunities for more species.

There is still more to do: This spring we have prepared several other meadow areas, some on sections of the wood that we had to disrupt for drainage trenches, others on areas that were growing little other than grass. Seeded this spring, we have already seen these areas show germination of various grasses and flowers, and we hope that more will come as they develop over the years. We will also need to mow last autumn's meadow later in the summer, and will need to commence twice-yearly mowing on all the meadows from next spring.

Wildflower meadows are not easy to establish. You cannot cut corners. You have to do it properly. You often have to do it more than once. But when they do get going, they are buzzing with life, and a truly beautiful and rich habitat to behold. They are definitely worth it.

Woodland Activities

2010-05-29T10:22:00.005+01:00

The woods have seen a flurry of human activity in the last month, which is the reason for this much-delayed update. Following on from the Scout Camp, we have seen visits from the Tamworth Wildlife Group, Austrey Forest School, Drayton Bassett Beavers, two Open Days and yesterday the first ever fashion photography shoot at the woods. In addition, I've been running beginner Nordic Walking sessions there.

We have certainly never seen so much human activity there, and it is only possible thanks to the progress we have made over the last couple of years with access and safety.

This all got me thinking on the meaning of the phrase "Woodland Activities". If you look at the magazines and web sites from those organizations that own and run woods, this phrase is usually associated with woodcraft or woodsman-type activities: coppicing, felling, planting or charcoal-burning, green-woodworking, hurdle-making etc. Then there are the leisure activities, principally birdwatching, walking and horse-riding, that are promoted on many web sites - woods are a place to go with the family and enjoy a day out, a gentle stroll with the dog, a nice picnic in some lovely shady scenery among the trees and bluebells. Finally, woodlands are a place for children to explore and learn. Quite a long list, many of which we have seen at Alvecote Wood over the last few weeks.

Then there are the more hard-core activities such as assault courses, mountain biking trails, survival camps, bushcraft workshops and so on - things that we don't plan to do at our little wood, but which many people enjoy on other sites.

What doesn't get discussed much is the potential of woodlands for other types of activities, and in particular, artistic activities.

Woodlands offer so much if you slow down and look at them with a creative eye. For the last few months I have been taking a photography course with Digital Masterclass. Although I've been taking photographs for years, and felt my technical ability was reasonably good, I lacked the confidence to follow through my artistic ideas. Since starting this course, I've started to see things with a different eye. There are images everywhere and these are not just literal images - a snap of trees with blubells underneath. There are colours, textures, shapes, lines, feelings and the emotions brought on by being in woodland that can be turned into images, paintings, sculptures, poetry, music or even "multimedia experiences" provided there are people who can see the potential and bring it to fruition.

Children have very vivid imaginations: The children we've had visiting the woods recently have envisioned monsters living in the hollow trees. Little faces full of wonder, joy and just a little bit of fear look up at the grand old trees, their heads full of stories of fairies, monsters and other mythical creatures. What a shame that as we grow up, we suppress that imagination, preferring to see the literal and losing all the other elements of the woodland experience.

One of the things I learned early on about woodland management was that you need to spend some time getting a "feel" for the woods. It would be very easy to wade in and mow, clear, coppice, plant and fell without really understanding your wood. This is modern, technical forest management. My view is that it was a blessing that it took us so long to build access around our woods, as that gave us time to get a feel for each individual little section. Sometimes, it is good just to go and sit or stand, and wait. Look closely at what grows there and why, and what doesn't grow there and why. Feel the atmosphere, the microclimate, the breeze, the light.

Building on that, I would certainly love to make more of our wood for artistic purposes - not just woodcrafts such as basket-making or hurdle-making, nice though these are. But truly artistic endeavours in which the imagination and feelings are allowed to run free, and express themselves in imagery, words and music. If you start looking at things with an artistic eye, you see them very differently - you see textures, colours, light and shade, shapes, lines that could be expressed in images, or in other ways.

Woodlands, particularly those managed as wildlife habitats, need good scientific methods and proper planned management to make them as good as possible for the creatures that depend on them. But limiting yourself to the technical while losing their artistic potential is a shame - and your own experience of the woods are diminished for it.

Work, exercise, leisure and art are all great woodland activities. Just don't forget to let your imagination run free next time you visit the woods.

With many thanks to our niece, Joanna Briggs, and Joanna B Photography, and her model Anna and stylist Dora for letting me take some phots at her fashion shoot!

The woods come alive

2010-04-12T12:22:00.005+01:00

This weekend the woods came alive in several different ways. The first and most obvious sign of life arrived on Friday evening, in the form of 23 Scouts and 6 leaders, from Polesworth and Wigginton scout groups. Soon our little clearing was smothered in tents, and the sounds of very excited young voices in the distance could be heard, as they explored, pitched tents, got their evening meals and settled down for the night.

We took advantage of the lovely weather also to camp at the woods for a couple of nights. After a visit to the pub for our evening meal, the first evening yielded the first signs of bats this year on our bat detector - pipistrelles and noctule bats, but also an as yet unidentified bat. A cold night gave way to a beautiful early morning. Early morning at the woods is truly memorable, and the only way to see it is by camping there - arrival of a vehicle scatters the wildlife so you don't really get to see what is there. Emerging from our slumbers, we saw a partridge walking across our internal road, and heard the sound of newly-arrived chiffchaffs, willow warblers, blackcaps and the skylarks in the adjacent fields. It was truly delightful.

Signs of spring were everywhere. Lesser celandine was in flower in one of our clearings. We were delighted to find that four colonies of snakeshead fritillary were coming into flower after several unsuccessful attempts to establish extra colonies in case the original one was compromised. Our cowslips are back after they failed to appear last year. We have a lovely patch of primroses. The sedges are flowering in the ponds. The yellow iris is starting to emerge. The elder and hawthorn are bursting into leaf, so much so that the coppice is now hidden from view - it seems to have vanished in just two days!

The birds are singing and are seen everywhere with nest material in their beaks. Green and great-spotted woodpeckers are calling and drumming. There is a liveliness to the woods that is truly remarkable after the cold and hard winter.

On Saturday evening I inadvertently stumbled upon a mallard nest - I was checking the ponds to see whether our marginal plants were thriving. There were eight eggs apparent after the duck flew off, and I was concerned that she would come back - I needn't have worried, we saw the drake a little while later and the duck was seen going back to the nest. This is the first time mallard have bred near our ponds, and we will be looking out with great anticipation for eight little fluffy ducklings in a few weeks' time.

It is quite remarkable how the woods can absorb 23 lively scouts without difficulty - while we were working lower down in the woods we couldn't hear them at all. It was as if they weren't there. Yet they were there, and busy too! They were rising to challenges, and gaining their badges, tracking, playing night-time games and enjoying the countryside.

We were impressed with how observant they were. At campfire on Saturday, we talked to them, asking them questions about what they had seen, so they could learn something about the wildlife in the woods, and what sort of things we have done to encourage it. They seemed genuinely enthusiastic and interested.

The Sunday departure came all too quickly, and you would not know that anybody had been there, so completely have they cleared up. Many of the scouts came and thanked us for the use of the woods, and for creating a place where wildlife can live and grow undisturbed by humans.

The presence of the scouts was unobtrusive, but, combined with the activity of animals and birds, the emergence of flowers, and the general buzz of spring, made the woods seem truly alive. We find that very rewarding, and particularly that this group of young people could experience a place like Alvecote Wood for themselves. We are getting enquiries all the time for use of the site by wildlife groups, schools and other cub, scout and beaver groups. We hope it will not be much longer before the woods are again alive to the sound of happy children, blending in so well with the wildlife around them.

Open Day

2010-03-29T12:08:00.003+01:00

Open Days have returned to Alvecote Wood! The winter work is almost over and it is time for us to enjoy the wood and hopefully to share that enjoyment with others. So many of our recent visits have been working visits that sometimes you forget the pleasure of just meandering around and looking at things. And visitors help you see things through new eyes.

Over the last few weeks we have been very busy installing new fences along the field boundary, putting the old wire to use as deer fencing for our coppice, and generally trying to get the wood tidy and safe for visits again. The garden area has also been requiring attention - planting of salads, potatoes and onions, and preparation for more planting to come.

