Deer, deer and more deer

Mark Chase from the Deer Action Group gave us this footage from the trail camera, showing just what the deer get up to when they think no one's around. These shots were all taken from the deer seat May- August - note how quickly the ground recovers in just one season.

This is August in OC1. 

Mostly they spend their time eating - as we thought - but there is also time for play.

Bat rescue

We found a bat in the middle of  a hot day clinging to an old log on the pond side path.  So after seeking advice from the nearby Knepp Castle Estate we found a small box in the cabin and using a soft towel, gently lifted the poorly creature into it. Our visitor Marc Easton took her for treatment to a local bat  hospital. Bat experts there found it to be an adult  female long eared brown bat who has had a baby earlier this year. She was  suffering from a prolapsed anus, and dehydration. She is being given water , food , antibiotics and painkillers and is now expected to make a full recovery. When she is completely better she will be brought back to the area where she was found, and released. Bats have a travelling range of 10 kilometres, so she will soon find either her original roost, or another nearby.

At the bat hospital

We'd like to think that when she is released she will look something like this:

Long Eared Brown Bat (Library picture)

Thanks to Sussex Bat Rescue and the experts at Knepp Castle Estate.

Rowan

Today in the wood on the last day of July, the rowan berries are starting to ripen - some red, some orange. Looking at the mass of berries appearing wherever the tree can find some sun, I started to think about what a very flexible tree the rowan is - and what a great survivor.

It will grow in almost any conditions.
It grows deep in the dense birch. It will grow in the pine plantation - anywhere where it can stretch towards the light. In shade it grows long and thin - but it does grow. These long spindly trees eventually bend under their own weight. They straggle through the wood, leaning on other trees and on each other. Sometimes they just topple over. But that's not the end of the story. Once on the ground, new saplings grow out from the fallen tree. It's not unusual to find a line of rowans growing in a neat row, where one fallen tree has how become four or five.
If it can find some sun, such as on the edge of the ride, it grows vigorous and sturdy - up to 40 ft and more. And in the sun of course there are berries (or officially 'pomes' as I now know I should call them after a quick trip to wikipedia). Rowan seem to be virtually indestructible: chop them down and new leaves sprout immediately. Pollard them and a wig of growth will shoot up. Rowan seedlings are everywhere. If the deer didn't eat them, we'd be waist high in rowan. As an experiment I protected a couple with tree tubes, and already the leaves are fountaining out of the top.

It's been a poor year for butterflies, but today's sun brought out a few speckled woods - seen here basking on the ride. In the long grass there were dozens of little wood frogs. This one was hopping away but I just managed a quick phone snap.

Tasty bark

It's been a bit of a race trying to protect as many of the emerging oaks and beech as possible before they are eaten by deer. We've protected 75 so far with our recycled tree tubes and home made stakes. We have to be fast. A seedling beech was marked  with one of our red painted stick markers but not covered immediately.  Returning to it a short time later with a tree tube and stake, it had already been been eaten - stripped of its foliage leaving a bare twig behind.  The other day Sarah looked up from banging a tree stake in, to see a heavily pregnant doe staring at her through the bracken. A quick snap with a mobile phone got a picture of the culprit. The deer at this time of the year are usually single does.






Though the deer browse a great deal at ground level, they also tear off and eat tree bark. However they do not appear to cause such  excessive damage that squirrels wreak on trees, particularly beech. This summer has been particularly bad.  The mild winter of 2015 - 2016, with plenty of available food and seemingly no need to hibernate,  appears to have led to a squirrel population explosion. We've never seen so much damage to our beech trees. They rip the bark off from the base to the top of the tree, seeking the sweet layer directly under the bark. We have  tried protecting  trees from deer,  by piling  branches and other brash around the tree stem. Though this seems to have some deterrent effect, nothing stops the squirrels. who just climb further up the tree and start stripping the bark there. The effect of  this is to slow the growth of the tree, and if it is so bad that the bark is stripped off all round the trunk - effectively ring barking it -  then the tree will die.

