Golden Autumn Roundup

 

This is the first blog post since June , though visits to, and work in the wood, never stops and the seasons come and go more quickly each year, or so it seems to us. There is a natural rhythm of weather, growth and decline.  Often there seems to be nothing much of particular note to report or record.  A change of season when everything in the wood is making ready for dormancy seems like a good time to take stock of  the work we've been doing, and future plans.

It's been a mild and mostly still, sunny,  November . The leaves have lingered  on the trees for longer than usual this Autumn,  to be enjoyed as they gradually turned gold and russet. Old Copse is looking beautiful,  a continuing, growing  reward for our restoration work. The fallow bucks have been making their annual coughing,  barking and belching, noises.  There aren't many stags in the wood though there is one large  buck who likes to hang about and groan loudly.  Poor old chap. The wood is full of pheasant escapees from the pheasantry  on the neighbouring estate. Silly birds, they will insist on flying back when they would be safe if they stayed at Old Copse.  

Red Kite

We  were pleased  to see a Red Kite soaring above us in  late Spring this year half a mile or so from  Old Copse, and were thrilled to hear recently, for the first time, one calling overhead near the cabin.  

 

'The Red Kite is an increasingly familiar sight in the skies above Sussex, soaring effortlessly over the South Downs on an almost-six-foot wingspan. These magnificent birds are still outnumbered by their Buzzard brethren but they share a similar story, both bouncing back from the brink of extinction'. (Sussex Wild Life Trust)

Restored Hazel Coppice

The derelict remnant hazel coppice which we restored last winter at the south end of Old Copse, has done phenomenally well. Success is down to temporary deer fencing and additional light. Felling to let in a little more light has allowed the ground flora to flourish, though thankfully no bracken has appeared so I think we managed to get the  balance of light and shade correct. It looks very lush, almost jungly. We'll be planting more hazel this winter , doing some more holly felling  and we hope to extend the coppice area. Come on in Dormice, your new home awaits!  Here are (rather too  many)  photos. 

Mushrooms and Fungus

Autumn is time for a visit from the West Weald Fungus recording group led by Dick Alder, renowned mycologist. They managed to record 82 species in just a very small section of Old Copse. This, he says is due to its rich diversity. 

Just a few of the 82 varieties identified:

 

Chimney Sweep

We thought it time to get the cabin chimney swept as the log burner has been doing a magnificent job of keeping us warm and providing hot water for almost eight winters . We were pleased to be told it was in tiptop shape and  remarkably clean, due to both its being being a short chimney, and the use of our own properly seasoned wood . So, it's all safe and certified for another eight years thanks to Matthew who, together with running  the family chimney sweep business,  works as a professional ballroom dancer  and teacher during the 'off' season. Perhaps I shouldn't say that 'Half a Sixpence' came to mind. 

(Or should that be Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins...? ed.)

The Willow Grove 

Last January we pollarded  half of the willow regrowth in a wet part of the wood. We plan to cut the rest of the willows this winter and augment the area  with homegrown willow 'whips'. We hope the Purple Emperor butterflies,  and the Marsh and Willow Tits will like it. 

Maintenance of Glades and Rides

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These must be actively managed to prevent the edges advancing. This would eventually narrow  the open areas , which are crucial in  maintaining the diversity and quality of the habitat mosaic which best encourages  wildlife.  We  strim  the  herbaceous vegetation to prevent  invasion, particularly by invasive bracken under which nothing grows. We start this in  late August , doing the main Ride once a year, and glades,'scallops',  and other open areas on a two year rotation. 

Habitat

Old Copse has abundant supplies of  felled timber, dead wood, both standing and fallen,  brash, and other woodland debris, just lying about all over 30 acres, slowly decomposing, providing nutrients, food, nesting and shelter for many Old Copse residents. I love seeing  heaps, piles, and stacks being colonised by small creatures. Numerous neat, circular  'entrances' of all sizes are evident if one looks closely at decaying brash piles, but not so close as to disturb the inhabitants. I often wonder who lives in them. Certainly invertebrates, also small mammals such as wood mice and voles, and perhaps stoats and weasels, all of which we've seen in the wood.  Birds such as wrens and robins make good use of brash piles,  and grass snakes and reptiles love a log pile. 

Winter Work

This winter's agenda  includes  pollarding willow;  thinning  even - aged birch that are shading out regenerating young oaks, beech  and other broadleaves ;  and holly thinning . We'll also be tree planting,  including a  few different ones this year - Black Poplar and  Aspen  as well as our  usual Oak, Beech, Wild Cherry, Hornbeam, Sweet Chestnut, Field Maple  etc. Natural regeneration is springing up in all the places where  we've managed to get rid of the bracken: oak,beech, alder - buckthorn, wild cherry, birch, rowan, are just part of the explosion of  recent growth , and we have quite a few transplanted saplings growing on in the tree nursery. Looks like it'll be a busy winter.  