We had a rehearsal for our Open Day last Thursday when the team from the local RSPB reserve at Middleton Lakes visited us. Having had few people in the woods all winter, we suddenly had 24 keen birdwatchers to take round in two groups, testing our knowledge of the habitat and the birds that frequent the woods. The appearance of a great-spotted woodpecker produced a synchronised movement of binoculars to the eyes that would rival the co-ordination of any dance group. The feedback we got was very positive, and from such an expert and enthusiastic group, very welcome too.

The preparation for the Open Day took place amid the Nordic Walking class that I have started running at the woods, and there seemed to be such a lot to do. I also attended the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust WildPlay Leader training the day beforehand. This should mean that I can eventually run WildPlay sessions at the wood, allowing children to experience a really wild environment and learn about the woods, and nature, at first hand while enjoying themselves.

But at last we were ready, and we opened the gate. And nobody came. We didn't mind that much, as we were both tired, and enjoyed just sitting down, watching the birds on our feeders, and enjoying the unexpected and un-forecasted spring sunshine.

We put the slow start down to the fact that the clocks had gone forward, and everybody had lost an hour of sleep, plus the fact that the road was closed - you could get to the wood just fine, but the signage implied that you couldn't. But eventually, one gentleman came, and then some more, and finally we had a good attendance which picked up all day.

So we got into the swing of guided tours, explaining what we have been trying to achieve creating our new coppice areas, and generally trying to enthuse visitors about the site.

What was particularly great about the day were the two little lads pictured above. They are cousins and visited with their mums. They had a wonderful time running and playing in the woods. They made their own toys and played a shoot-em-up game with sticks. Their imaginations were engaged, and they were very, very happy. No playstations. No cries of "I'm bored!". Just enjoying themselves in the early evening sunshine, running and hiding, and playing with toys that were completely free.

If all our Open Days are like this, I shall be happy. It is lovely to have adults asking us difficult questions. It is lovely to get positive feedback, particularly after many bleak and snowy and very cold weekends working with a few hardy volunteers, or even on our own. It is lovely to have our neighbours visit and praise our efforts. But the best thing of all, is to see children playing in the woods. That is what it is all about.

Frustrations of a Wildlife Photographer - Part 2

2010-03-08T11:53:00.004Z

The woods are alive with birds. A bird survey last week revealed over 40 individual great tits, all singing away like creaky supermarket trolleys. There are buzzards, sparrowhawks, great and great-spotted woodpeckers, great, blue and long-tailed tits, wrens, dunnocks, robins, blackbirds, song thrushes, goldfinches, bulfinches, chaffinches, nuthatches, woodpigeons, pheasants and that is just one day's observations.

But do you think any of them will let me photograph them? Well, yes, but it has taken a long time. You might think it is easy to just put up a seed feeder and then stand and wait and take photos. It is easy in the garden at home.

But these little birds are not garden birds, although they are birds that you can get in your garden. They are not used to humans, living as they do in a woodland without much human activity. In my garden I can remove the seed feeder while two sparrows and a blue tit sit inches from my head, complaining about the delay in getting their food. In the wood, they are much more shy of human contact.

The seed feeder that we placed in the autumn had to be removed when the squirrels were emptying it every day, only to bury the seed around the wood. I'm sure we'll get a lot of sunflowers growing in odd places in the summer thanks to their activity. Having controlled the squirrels a bit during the winter, we have replaced the feeders and got the birds used to using it. This has taken a few weeks, but the feeders are now alive from dawn to dusk with little birds, and the occasional great spotted woodpecker.

However, getting photos is still not that easy. As soon as you approach the feeder, the birds disappear. They sit in the tree over your head, but won't come near the feeder. You need to get reasonably close, even with a big zoom lens, because otherwise the feeder is obscured by twigs. A lot of patient approach work, moving in slowly, inch by inch, can be ruined by the battery alarm going on the camera, undoing about half an hour of careful stalking, while getting frozen in the process.

The birds are also so busy that you end up with about 500 pictures of an empty seed feeder or of blurred little bundles of feathers moving too fast for the shutter speeds attainable in the wintery light, and only about 4 or 5 useable photos of birds on the feeder. And then they all have their heads in the holes, and won't pose for the camera!

At last, this weekend, we had some success. I set up the camera, and walked away, so they could get used to it being there, and close enough to get a photo that wasn't 99% background with a little dot in the middle that might be a blue-tit, but ends up as a fuzzy blur when you enlarge it. I then spent a while moving in, and finally, after a long wait, the birds started to arrive. In large numbers.

Many of the photos still showed an empty feeder, or birds with twigs coming out of their head, or heads buried in the feeder holes. The long-tailed tits spectacularly failed to show me their sweet little faces, so I have plenty of photos of sweet little long-tailed tails instead. The birds refused to stand in the optimum light, and generally only wanted to feed on the far side of the feeder.

But in the end the patience was rewarded, and I got some decent shots of nuthatches, great tits, blue tits, chaffinches and robins.

I also had some success in the afternoon, when I found out you could fool the birds into thinking you weren't there by standing behind a twig. Now I might be slim, but I'm not that thin, however a few twigs (one of which was down my neck and the other almost up my nose) provided sufficient camouflage for some of the birds, and I got some really nice shots of the birds on the feeder in the evening sun.

OK, a feeder isn't a natural setting, but I managed some shots of the birds in the trees waiting for their place in the feeding queue. I'm completely hooked on photographing them, even though it involves frustration, discomfort, getting very cold, and the inevitable battery alarm at the wrong moment. I obviously need more feeding station, bird hides, and some extortionately expensive lenses to get closer to the birds when they won't get closer to me.

Frustrating - yes indeed. But worth it!

Take a deep breath..

2010-02-17T17:49:00.005Z

Take a deep breath because Spring is nearly here! You can see and feel it everywhere as you take a walk around the woods - and taking a walk is something I've been able to do this week, as the workload is falling off and we look forward to enjoying the wood rather than just working in it.

We tried putting in a seed feeder in the Autumn, but the squirrels stole all the seeds and buried them - so I guess we might have some rogue sunflowers in the wood this year! Another attempt this Spring has so far been ignored by squirrels, and it is alive with lovely little birds. Huge numbers of blue tits and great tits are moving in for a good feast, along with nuthatches (pictured left), bulfinches and chaffinches, and long-tailed tits too.

And as you walk round the woods, the birds have started singing - not just twittering away, but really singing their territory, and disputing it too. Everywhere you go, there is the sound of the great tit (pictured left), like a wonky supermarket trolley wheel, from the tops of the trees. "This is MY tree" they all seem to be saying, all with their unique and slightly different interpretation of the wonky wheel song.

The wrens are angrily and loudly protesting at your presence in the wood near their chosen nest site. The robins have put aside their temporary truce of a few weeks ago, when we saw four of them together enjoying the pickings after our coppicing activity. None of that now - they are all staking their claim and making sure of their territory for the weeks ahead.

Green woodpeckers are drumming on the trees, as well as making their characteristic "yaffle" calls. Great-spotted woodpeckers have been seen near the site where they have nested for the last two years. A pair of jays are shrieking in a primeval way around our clearing. Treecreepers and nuthatches are staking out their favourite trees and ensuring that everybody knows that is their home.

We hope we have improved the prospects for some of these little birds, with our additional nest boxes - now there are 31, in all parts of the wood, with various sized holes for a variety of different birds to use. A hedgehog box (pictured left) has also been installed, beautifully made and kindly donated by our neighbour.

There are just a few buds swelling and a couple starting to burst on the very earliest trees. There is an impressive display of hazel catkins. A few diving beetles and other insects can be seen swimming in the ponds which for so long have been frozen, and apparently lifeless. And best of all the bluebells are starting to poke little green shoots above the soil! In April the wood will have a blue carpet, and I can't wait to see it in all its glory.

So, take a deep breath! The birds are taking a deep breath and singing. And I am taking a deep breath and waiting for Spring.