The culprit  of this vandalism is not the small pretty, native  red squirrel (sadly now only found in isolated pockets in the UK) but the larger, immigrant American grey squirrel  (Scirius caroliniensis) These are  native to North America and were first released in the UK in 1876 in Henbury Park Cheshire. They soon spread throughout the country.

Red squirrel (library picture)

Unfortunately they have had a devastating , and well documented effect on our native reds which can now only be found in a few areas of the British Isles. However, to be fair , although they are bigger and have a reputation for being aggressive, they do not kill red squirrels and there is some evidence that red squirrels were already on the decline before the greys turned up, because of habitat loss and disease. So it may be argued that the greys just took up the space vacated by the reds.  The grey's success, (there are about 66 greys for every red) seems to be down to their being better at competing for food. They are also prolific breeders with 2 litters a year of between 3 and 7 'kits'. This is why some extermination programmes have not worked - clear the greys out of one area and neighbouring colonies just move in. In addition, they carry the squirrel pox virus which while it doesn't harm greys, is a serious infection for red squirrels.





We  wondered if it might be possible to paint some sort of a deterrent  on the tree trunks, but it seems not. It would be wonderful if both the deer and squirrels stuck to eating birch, bracken, bramble and grass. There's plenty of that to feed them , and would  make our work so much easier.  However, like us,  it seems that  both animals like a varied diet, and the cambium layer which lies underneath the bark is a great treat for them.  Bark stripping is at its height  from April to July, and after this the activity falls off markedly., and the tree will have some months to try and repair the damage. Once the tree grows larger, squirrels lose interest. So, if pest control doesn't work, though that's something we will try, it looks as if we'll just have to live with it, and hope that we can grow enough  beech trees , healthy enough to resist grey squirrel damage.

Sometimes, this sort of dispiriting  battle with woodland pests can make the  restoration of  30 acres of woodland feel like an uphill struggle. We  put in two regular working days a week at Old Copse  throughout the year,  and are fortunate to have occasional help from our deer stalkers, and  a volunteer or two. We also make good use of child labour when it is available. Bracken bashing is an excellent job for kids - an easy ,  light and satisfying  activity with instant results. So, it's important to remain optimistic, and to remind ourselves of what we've  achieved during the past 7 years, despite all the difficulties, and  appreciate how much our hard work  has transformed Old Copse.

Latest sightings: fallow deer (see above), a pair of wrens with 3 fledglings,  making good use of a brash pile to raise their young family, a pair of marsh tits, 4 speckled wood butterflies on the bluebell walk,   many bees busy in the alder buckthorn.

Alder buckthorn in flower - a bee magnet

Learning as we go: business as usual at Old Copse

One of the items in our 5 year plan for Old Copse 2 (i.e. a second block of 15 acres, purchased in January 2013) was, by way of an experiment,  to clear fell an acre or so in the birchwood. The birch, being a pioneer species, rushed into the space cleared by the 1987 storm  that knocked down the then 30 year old scots pine plantation. We originally planned to replant this area with a variety of broadleaves . But as we grew to know this bit of the wood better, we saw that it was in fact surprisingly diverse, rather than just a birch monoculture. The birch have acted as 'nurse' trees, protecting a good number of flourishing young oak, beech, rowan, cherry, sweet chestnut etc. So, happily, we don't need to clear fell, which in any case would only mean an inrush of intractable bracken, as we've seen elsewhere in the wood. Instead we will give the young broadleaves more light and space by carefully 'halo' thinning around them.

The new track/bluebell walk through the birchwood entailed quite a bit of  felling to allow machinery through during the Scots Pine thin of late 2015. This newly cleared space has already created a wildlife corridor for a growing number of birds and butterflies that use it as a short cut through the wood and feed on the plants on the sunny edges. It is extremely gratifying to see how quickly wildlife spots an opportunity. We will continue to widen this corridor, pollarding the birch along its edges and planting  home grown hazel  underneath. This track is not in full sun all the time, but has dappled shade at different times of the day, along its length. We think this variation in light and shade has prevented the dreaded bracken from taking over.