  

 

 

May Workday

How time flies during a Pandemic. It's June once again and Covid restrictions were lifted.in time  for the annual Old Copse workday in May, with Mark Chase and his team of deer stalkers. In contrast to the hot dry weather on last year's work party, this May was  wet.  We were lucky though,  and it only started to rain right at the end of the day. 18 workers got a great deal done, including repair of the roadside boundary fence using sturdy chestnut fence posts;  removal and processing of a large quantity of timber from various felling sites in the wood, and repairing a leak in the water supply which entailed mechanical digging. The range of  machinery they brought with them, from chainsaws and log splitter, to a digger/ fence post basher  made a crucial difference to how much could be achieved in one day. Tiring but satisfying. 

After a long cold winter, Spring rain and a bit of sunshine has brought  astonishingly exuberant growth . There's more regeneration this year than we've witnessed in the almost twelve years since we've been restoring Old Copse. From ground and shrub layer to canopy - everything is sprouting. The tree whips we've planted and protected from deer have greened up and started to put on a growth spurt. Natural regeneration has included birch, rowan,willow, oak, beech and wild cherry. This hasn't come about by chance but is due to a number of crucial factors such as the rainy Spring and  gradual felling of the pine plantation to  let in more light  - but not too much. It's  a tricky balance - too much light encourages bracken and bramble.  It's such a joy when  the ground flora starts to return, e,g,  Lily of the Valley, wild daffodils, wild garlic, honeysuckle, wood anenome. In the shrub layer broom and alder buckthorn are all gradually increasing. A small new glade was created to the south of  the cabin last Spring , and cleared of dense bracken.  This Spring 50% of it was covered in bluebells. We're hoping for 100% coverage next year. Results like this makes work at Old Copse very rewarding.

 It's been so wet that the ducks have been leaving their 11 acre 'Pond' to stroll down the Ride for a change of scene. The cuckoo is safely returned from its gruelling journey from West Africa, and we're hoping to hear again the strange call of the Nightjar near the cabin soon.   

 

Willow Pollarding in the snow

Our  Willow Grove at Old Copse hadn't been pollarded (cut at around head height)  since we created it  (together with Milo and Martha) in January 2015,  so this winter we decided it was time to do it again. It was a particularly cold day, and shortly after we started, so did the snow. 

 

John, our forester, and Ana, from Mexico

    A clump of pollarded willow

Goat Willow grows very well in this part of the 'wet wood', the main wet wood nearby is full of very tall Alder trees which are closely associated with wet woodland (see Woodland Trust article). However some goat willows had started to grow tall and spindly and a couple had collapsed onto the ground for the deer to eat.  Old Copse was, and still is to an extent,  lacking in a range of tree age and height, having been completely untouched for many years. Regular pollarding, i.e. cutting  at shoulder height ,  gives trees strength and stability . It also  keeps the foliage out of reach of deer. 

We pollarded half of the Willow Grove this time, leaving the other 50%  until  next year, because the Emperor butterfly, which we are trying to attract, need goat willow leaves, their favourite food plant, to eat and lay their eggs on. Hatched larvae are well camouflaged with the midrib of willow leaves. The caterpillars overwinter in willow twig forks, then pupate in the Summer and are active at night.  

The beautiful Purple Emperor butterfly

As adults, purple emperor's main food sources are aphid honeydew and tree sap, though they also come to ground to feed on animal dung and carrion .During July, males congregate on particularly tall 'master trees' awaiting mates. Females either couple up with a male or swoop to the ground as a signal that they have already mated. 

Despite a decline in the 20th century, thought to have been caused by widespread   large-scale loss and fragmentation of ancient woodland  together with the removal and  'tidying-up' of areas of goat willow, which is usually considered  non-productive 'scrub', it seems the Purple Emperors may be expanding its range again,  even into suburban areas particularly in  South -central England which is still  their  prime territory . Knepp Castle has had enormous success in attracting Purple Emperors due to their rewilding programme, and that isn't far from Old Copse. They favour oak woodland, and though Old Copse has a fair number of oaks, with many regenerating naturally (and protected from deer)  there aren't that many tall ones in the vicinity of the Willow Grove, so we hope they might make use of the tall birches instead.  

Burning the Brash. No chance of setting the woodland floor on fire in the cold and wet

First time we've seen icicles at the cabin

A rare sight - snowing in the wood 

Wet woodland looks different regionally, like this carr with birch, alder and willow.

Credit: Alastair Hotchkiss / WTML

Old year new year

It feels like being stuck in a time warp. Here we are at the start of 2021, back in 'lockdown' once again. As in  Spring  last year we will continue work  at Old Copse (in between  the demands of actual  paid work), in  the forthcoming weeks, months, or however long it takes . We still have to check the beehives during winter, and  continue with the usual seasonal tasks. We also have to respond to emergencies  like the large Scots Pine that  toppled over at the southern end of the wood in recent stormy weather, knocking off the top of a Beech as it fell. It was directly adjacent to the road,  so it's  fortunate that nobody was driving past at the time . The ground there is too poor, dry and shaded  to plant a successful wild hedge at the boundary so the resultant pine and beech brash will make a useful temporary 'dead' hedge.   