Tree Planting and Nest Boxes

2010-02-01T10:53:00.002Z

This weekend has seen the major work programme for this winter draw to a close with our tree-planting for this year now complete. As it happens, I have also been preparing a presentation for the Newton Regis Women's Institute on the woods, and this has given opportunity to reflect on the progress made over the past two years since we took ownership.

What about tree-planting? Well, in January 2009 we planted 600 trees to make a roadside hedge and used the remaining trees to form some thickets in areas of the wood without shrub cover. All but 15 of these trees have survived, and grew last year, and ultimately this will provide a very valuable habitat for wildlife, not to mention a good food source, as the tree mix contains hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel and rose, together with field maple. At present the hedge is still small, but as it grows taller and thicker it will look good and provide shelter and food for a whole range of creatures.

This last weekend we completed the planting of 400 more trees - this time hazel with a bit of ash and field maple, in the body of the woods. Most of these trees were planted in an area that had been cleared of dense bramble and elder scrub. This area had contained a polytunnel that housed pigs some years ago. We are now re-planting with native species so that we can turn this area into productive coppice and provide a new habitat for wildlife. Bramble and elder are good habitats too, but the wood has too much bramble overgrowth and not enough scrub, so this is a good way of establishing a scrub layer. Eventually we are also hoping that the oaks surrounding this clearing will have seeded the ground, and small oak saplings will emerge - they had no opportunity before as the bramble had shaded them out. Now we will manage any seedlings that emerge, thin the coppice as it grows, and allow some of the oak and ash to become canopy trees in due course. It will take time, but we have made a start.

Some other trees were planted in an area cleared of dense bramble around a dead tree that fell in the frost. In combination with clearance of sycamore in this area, we hope to transform the balance back to oak/ash/hazel rather than sycamore and bramble, which was there before.

The remaining trees were used to fill in some of the gaps in the area we had recently cut to establish new coppice. This will ensure a good, dense under-storey with the pre-selected canopy trees growing out above it, and therefore establish an area of coppice with standards, rather than an area of tall, un-thinned trees in poor health and without room to thrive.

Finishing this work earlier than anticipated, we also completed our nest box survey. Two years ago we put up 19 new nest boxes for a variety of species around the woods. Last year, we were unable to survey them, so the survey was overdue. There were 15 nest boxes with holes in the front of various sizes, and ALL of these had been occupied, mostly by blue-tits, although one had a wasp nest in instead. The open-fronted nest boxes had not been used, although there are plenty of robins about. We hope that robins and flycatchers will get the message and start using these as well.

A kind neighbour had also made us 5 more nest boxes and these were placed in new locations around the wood, we hope in time to attract blue tits to nest there this year. He has made another 7 with smaller holes too, which we need to put up this week.

I was stunned by the 100% occupancy of these boxes - I had seen 3 or 4 of them in use, but to know that all of them had been used was really encouraging. We have also got a constant stream of great tits and nuthatches coming to our seed feeders. The future is looking good for birds at Alvecote Wood.

Most of what we have to do now are small jobs, including work on our forest garden based on permaculture principles in the area near our building. This winter has seen huge progress - on access roads and tracks, on coppicing, on clearance of sycamore, on drainage and bridges and on tree planting. In a few weeks, the wood will be a different place - green, leafy and thriving. Our spring and summer tasks will take over - mowing, brush-cutting, planting herbaceous plants, tending the garden area and most of all, enjoying it. That is, after all, what owning a wood is all about!

Tree Surgery

2010-01-20T16:25:00.005Z

There is something very pleasing about watching professionals who really know what they are doing. We are very lucky that our tree surgeons (Mike Daniels, Paul and John from Arborcare) are such brilliant guys, very professionals and so very nice as well. We have had the pleasure of their company at our home and at the woods in the last couple of weeks.

Yesterday we spent the day at the woods getting so much done. We had been steadily progressing with cutting our first area of coppice, and preparing the ground in a new clearing to be planted with new coppice trees, to replace bramble and elder scrub. With the very welcome help of several very hardy volunteers, we managed to be almost ready for the tree surgeons to arrive.

We had a number of oak trees with some dangerous-looking branches overhanging the paths. We don't want the woods to look like a park, so if there are branches that might fall overhanging areas without paths that is fine - we leave them to fall, and in the meantime the dead branches are good habitat for a huge range of wildlife from lichens and mosses through insects and fungi to bats and birds. But, if we have a branch overhanging the path, we simply don't know whether it will fall, and we had to remove some of these. There was also a tree which had in the past been struck by lightning. The top was hollow and it swayed and creaked alarmingly in the wind. Standing as it did, at a good viewing point for our lower ponds, we needed the top of this tree to be removed so it did not fall on visitors who had stopped to admire the view.

The tree surgeons also had a marvellous heavy-duty chipper to cut the smaller branches and brash into wood chips. In the course of our coppicing work we had generated a very large amount of brash. The logs and poles we have cut and kept to be turned into craft products, seats and to be dried for firewood. But there are a lot of twigs on even the smallest tree. It is customary to burn brash, but we also have some pretty muddy paths in the wood, thanks to our clay soil, so wood chips make an excellent mulch to cover the path and reduce the muddiness. It is an excellent and very eco-friendly material, with zero miles to travel and which we can get for free from waste products of our own wood. So we just needed to chip it.

At the crack of dawn (it felt like that, anyway!) Mike and the guys turned up, and after some discussion surrounding getting a heavy chipper and a pick-up down a muddy path which a few days before had challeneged (but not defeated) our Land Rover, we set off to start work.

These chippers are serious bits of kit - very scary, despite all the safety cut-offs and other features that prevent you being dragged in a chipped along with the bits of tree. But they do work very impressively, and after a safety briefing, donning a chainsaw hat and visor, and a demonstration, we got stuck in to moving our piles of brash. We had some help from three volunteers during the day, and that meant that Stephen could complete the felling of three large willows, and thus finish off our coppice cut for this year. Meanwhile the muncher steadily munched its way through our brash pile.

We had the pleasure of watching Mike climb trees to remove branches, and to remove the top of our creaking lighning-struck tree. It all looks so easy, but it obviously isn't. The ease with which these guys wield chainsaws is awesome - they are simply very talented. But most of all, it is lovely to see the pleasure and sometimes the reverence with which they regard the trees on which they are working. These are venerable old trees, not garden ornaments, but wild ent-like creatures that were already old before the first bicycles or motor vehicles made their way down Robey's Lane. So it is quite special to be working on them, in this lovely woodland environment.

It is also brilliant to get advice from the guys on how we are using our tools - to know we are felling correctly, and that Stephen is using the chainsaw safely and correctly. One of the highlights of the day was when Stephen felled a very difficult sycamore. It was guaranteed to get hooked up on branches of adjacent trees, no matter which way it was felled. We had already dealt with three large sycamores, and this was the fourth and hardest to fell. We don't mind a few saplings, but once they start producing seed, they need to go, as we don't want the wood turning into a sycamore wood over the next 100 years. Under guidance from Paul, Mike and John, he took it down in sections until it was possible to bring down the crown of the tree safely and harvest the wood for various craft projects and firewood. They didn't have to teach him how to do that, but it was brilliant that they were prepared to do so.

So now we are (almost) ready for the arrival of our new saplings in the next 10 days. These will form a new area of coppice and eventually we can cut these and harvest the logs and poles. In the meantime they will provide new areas of habitat for the birds and other creatures. It is an exciting time for the woods - the first real management it has had in a long while. We hope that it is appreciated by the wildife there, and that we provide the rejuvenation that it needs.

So, thanks to our wonderful friends, we have a wood that is safer, we have learned a lot about felling trees, and we have a pile of home-grown woodchip to make our paths more pleasant. We just have to put it in the trailer and spread it! Work goes on at the woods, but it is a pleasure to do it, particularly in the company of our friends, and guys who really know what this business is all about.

Snow

2010-01-07T18:19:00.004Z

I've always been somewhat disappointed at the appearance of woods in snow. This is largely because the woods tend to keep out the snow, which is captured in the upper branches and doesn't reach the ground in any quantity. However this week we had a really decent amount of snow and it has made it to ground level. The woods has turned into a magical place.

