Glorious Spring

May weather has been a mixed bag, starting as it did  unseasonally dry and cold with a few night frosts  and ending with a mini -heatwave which broke last night with a spectacular thunder and lightning storm. I slept through it, so was a bit surprised to see that the garden water butts were filled right up. Today is muggy and  warm, with dense fog on the hills, and  drizzle. 

During the dry weather, growth in Old Copse seemed to have stalled, but with the downpours we've had recently, combined with the warmth , everything has burst into leaf. We can relax after worrying that our new trees wouldn't survive the summer. They have put on a huge spurt in growth , with just a few failures to thrive.

The established  beech trees are particularly lovely, their  almost  luminous, lime green leaves stand out from everything else and make us realise just how many there are in the wood. Not all the oaks are in leaf, which  indicates  that they have varied DNA

This is a photographic post ,  a  Springtime record of what Old Copse looks like in May 2017,  to enable us to compare with past and future years. To a casual viewer of this blog it could well appear that nothing much changes and it all looks the same from year to year , apart from seasonal differences. However, as frequent workers in the wood, we have every opportunity to observe changes, and to note what is doing well, and vice versa.

We've started opening up clearings and made a track through the dense birch wood

Each year there are more bluebells, and they are gradually spreading down among the thinned pine.

Grasses, foxgloves and ferns  are  colonising cleared ground 

The fallow deer have become very bold since the close of the season.

It's that time of the year again , Mark and his deer stalkers came in to do some heavy lifting.

And here they are taking a welcome break. Many thanks chaps for ........ 

Doing some tough holly clearance

.............and  processing, transporting, and stacking a large amount of birch firewood for next winter.

Recent sightings. Sarah was lucky : she disturbed a woodcock (red listed)  at the North end of the wood. It was taking cover under a beech tree in among the birch,  and later a tawny owl flew low over her head heading back to its roost in a large beech tree in the north of the wood.

Spring on the pond

A clear Spring day. A film of green as the new leaves get going. Bluebells pushing up everywhere. On the pond the mallards are pairing up, squabbling to find partners and then retreating upstream for a little privacy. The moorhens are already building nests and quacking at anyone who comes near.

On the cusp

 

The only Hornbeam in the wood and on its left, the only Aspen 

The wood is on the point of bursting into leaf and flower. A lovely time of the year,

We had a chat with a fisherman on the Pond who said he saw a huge group of  deer last week on the opposite side of the water. He heard the noise of their hooves before he spotted them. He managed to count 46 including 5 or 6 white ones, which are a sign of overpopulation and inbreeding. The deer stalking season is now over and  soon this year's young will be born, enlarging numbers even further. The deer stalker only managed to bag four this season, so we're not even keeping up with their reproduction rates. Clearly we'll need to do something more, though not sure what. Introduce a couple of  lynx or a wolf perhaps......................

The willows pollarded this year are just starting to shoot.

The willows pollarded last year are in leaf. The ground is sodden with recent rain, attracting many insects and a variety of birdlife. Just waiting for the Purple Emperor butterfly to put in an appearance.