The deer are back, especially does with their young. Having mostly disappeared, to the deer stalkers frustration, during the winter and early Spring months, they soon learned that it is now closed season for doe shooting.  There is plenty of  evidence of their return, especially around the car-park where the flattened grass attests to their enjoying the  morning sunshine. The stag season begins in August, so they have a respite of a couple of months in which to snack on everything the wood offers. The Spring and early Summer weather -  warm sunshine with regular periods of rain -  has resulted in lush growth, so perhaps the deer will be content with grass rather than seedling trees. Hmm, wishful thinking perhaps, so we've been continuing to protect emerging trees, primarily oak and beech. We've covered 64 so far. We only expect a proportion of these to survive, so in addition, next  autumn/winter we will be planting our homegrown Old Copse transplants - about 50 have been successful, augmented with bought in tree 'whips' from a nearby tree nursery. Our aim is a minimum of 200 seedlings and new planted trees in Old Copse by the end of next winter.


Last week was half-term so children were in the wood amusing themselves with axes and knives. This might sound dangerous, but with the right instruction they soon learn how to handle these tools safely. They gained, I think, a good sense of achievement and satisfaction by chopping kindling for the log burner, making a new swing, and carving spoons.

Practising with the axe

Spoon whittling

Work party at Old Copse

Another gorgeous day in the wood. Our deer stalkers gave us a  much appreciated helping hand with ongoing tasks. The work party arrived at 8a.m and left 8 hard- working hours later, having cleared and cut up a large  fallen birch; mended the fence it had fallen onto; adjusted the top gate and continued with some challenging holly clearance on a steep slope, followed by a big bonfire. They even had time to make a lovely sturdy bench for the top of the bluebell walk where we can sit and look across the valley to St.Leonard's Forest. Beautiful. Many thanks to Mark and his team.

Mark and team enjoying the sunshine on the ride

Lovely new seat!

The new seat is made

Regeneration following thinning

With the first few days of May bringing the warmest weather of the year, it seemed like a good time to review how the wood has reacted to the winter's big thin.

The bluebells seem to have benefitted from the increased light levels in the thinned pine. While we can't expect them to spread until at least next season, we seem to have more in flower this year, and fewer blind ones. In the tracks where the tractor has been, the bluebells are slowly regenerating in ones and twos, but with the crushing from the machinery we'll have to wait until next year for flowering. Now that a third of the Scots Pine plantation has been removed  the large number of thriving, regenerated and regenerating beech and oak to be seen is surprising,  particularly now  when their leaves are bright green.

Beech seedling in the leaf litter

Protected from deer predation

The rain followed by warm days has brought on a fine crop of seedlings. Rowan seedlings are prolific in the ground layer, but there are also beech, alder and the occasional small oak. In the thinned pines where we find a healthy new seedling in a good situation with space to grow, we are protecting them with our recycled tree tubes. On Sunday we found and protected 14 new trees in this way, and will continue to do this through the Spring. These will all help to increase diversity and aid the transition from PAWS to ASNW. The top photo shows how beech trees thrive once they have escaped from the deer and are out of browsing reach.

At the moment deer damage seems to be less severe than usual. The deer stalkers have only managed to shoot five this season, and one of those was old and diseased. Their target was 12  but even a small amount helps to keep numbers down. Whether it's stalking activity, the felling operation,  or the mild winter which has kept the deer well fed elsewhere, it's an opportunity to see what can regenerate in the ground layer with less deer pressure. For example, bilberry is appearing in several patches on OC2, where previously there was none.

Bilberry

In the willow grove, the pollarded sallows are sprouting. The ground is still very wet, supporting a fine crop of liverworts. New ferns are uncurling.

Liverworts

The ride is drying out. Grass is gradually returning to the surface following the scraping and levelling, but there is some way to go. The photo below shows the contrast between the foreground area which had a small amount of use by machinery and the background where there was heavy traffic. 

On Sunday a pair of marsh tits were spotted near the willow grove, and the cuckoo was heard calling from St Leonard's Forest, back from his 4,000 mile trip to south west Africa.