The snow completely changes the appearance of everything. The first thing you notice is how soft the edges become - it covers the spiky vegetation with round clumps of sparkling white, and the whole outline of the trees, the bushes, the ground, the fallen logs and the ground layer changes.

The next thing I noticed is just how many active animals there are on the site. Only 24 hours since we had the snow, and yet the whole place is peppered with tracks. Rabbits have been everywhere. Foxes seem to have been everywhere. There are still a few active muntjac deer. Birds have been hopping around, trying to find some water to drink. There weren't any badger prints today, but lots of squirrel activity - digging up their caches of nuts. The frozen ponds now have a light dusting of snow tracked by the birds and rabbits. It is nice to know that the animals make use of the paths we have created - they are obviously convenient for rabbits and foxes as well as for humans!

The fields adjacent to the woods look wonderful too. Despite the fact that there is little colour in the snow they look quite stunning - nobody has had the opportunity to walk across them, so they look white, crisp and inviting.

Snow seems to stick to the little saplings, the brambles, the brash piles and the ground vegetation much more than to the larger trees. At times it is hard to believe that this is natural because if you went out of your way to create something this beautiful you couldn't do any better.

In the depth of this mid-winter snow, there are the faintest signs of Spring appearing - the hazel catkins are growing in size, and the buds on some of the trees are well-formed, ready for the good weather in just a few weeks' time. And the tips of the daffodils are just starting to show above the ground.

Every time we walk around the woods, we see something new. Today we were privileged to see the place in a completely new light. Alvecote Wood has many faces, but today it was putting on its best for us in the snow.

Coppicing and Fallen Trees

2009-12-20T18:04:00.006Z

We've been a bit quiet at the Wood recently, thanks to Sarah being ill, and the business being quite busy. But as we wind down a bit for Christmas and the incessant rain has given way to frost, we have been able to get some work done.

Last weekend, with the help of two volunteers, Daz and John, we managed to make a good start on the coppicing. We have an area that has been earmarked for coppicing. This means we will cut the trees to ground level, allowing them to produce new shoots from the base. One or two trees will be selected to become mature "standard" trees and form the new canopy. But why do we need to do this?

Well, this particular area has evidently been clear-felled before. New trees have grown, all at the same time, and now are all the same age and much too close together. There are two consequences to this. First of all, the trees that might become canopy trees tend to grow too tall and spindly, as they are all competing to reach the light. Some have already died, and many of the others are not in good condition. Second, the ground is completely shaded, so the natural scrub and ground layers are not present. Aside from a few birds' nests, this is now not a good area for wildlife, as there is simply nothing there but a lot of trunks and a few leaves right up at the top. So, we clear fell all the trees, except for a few selected ones. We let in the light, and we let new shoots grow up, providing a scrub layer. In the few years it takes for these shoots to regenerate, there will also be a ground layer developing. And we can then repeat the process for a sustainable harvest of wood. We will also plant a few additional species, such as hazel, in the gaps, so that we get a wider variety of wildlife and habitats.

It was quite a hard couple of days, but at the end of it we had cleared about half of the area we planned to coppice this winter. We had stacked the logs properly, and stored the brash as a partial fence around the area to limit ingress by deer, and also to provide some cover for little creatures such as woodmice. We are also gradually dismantling the fallen dead tree in the background of this picture. It is suppressing the growth of oak saplings, so if we can clear it, we can retain it in a different area as dead-wood habitat, but allow the other trees to grow and be coppiced in their turn in a few years' time.

We have also had some pretty hard frosts over the past few days. We had a standing dead tree, a favourite perch for our resident buzzards, a little way up the path from this coppice area. Unfortunately the frost got into the little cracks in the wood, and it finally fell this weekend. We had to cut it up and move it, as it had fallen into the path. So Sarah donned her ski gear against the cold, and with Stephen, went to do the job.

The tree was pretty well rotten. We reckon it was about 150 years old when it died, but it has been dead for maybe 20 years. However, it was left standing because it had multiple holes used by nesting birds, and provided a good refuge for insects on which those birds were feeding. Standing dead wood is excellent habitat, so we were keen to preserve it. It was quite a tricky task to know which branches holding it up off the ground were sound, and which were rotten, and therefore how to cut it up. Stephen did a grand job with the new chainsaw and we got the road clear. The remaining logs will be used as seats for visitors (and for us to drink our soup when we are busy completing the coppicing work!), and as dead wood habitat on the ground, as well as for firewood and crafts, depending on the quality.

All the time we were there, we had a little companion "helping" us. The robin didn't seem to mind the chainsaw, or the fact that Sarah was moving and stacking logs around him. The only thing he minded was the other robin who showed up to see what was going on!

It is a very Christmassy picture, and on that note, we'd like to wish everybody who follows this blog a very Happy Christmas and New Year.

Woods in Winter

2009-12-07T15:06:00.005Z

Yesterday we got the opportunity just to walk and enjoy the woods - something we don't often do, as we are usually working. Woods in Winter are really special, particularly when you get a beautiful sunny day as we had yesterday, with the lovely delicate lighting of a later Winter afternoon.

Winter gives you a new perspective on things that look completely different when obscured by leaves and undergrowth. Suddenly the structure of the wood becomes clear. You can see much further and see how various parts of the wood relate to each other. Elements that look harsh in the Summer sunshine, and sinister in the dark and rain suddenly look gentle, and beautiful. You can see the structure in the bark highlighted in the oblique sunshine, the last rays of the sun shining through the last few leaves on the trees, and through the leaves on the ground.

The trees take on an Ent-like appearance, and the whole wood becomes a magical place.

When you are constantly working on a wood, you never really see the progress you have made, so while we were walking around, it was good to reflect on the progress we have made since last winter. Last winter we had constructed the building and road entrance, and partly completed the upper ponds, but had done very little else apart from making a few mown paths. Now we have a long list of achievements: Planting the roadside hedge; planting the thickets; constructing a weatherproof path down to the ditch; constructing a culvert bridge; creating mown paths that will take us right down to the lower ponds; making the lower ponds; installing drainage to reduce waterlogging; installing sluices to control the drainage; having a couple of goes at wildflower meadows - the latest attempt looking promising; preparing the ground for planting new coppice; tagging the trees in the areas to be coppiced; preparing the old goat shed to get a new roof for seasoning wood; building a greenhouse; planting an orchard. That list doesn't look too shabby!

That doesn't include the progress we have made in links with community groups including the Scouts, Tamworth Wildlife Group, Womens' Institute, Forest Schools and Wild Play Groups, and our successful Open Days.

Sometimes it is good to put away the spades, rakes, tractor and its attachments, bow-saw, chain-saw, pruning-saw, loppers, secateurs, brush-cutter and hedge-cutter and just sit back and reflect. In the low afternoon sunlight, we could reflect on a successful year, and look forward to the work to come: planting two new coppice areas, coppicing near the lower ponds, thinning the overcrowded Southern boundary, planting more wildflower meadow and looking at areas of forest-garden on permaculture principles, planning new nest boxes and recording activity in those already present.

As I look at the list of things we've done, and the things we plan, it seems we are moving into a new phase for 2010: We are moving from basic infrastructure to the kind of work we'd really like to be doing - work to encourage and improve the site for wildlife and to actually manage the trees and woodland.

So as the watery winter light shone yesterday on our beautiful wood, we have reached a watershed, and hope that 2010 will bring greater improvements, more wildlife, and hopefully more progress when, a year hence, we look again at the woods in Winter.

End of the Season

2009-11-10T12:57:00.002Z

This Sunday we had our last Open Day of the season. Without defining strict criteria, it seemed to be a great success. We had record numbers of visitors, all positive about what we were doing, and managed to raise enough money through craft sales for a good number of trees to establish a new coppice area.

The day started well when we opened a letter that had arrived on Saturday giving us planning permission to do all that we had requested in terms of woodland management - coppicing, transplantation, tree surgery and thinning operations.