Fallen pine at the road edge

Our main project this winter is to restore an area of  derelict hazel coppice at the south end of the wood, adjacent to the road. In the old days, up to the end of the 17th century, the majority of Old Copse would have been coppiced   to produce wood for making charcoal  near to the dammed pond, to fuel the iron furnace/forge. The archeological surveyor who came to inspect Old Copse some years back , showed us numerous places adjacent to the pond where coppice workers had made charcoal hundreds of years ago.  It's taken us a while to get around to tackling it, but it's always been an important item on our to do list, and great to think that at last we're re-connecting Old Copse to its Wealden iron industry past.  The area was a complete mess, choked with fallen trees, enormously over grown hazel and holly, and very dark. It has been fairly challenging but with the professional help of  John, our forester, we've managed to (almost) get it done.

Overstood coppice before work started

Coppicing  is a traditional woodland practice which provides a steady supply of useful material for turning into firelogs, charcoal, hurdles, bean and pea sticks and many other uses. This part of woodland management is also excellent for wild life and bio diversity. Coppice rotation, i.e. regular cutting every 7 years or so, means that the light in the area changes over time and a  rich diversity of woodland ground flora is produced. We began to see this happening last Spring, after we had felled some of the holly that shaded out the ground,  and  wild daffodils and primroses appeared . We hope this will continue with a wide range of other ground flora. We hope too  that eventually a few dormice will find it to their liking, and decide to set up home. At least, that is the aim.       

 Temporary deer fence supported by hazel poles

Forester's assistant Lara supervising progress and guarding equipment 

The hazel has now been coppiced, holly removed, 60 new hazels planted, to add to those we coppiced, and  a temporary deer fence installed. We've also started a bit of 'layering' to produce more plants. Outside the deer fence are a number of  hazels which earlier this year we pollarded i.e. cut further up the stem,  and  protected with brash,  to see if the deer left them alone, which, surprisingly  they did.  So we'll pollard the rest of the hazel outside the deer fence and hope that they too remain unmolested .  Many thanks once again to Sussex Lund who continue to support us by funding our hazel coppice initiative , and other projects at Old Copse.

 

New hazel planting

Previously pollarded hazel  protected by brash

Coppiced hazel stool

There is now a large stack of hazel 'poles'  for fire wood, or for charcoal burning. We've had some experience of this (as shown here) so if we have the time later this year..............

                  Cut hazel poles with brash behind  and  Hawkins pond in the background.

We'll see how the coppice area gets on next year, and next Autumn/Winter plant more hazel  both in the restored coppice  and alongside the road. We'll extend the coppice coupe or form a new one once we've felled enough holly to let more light in. In doing this we'll be very careful , as usual, not to encourage bramble and bracken.   So,  we'll be busy for quite a while in these few acres at the neglected southern end of Old Copse. 

We've managed to do a little more tree planting elsewhere in the wood this season , though not as much as usual because of the coppice project.We like to get the whips into the ground by early January at the latest to help them get off to a good start in the Spring. Suppliers tend not to lift them  until late November so we  have a short planting time frame.  It's also been satisfying to plant our own home grown trees -   oak, beech, hazel, wild cherry, sweet chestnut  etc.  Thanks to Sarah's Mum who kindly dug up and donated seedling  oaks from her garden , and which have now grown large enough to be planted out in the wood. Maybe  we should label them  all,  'Ann's Oak '  The tree nursery is looking pretty empty at the moment. Perhaps she'll have some more for us soon. 

For readers  interested in the Sussex  Wealden Iron Industry, and making charcoal the traditional (Earthburn) way, there's loads of interesting information online. Here's an evocative extract from  Wealden Iron: A Short History by Helen Pearce 2018  

'The remaining ponds cannot hint at the widespread heavy industry that dominated the scene a few centuries ago. The clamour of the hammers, the acrid smoke from the furnaces, the countless miners, fillers, finers, hammermen and carters, the roads blocked by oxen hauling iron and fuel, and riverboats laden with bar-iron would have presented a far busier and noisier landscape than today’s peaceful waters. Weed and silt have reduced some ponds in size while others have been altered for ornamental purposes. All have been reclaimed by flora and fauna, and many are now within Sites of Special Scientific Interest. Often assumed to be natural beauty spots in the High Weald (now an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) these delightful artificial lakes are useful reminders of the largely concealed post-industrial nature of so much of our countryside.'

Oh, almost forgot, for the 4th time we've won a Woodland  Award from Woodlands.co.uk.This year we were winners of the best tree planting project,  welcome recognition for what the two of us are doing at Old Copse. There are many committed woodland restorers  all over the country carrying  on this important  work  and  it's always nice to win an award and to receive a lovely box of useful woodland equipment, and  books as a New year surprise.