We were also blessed with a lovely autumn day so that people could see the remaining leaves in all their glory before they fall for the winter.
Visitors were also treated to a good show courtesy of the vermin control guys who work for the adjacent farmer - they were ferreting for rabbits on the boundary and using a hawk to reduce their numbers. The Harris hawk was a beautiful bird indeed!

So now we can take stock of the wood, and what has been achieved over this season. It is nice to sit back and think rather than feel driven to work all the time. Having Open Days allows you to do this - people who come back can see the differences that you fail to see. You are making small incremental changes, but they see large changes when they return after several months. Having Open Days also reaffirms any doubts you may have about your woodland management.

Since this time last year, we have done a lot: planted 600 trees as a roadside hedge and some internal thickets, completed our gravel tracks including a culvert bridge over our ditch, freed up a lot of saplings, completed new mown paths to give access to the lower part of the wood, completed construction of our 6 ponds and populated them with pond plants, had a couple of goes at a wildflower meadow (fingers crossed this time it will work), improved the security of the site through a new fence, done a lot of wildlife photography and surveying so we know what is there.

This winter there is a lot to do: plant another 200-300 trees to form new coppice and replace some elder scrub, start coppicing our existing trees, start thinning some trees in an overgrown area, remove some elder and replant with hazel, put a roof on the old goat shed so we have a good wood store, and put up our greenhouse so we can grow some saplings.

It all takes time and effort, but this is rewarded many-fold by the improvements we are seeing and have seen. I think we can approach the winter season of work with some satisfaction of work well done, and things achieved. But with a woodland you are never finished - it may be the end of one season, but there is always another one to come!

Really Excellent

2009-11-04T16:05:00.003Z

Self-doubt is an inevitable consequence of owning a wood. You are trying to do your best, for the future of the woodland and its wildlife, but you always wonder if you have made the right decisions. There are many places where you need to balance one need with another, and the mental trade-offs cause me sleepless hours.

We obviously discuss any major decisions with people who know: The Forestry Commission, the Wildlife Trust, other local wildlife specialists and specialist wildlife organisations like the Pond Conservation Trust and the Bat Conservation Trust. But you quickly get to realise that for every organisation or individual you consult you get a different set of advice, which leads to more soul-searching as you decide which bits of which advice to take.

For example, some people think we should get rid of all the sycamore in the wood, while others point out that sycamore is a valuable habitat in its own right and maybe we should keep the mature trees and simply remove the saplings to prevent it becoming invasive. Some people like elder (pictured above) for its flowers and berries, others think we have too much of it and should encourage a more diverse scrub layer.

So ultimately the decisions are down to us. But how do we know if in broad terms we have made the right decisions and done the right things? We hold open days, to which the local public are invited, as well as friends, family and people with an interest in the site and the wildlife that it holds. The feedback from the many people who have visited has been unanimously positive, and that certainly makes us feel good. We also invite community groups to use the site, and the feedback from this process has been positive too.

Today we had an un-announced visit from the Warwickshire County Council Forestry Officer. It was in connection with the planning application we have put in. Because the trees are protected, anything we do, such as coppicing, tree-pruning, thinning - in short any normal forest management operation - has to be subject to a planning process. It had been a while since he visited. We were a bit nervous about what he would think of our efforts.

Well, I'm pleased to report that he was very positive indeed. We have transformed a neglected site into a managed site, and started to make a difference to the wildlife there. That was what we wanted to do, and that was what he wanted us to do.

At the end of the visit his comment was "really excellent, carry on the good work!". On balance, therefore, it appears that our decisions have been good ones, and that is what it is all about. And his comments have made us feel really excellent, too!

Squirrels

2009-10-26T15:50:00.002Z

We have a lot of squirrels at the wood. They are "only" grey squirrels, not the native British red squirrel, but they are squirrels nonetheless.

Most people have a negative view of squirrels. "Tree rats" they are called, and because they are non-native they are somehow reviled as vermin.

However I have been very entertained, amused and impressed by the squirrels at the wood over the past few weeks. It has clearly been a "mast" year in our woods, with a prodigious crop of acorns from almost every oak tree. And where the acorns are, the squirrels are. Collecting, carrying and burying those acorns in little caches wherever they can find a place for them, giving meaning to the phrase "squirreling away".

They are working extremely hard. They are being very inventive in where they bury the acorns, including, on one occasion, my boots, left in the barn building, and the next day sporting a fine collection of about 12 acorns, carefully stashed in the toe of the left boot. Every time I set up the wildlife camera I get many pictures of busy little squirrels carrying, digging, burying. Wherever you go in the wood.

Sometimes it doesn't go right for them. After we built our new track, we spotted a couple of squirrels sitting in the middle of it looking a bit puzzled. It seemed they were thinking "I'm sure I buried some acorns here somewhere...." but of course their caches had been buried by our new track!

We are told that we should control squirrels, but I reckon that they are doing a pretty good job. We need them to bury lots of acorns and then forget where they have put them. This way we get new oak trees growing in the Spring. Red squirrels may be more absent-minded than grey squirrels, and less likely to damage the acorns in the process of burying them, but many of the grey squirrels' caches, when dug up accidentally, have perfectly intact acorns that look capable of becoming a tree given a chance, and a lapse of memory on the part of the squirrel that buried them.

For my part, I'm happy to watch them, laugh at their antics, tolerate the occasional acorn cache in my boots, and hope that in the Spring, some of these will turn into new trees. That is what we are trying to achieve, and without the help of these little "tree rats" we are very unlikely to be successful.

Money and Values

2009-10-06T14:13:00.003+01:00

It has been a little while since I last posted but that is mainly because we've been doing so many things in the woods and elsewhere. At the woods we managed to complete the weather-critical work on paths, clearings, wildflower meadows and rubbish clearance thanks to the help of Bill and his mini-digger, Daz, one of our volunteers, and some really rather large big boys' toys that we had on hire, some of which I got to drive. We have had another Open Day that seemed to go very well. We have been completing a lot of paperwork relating to work that we need to do on our Tree Protection Order protected trees, and we have had a short holiday.

One question that keeps coming up is "How do you make any money out of this place"? The answer is we don't make a profit out of the woods, and I don't think we can hope to do this. We do have money coming in from a variety of sources: Our business, our friends and family, from the sale of our craft products, from occasional donors, and from Forestry Commission grants. We also hope to recover some money from community groups using the site in future. This does not cover the costs, but it helps to offset some of the costs of running and maintaining the site, and of equipment, seeds and plants to help improve it for wildlife.

In future we will also have (permission permitting) coppiced wood products available, such as beanpoles and pea-sticks for allotments, and possibly willow for living willow garden structures (we may make some for sale ourselves), and additional craft products to sell at Open Days. At present we haven't established a coppice rotation to allow this to happen, but in a few years time this will bring in some money. Firewood seems to be rather a poor option - it takes a lot of effort to dry out and prepare logs for sale and you get almost no money from it, but if we have a surplus after our own use then we wouldn't be averse to selling it.

If we cannot look at the wood as a method of making money, then what is its value? I think it has much more value than the potential of its timber products. This is how I see it...

Most of us spend money every year on a lot of things that we enjoy; buying clothes, going out, various sports and leisure activities, gym memberships, playstations and games, buying music and DVD's, riding motorcycles, driving cars, riding bicycles or horses and many other things. Well, the woods is something we enjoy, so why not spend money on it in the same way? The woods is an important hobby for us, an important enjoyable activity. So from the purely selfish viewpoint, the woods is another hobby that we spend money on to enjoy.

It also helps to keep us fit and healthy and active. We much prefer activities you can do outside to being in a gym (and I am a qualified gym instructor!). Being outside in the fresh air, sun, wind, rain and snow, we keep active and fit with an activity that we can continue to do as we get older. We also have a little space to grow some vegetables and have fresh organic food with zero food-miles. We can do so in a lovely environment that has beauty and peace and interest. That's worth paying for.

These are all pretty selfish benefits. But there are others too. First of all the wildlife itself - trees, birds, insects, spiders, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, flowers, mosses and fungi. All of them can benefit if we can give a little time and money to our woods. Just by owning it we are helping to prevent it being damaged as a habitat by another less sympathetic use of the land (including just leaving it alone). Then we are trying to improve it and add habitats, and we are already seeing the benefit. Now we could just give money to an environmental charity and let them do it for us, and we still do this. But there is something of great personal value in being able to get your hands on, do things, and see the wildlife enjoying what you are trying to preserve and improve.

And of course it isn't just us. We want lots of people to benefit. We want people to enjoy the woods on open days, and for children and young people to enjoy the educational and artistic opportunities that the wood has to offer. We would love other people to enjoy the benefit of outdoor activity in the wood that we do ourselves. We would like the local community to feel happy and proud that the local wood is being cared for. And we would like the wood to be there, and full of trees and wildlife, for future generations.

So, if we are asked how we make money out of the wood, the answer would be: "We don't, but we, and hopefully others, get great value from it for the time, money and effort that we put in". The woods is definitely value for money.

Progress

2009-09-20T18:23:00.003+01:00

We are coming to the time of year where you can get a lot of work done in the woods. The birds have finished nesting, but the mammals are not yet hibernating, and the ground is not yet waterlogged, limiting your ability to get around. So, for this reason, I am sitting here aching in many places, and with scratches and insect bites competing with the aches for attention.

Progress. What actually is progress in terms of the wood? At the time it seems like you have made a tiny incremental change, but when you look back over a period of weeks, months or years, you find you've made a big difference. It also isn't a straight line - sometimes you have to go backwards to go forwards in the long run.

We are seizing the opportunity afforded by the dry weather to complete some work on internal tracks and drainage that was started last winter, but then abandoned as the ground got too waterlogged to continue. Here, it seems we are going backwards a bit - we've had to grade and level the ground to prepare to place the roadstone so it doesn't just turn into puddles and do no good at all. This makes the ground look bare and unpleasant. Then we have to brush-cut along the drainage trench so we can get to it and put in the land drains and gravel and sluices to control water flow. And we've had to move some of the piles of roadstone left through the summer - they have been colonised by plants, so we have gone from green to bare again.

Access tracks are a necessary evil for us. Any road or track that reduces the ability of plants to grow also reduces the opportunities for wildlife. A green track allows plants to grow, and we have a lot of green paths around the site. The problem is that we need access to the woods through the winter when the ground can get waterlogged. Failing to put in proper tracks just means you damage the ground and may even sink in and damage the tree roots below. Access tracks are also important for disabled visitors and people who are unsteady on their feet - uneven grassy tracks can be difficult for older visitors but our new track will be level.

And then most of the time it is just the two of us working there. If you have regiments of volunteers who can do all the work by hand, using light hand-tools, and can carry large quantities of timber around by hand, well that is fine. We don't have this - so we have to use tools that allow us to do the job, such as a chainsaw and brushcutter.

Last weekend we went on a coppicing course to learn how to establish our own coppice in our woods. This will have many benefits. It will bring neglected areas of the wood under management again. There are areas of dense growth of saplings that are far too close together. In this area there is no ground layer - it is like the sterile brown earth under a conifer forest. The trees are growing weak and some have already died. Management will allow new standard trees to grow strong, with a proper understorey and ground layer beneath. It will also produce dense re-growth on the coppiced stumps that is favoured by certain animals and birds. And in a few years' time it will produce a sustainable source of wood that can be used to make things and for firewood as we start the coppice cycle again.

Today I have been marking the trees with coloured wool - orange for oak, yellow for willow, grey for ash and so on. This will ensure that when we cut some of them, we leave an appropriate mix of species and a good age distribution. It gave me a feel for the size of the task that we will be doing when we start to coppice the area. It also showed me that the task would be impossible if we can't get our Land Rover down there with a trailer and some tools. And for that we need a weatherproof track part of the way (some of the ground doesn't get soft and waterlogged). Either we have no track and no management or a track and good management for wildlife and to establish healthy trees for the future.

Is drainage progress? We definitely don't want to drain our boggy area, which is a valuable habitat with some plants like bog stitchwort thriving on the waterlogged soil. But the area has been drained before - a broken land drain was found. And we can clearly see that some mature oak trees have died where the area of waterlogging is extending - failing to do something will result in more trees being lost. So we are establishing a drainage system to take water away from the trees and into the boggy area. If this gets too wet (as a result of more water coming in) we are going to put in sluices to allow the water to run into the ponds. This gives us a controllable drainage system that will permit us to divert water to where it can do most good, and away from where it has been doing harm.

And are the ponds progress? Well, last year they weren't there. There were a few dragonflies around but nothing special. Now, on a beautiful late summer day, the ponds were alive with dragonflies. Wasps and other insects were coming down to drink. Muntjac prints abound in the mud around the side, as well as other mammal prints, so they are being used as a source of drinking water. I sat watching a squirrel run down the drainage trench to the pond, take a drink and hop away again - something I could never have seen before the ponds were there. Take a look in the ponds and you will see plants establishing, diving beetles, water boatmen, pond skaters, frogs and all kinds of other creatures. On the soil around the ponds that was just a spoil heap in February, we now have wild flowers some of which are new to the site.

So yes, it is all progress. If we can hand on a healthy well-managed woodland with a wide variety of habitats with their associated flora and fauna, then we will have done a good job. But at the moment it is very much work in progress...

Autumn

2009-09-14T18:07:00.002+01:00

Autumn has always been my favourite time of year. Whether or not it is because I was born in the Autumn, I don't know, but there is something that gets to me about Autumn. So much is going on in Autumn. The trees are setting fruit. There is so much to harvest and use around the hedgerows and in the trees and gardens. The leaves are changing colour, whether it is a subtle change in variegation and veining, or whether they are advertising their demise with an exuberant mix of oranges, yellows and reds. Small creatures are scurrying around in the trees and hedgerows laying in stores of food for hibernation or to last through the winter. The countryside has a mature, golden colour of harvested grass and grain. I love it.

It is also the time of year you turn your mind to the tasks ahead in the wood. The Spring and Summer are wonderful times with a profusion of green and insects and flowers and singing birds. However you are fairly limited in what can be done at the woods because of the need to avoid nesting birds in Summer and hibernating mammals in the deep winter. So Autumn is when you need to plan and get things done.

Last weekend we went on a coppicing course to learn about this ancient wood activity, now gaining in popularity again. More importantly, establishing a coppiced area or two in our woods will increase habitats for wildlife, and allow a proper three layer structure to be created that is missing in so much of the wood. We have areas of dense scrub with no ground layer, areas of high forest with no scrub but a good ground layer in the dappled sunshine, and areas of bramble crowding out everything and preventing development of any layer other than bramble.

Some of these areas we want to keep, but establishing a coppice would certainly help open up some of the denser areas, allowing selection of new standard trees, and development of useful scrub (hawthorn, willow and hazel, rather than elder). In time it will bring sustainable sources of wood to our woods. Right now, what we have to do is think, and plan, and carefully select the areas we need to fell to create regeneration and regrowth, of which coppicing is a part.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying the Autumn. The birds are quieter, the mammals are noisier and bolder, and the woods is buzzing with frantic activity. The trees are taking a deep breath and screaming their temporary demise as they prepare for winter, with the promise of another year ahead. I'm also enjoying the bounty provided by nature - the blackberries which are coming to an end, the elderberries which are bubbling away in a demijohn producing wine for next year, and the crab apple and rowan jelly that I made last week. Autumn is definitely my favourite time of year. Let us hope by next Autumn we have an established coppice and a productive wood again.

Access

2009-09-02T15:46:00.002+01:00

Along the lines of the "one hand clapping" question, can a place be beautiful if you are unable to see it? Improving access to the woods has been one of our main objectives from the start. Almost two years after we took ownership, and despite a lot of hard work, there are still a few places we have been unable to access.

Access is essential for all kinds of reasons. First of all, it is essential if we are to make improvements to the site for wildlife. A site overgrown with bramble has low biodiversity and a low range of habitats - something we are seeking to change. In order to address this, we need to get through the brambles and to wherever they are growing to be able to manage them. Obviously we don't want to remove all the brambles, because they are a valuable habitat, not to mention a source of delicious blackberries for crumbles and wine-making. The problem is that they were seeking to make themselves the only habitat and that would not be right.

Over the past two years we have developed several strategies for dealing with bramble. We started off rather naively thinking we could deal with them using a brush-cutter. This thought was rapidly put to rest - the brambles grew faster than we could cut them. Bulldozing them with the front of our tractor and brush-cutting the remains was our second strategy, but this was very hard work and resulted in very slow progress. In the end we opted for a rotary slasher for the back of the tractor. But whilst this is a very effective tool, there is more to making access paths than simply wading in. For a start the site was peppered with multiple generations of barbed-wire fences - not something you want to get tangled up in the mower, or indeed get tangled round your feet. This needed careful removal. Bramble can also conceal a multitude of things you don't want to hit with a tractor or mower - ditches, holes, large fallen logs, piles of stones. All of these things need to be sought out in advance of making a path or clearing a glade to make way for new trees and ground flora.

We have gradually become more adept at the mechanics of making paths and clearing brambles, but there is another consideration - you can't cut bramble when the birds are nesting in it, nor can you cut it when the mammals are hibernating in it. And you can't get a tractor into the woods at all when the ground is too soft to bear the weight of the machine. So we have a limited time of the year when we can get to grips with our access problem, and that time is now.

This Bank Holiday weekend we aimed to improve access. We have never been able to get the tractor or any vehicle into the lower part of our woods. We definitely don't want to drive around willy-nilly, but getting a Land Rover to the lower area would be important for establishing a coppice, for example. Not to mention the fact that older visitors such as my mother-in-law, who has never seen more than a small part of the wood, can be driven down to see the beautiful sights of the deep woodland.

The process started with access that was more difficult than normal - our entrance had been blocked by a huge amount of fly-tipped rubble and soil, so we couldn't get the car in. A morning was wasted in clearing this with the tractor so we could start the task in hand.

We had identified a route that skirted an elbow in the ditch and made use of a dam created when a previous owner had diverted the ditch. We obviously wanted to avoid cutting down any trees, and we managed to plot a route that involved felling only two elder shrubs, and pruning back a few others. We spent two days chainsawing, sawing, cropping and lopping, moving prunings away from the path and mowing back brambles and bracken until we broke through to a clearing we had never been able to cross before. The tractor made short work of the bramble that was smothering this clearing, and we broke through to our lower ponds. At last the whole of the woods was now accessible to our Land Rover, and our winter coppicing work, and clearance of invading sycamore, will now be much easier.

But aside from doing work, and allowing my mother-in-law to see the wood for the first time, access is important for all sorts of other reasons. You can see the wood from a whole new perspective. You can even see things you have never seen before, such as a fallen tree we knew was there, but now we can explore the spooky depths of the fallen branches on the ground. We can photograph well-known trees from different angles. We can attempt to record the way in which wildlife makes use of the new paths. We can walk around our own woods at night seeking bats and owls without risk of tripping on narrow footpaths.

Beauty may well be there when you can't see it, but it is very pleasant to be able to appreciate it.

Open Days, Badgers and Rabbits

2009-08-24T17:57:00.004+01:00

Yesterday was our second Open Day at Alvecote Wood. Why should we open our private little piece of heaven to the public? After all, we have to deal with all the health and safety, put up signs, put out road cones, mow an area for people to park their cars and it is generally a whole weekend of work.

Well, there are many good reasons. When you own a woodland, you aren't the owner in any real sense of the word. The trees have been there, and will be there, for a lot longer than you, so you are more like their temporary guardian, to care for them and pass them on to another pair of hands in due course.

This wood is on a prominent local thoroughfare - not a major road, just a country lane, but nevertheless used by many local people on their way to and from their villages and between different parts of Tamworth. Lots of people walk and cycle past it every day. Lots of people have wondered what we are doing there - stopping to talk to us when we are working near the entrance. I am certain a lot of local people were concerned that we were turning it into a building site, or otherwise going to spoil a little piece of beauty that they could enjoy on their journey. The local folk have been supportive of our efforts when they get to hear about what we are trying to achieve.

There are a lot of wildlife groups in and around the local area interested in what we are doing. Wildlife sites don't exist in isolation: Some are little islands, but most of these islands are linked in some way. Our particular site is linked to wild areas along the canal, and the canopy of trees touches those on the other side, which is a SSSI. What we do here impacts on wildlife all around the area. The site is special - the only bit of ancient woodland in the local area. Other people trying to help wildlife are interested to see what is going on, as well as interested in bringing groups to look round.

We also want community groups to use the woods. In June, the Scouts camped at the woods, forming a work party but also enjoying everything that the woods have to offer. It takes a lot to impress 14 year old boys, but this group seemed to be very impressed and sometimes a little awestruck by what we had there.

So, we have local people, wildlife people, community groups, and most important of all, the potential future guardians of these trees.

This Open Day was a success, in the sense that people came, walked round, were positive, organised nature walks for their groups as a result of seeing the woods, and were generally reassured that we weren't awful people and they were going to see lovely trees, flowers and birds at least for a while longer as they walked, cycled and drove past.

It wasn't all wildlife: On the plus side, we had a pair of sparrowhawks plus our resident buzzard on display. On the less wild side, when we arrived to set up in the morning, a large white floppy-eared domestic pet rabbit was sitting under our trailer parked outside our barn. It seemed a pretty healthy and certainly quite friendly rabbit, and seemed to like apples and thistles. It was quite cute with one ear that stood up and the other that flopped down. It was obviously a pet, and obviously not going to last very long with the buzzard around, as well as foxes. It caused quite a stir among the visitors. Nobody from the village had heard of a lost rabbit, and I can't quite see this particularly pampered looking bunny travelling all that way on its own. I suspect the owner could no longer cope and dumped it. Fortunately it found its way under our trailer. Our friend was looking for a rabbit for her son, so armed with a new hutch, some cabbage leaves and a box, and an army of willing helpers, it was finally caught and left for its new home.

This time, only one child came - the majority of the visitors were at least our age. Based on this one Open Day we might be concerned for the future of the local wildlife. However we have had some tremendous positive experiences to lead us to think that there will be good hands into which to place our guardianship when the time comes. First of all, the general level of interest among the Scouts, who asked pertinent questions, worked hard, and learned a lot.

And then there was the previous Open Day a month ago. Not such nice weather, two children arrived with their Mum in the pouring rain just as we were packing up. They seemed really interested, so I offered to take them round, even though we were technically shut for the day. And what a great pair of children they were. They were knowledgeable, and interested. They were quiet and listened, and then asked some of the most difficult questions I'd been asked all day. It was an absolute pleasure to talk to them and show them what we were trying to do. They seemed genuinely pleased, too, that people like us were caring for this wood, and for the creatures in it. Who knows where they will end up? My impression was probably as Professors of Biological Sciences at a major University, but they could just end up being the guardians of our trees in the future, coming as they did from one of the local villages.

Open Days are definitely worth it. They are worth it for all sorts of reasons, and I think both visitors and visited get something from them. Let us hope that this tradition continues when we pass on guardianship of our trees to somebody else.

PS: The frustrating creature I was photographing turned out to be a badger scent marking his territory. With the last gasp of a dying battery, the badger was duly captured on the memory card. The camera is back there with a fresh battery and I hope to get a lot more pictures soon!

Frustrations of the Wildlife Photographer

2009-08-21T18:25:00.002+01:00

I like taking photos of wildlife. Since my first SLR camera in the 1970's, I've been taking photos of butterflies and plants, although it is made a lot easier by the current crop of intelligent cameras than it was in the days of manual metering and focus.

Taking photos of mammals and birds, however, is new to me. You can snap the occasional photo of squirrels, and might be lucky with the birds on the seed feeders, but unless you want to invest in expensive equipment and then leave it overnight on an unattended site where it announces its presence by occasional triggers of the flash, then you are quite limited in opportunity.

First of all, you need to know where the creatures are, and when they are there. Where isn't too difficult - the rainy summer means I know the tracks followed by the munjtac deer at Alvecote Wood, and can see the occasional print left by foxes. However I don't really know where they are at particular times of day. I need to know this if I am to lurk hidden and get decent photographs.

So, we invested in a trail camera - one of those relatively cheap camouflaged digital cameras that you can strap to a tree and is triggered by an infra-red beam. It also takes night-time pictures. There have been some successes - we now know that muntjac visit one particular clearing at more or less the same time of day. I've had good photos of mother and kid at another location, and we know we also have a buck muntjac. I've had tantalising views of a fox disappearing into the distance. I've had any number of photos of rabbits and woodpigeons.

But what I'd really like to find are the foxes and badgers that we know are on site. We know they are there because we see their footprints, have heard foxes at night, and have seen dead badgers on site too.

The next step has been to try and identify places where the fox is marking his territory. A number of candidate sites with pungent odours have been identified, baited with food, and the camera left hopefully overnight for several nights, only to disappoint with plenty of rabbits but no fox. Evidently the rabbits know something that I don't about the fox - maybe he has moved on.

As the undergrowth dies away in late summer, I was elated last week to identify a site where there is clear evidence of scent marking by a predator - lots of piles of poo, added to regularly, and obviously not that of a herbivore. I thought I'd get lots of pictures of foxes but sadly no. The first attempt yielded absolutely nothing - clearly the fox had moved on. The next site was more promising - visited on several evenings, there were fresh deposits. I duly placed the camera on a tree and went home, convinced that I would finally nail the wily fox.

I was wrong. The wind blew the branch on which the camera was attached and displaced it, so it now pointed at an elder bush and not at the more enticing area I was trying to photograph. Three nights, and all I got was a single retreating muntjac and a tantalising and blurred creature partly hidden by the bush that might have been a muntjac or fox, but I couldn't tell.

I identified another potential bush for the camera, and used fallen pieces of wood in an attempt to be subtle about holding the nettles and brambles out of the way to get a clear view of the scent-marking site. I replaced the memory card, and hoped the batteries would last a few more nights. I have left the camera to it.

This has taken months, and I'm still not at the stage where I can camp out with confidence to try to get pictures with better cameras. I have been looking for the foxes for so long that I'll now have to re-survey the muntjac site in order to check the timing of their appearances now the nights are drawing in.

All of this has given me a great deal of respect for those who sit for hours waiting for animals to appear, or more likely, not appear, or be the wrong animal when they do so! Even with plenty of technology, employed in what I hope to be an intelligent manner, the wily fox has proved elusive, and the badgers sadly only appear in their demise. I console myself with the much-easier to capture butterflies, but I really, really would like a photo of those foxes and badgers!

Being Outside

2009-08-18T11:50:00.002+01:00

I read a good article by Matt Baker in the Wildlife Trusts Magazine this month. He was bemoaning the fact that a whole generation of children are growing up without experiencing the natural world directly, but rather indirectly via playstations and the TV. Also the fact that the natural world is seen as being something that has to be packaged, that you have to travel to, and that you need equipment to enjoy.

I teach Nordic Walking classes in and around Tamworth. I am often out walking either with clients or on my own. On a beautiful summer day, warm and sunny, you can walk for miles without seeing anybody, even on footpaths through housing estates, and parks adjacent to homes. In the school summer holidays, children are indoors, not outdoors playing.

I was lucky as a child. I lived in South London, but we had a small patch of wild ground and allotments at the rear of our garden. I spent so much time there as a child. I made a den, climbed the elm trees (sadly they are now gone, victims of Dutch Elm disease), and explored the stream and wildlife around it. I learned to identify different plants by their flowers, seeds and leaves. I learned to identify different insects, pondweeds and the little stickleback fish that darted up and down the stream. I caught tadpoles and watched them grow into frogs. I learned to identify grass snakes and adders. I was enthralled by the butteflies that flitted up and down the woodland edge. It was magical, and I loved being outdoors.

We had plenty of nature reserves near our home and I visited them when I could, but nature wasn't a packaged experience - it was something just outside my door.

Food, also, was something you grew as much as possible. We always had fresh fruit from our fruit trees and vegetables from our garden and allotment. You ate what was growing, what you could pick that day. For the winter we stored our apples and potatoes and onions. We stored our own seeds for next year. And this was in London, not "the countryside". Our neighbours had chickens.

We now grow vegetables in our back and front garden and at Alvecote Wood. When I first planted veg in the front garden, people wondered whether they would be stolen. Nobody has touched them. I'd actually be quite happy if a child stole a few tomatoes, or picked some stems of rhubarb. But they don't. I suspect most of them don't know what the plants are, if they even notice them as the hurry by with their hoods up and rap blasting out of their mobile phones.

A couple of years ago, I was potting up strawberry runners to make new plants for next year. Our cleaner came and had to bring her little boy because of a glitch in childcare arrangements. She asked if he could plug in his playstation, but he quickly became enthralled in what I was doing. An hour later, hands slightly muddy, he had helped me pot up a lot of strawberry plants, and had also collected a lot of snails on the edge of our pond to look at the different sizes and colours. His mother was amazed - he'd never played outside like that before. She was beginning to think of planting a few veg in her own garden because of the interest he'd shown in ours.

Being outside is magic. I love music and man-made entertainment, but it doesn't come close to the permanent spectacular show that the natural world puts on for us. Buying food in the supermarket doesn't come close to eating your own potatoes, beans, peas, tomatoes, apples, rhubarb, onions, garlic and anything else you can grow, warts and all.

We'd like to provide more opportunities for children to enjoy our woods - it is close to a town and several villages and there are so many things they could learn. It is frustrating that there are so many barriers placed in our way. Not just CRB checks (which are obviously important), but accreditation schemes that, while worthy in themselves, cost money forcing us to choose between spending it on the wildlife that is there, and the children who should be enjoying it. Accreditation of sites based upon learning plans, lesson plans and learning objectives leaves no flexibility for children to enjoy nature spontaneously, and adds to the impression Matt Baker was alluding to in his article that wildlife somehow has to be travelled to, packaged and delivered in a controlled way, to order. Children need to explore right outside their door. They need to learn to assess risks for themselves. They need to learn how to learn for themselves. They need to experience the wonder of a new discovery. They simply need to be outside.

The Peace of the Woods

2009-08-17T18:05:00.001+01:00

Instant celebrity. Fame without effort. Being given everything rather than having to work for it. Knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. I am quite glad I am not growing up in such a World. There is dichotomy - many young people are concerned about "the environment" and think us old folk should "do more", but are unwilling to comprehend a world without instant gratification and every modern convenience, or think that somehow by putting plastic bottles into the weekly recycling they are doing all that is required to save the planet.

Our "do more" are our woods. Just a little wood a mile from our home, only 11 acres, but a wonderful, peaceful place. There is no instant gratification with trees or any wildlife project. Trees measure their progress in centuries. Our wood was a wood when William the Conqueror came to Britain, and was given along with other local land to local aristocracy when King Henry VIII siezed the priory lands. Our trees have been there since Napoleon was rampaging across Europe. It slows you down. It makes you think.

In two years we have achieved a lot, and yet little has changed. We now have a building (on an existing base) for our equipment. We have made inroads into the bramble that was choking the wood and diminishing bio-diversity. We have created access paths. We have made the site safe for visitors and volunteers. We have put up nest boxes. We have dug 5 ponds (we now have 6 in total). We are working to ensure that future generations can still enjoy beautiful oak trees, and the complex webs of wildlife that exist within. Little changes are happening - there are more dragonflies, the ponds are coming to life with new plants, insects, frogs, toads and other wildlife. Bats swoop low over the ponds in the evening to enjoy the abundant insects attracted by the ponds. Slow and subtle changes in a complex web of wildlife.

The peace of woodland is not something for you if you enjoy instant gratification, or want to see instant results for your effort. We will not be around when many of the new oak saplings emerging from the cleared bramble are mature. The World will be very different. But there is something much more gratifying if you have to wait for those changes.

We are trying to "do more" in our small way. We won't save the planet, but we hope that in 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, the children of Tamworth and North Warwickshire will have a little haven of wildlife with connections to the deep past that they can visit and enjoy.

Alvecote Wood is beautiful. It is peaceful. It is a cure for instant gratification. We are very privileged to own it.