Wednesday 18 January 2017

Winter sunrise at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve

With the coppicing completed for the winter, there's time for other things, like enjoying a frosty sunrise at Rye Harbour while waiting for my car to get it's MOT done. Here's a few photos, all taken using my phone rather than a proper camera (with some post-processing of course).

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Mike

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Monday 9 January 2017

Coppicing completed and Christmas lunch in the woods

Well, the winter's work in the woods is now done! Just for fun, I put my GoPro camera up one of the last few trees to be felled:



The final few days of coppicing in 2016 including some pretty chilly ones:
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and on the day we actually finished it was too foggy to get a photo of the whole area:
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Here's now it looked a couple of days into the work, earlier in the autumn:
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Here's the same view now, followed by some views from other angles:
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This one's looking back from the far end. You can see we left a few trees standing - these included Oak, Hornbeam, Alder Buckthorn and a wild Apple. The idea is to give them a bit of an advantage over the regrowing Sweet Chestnut and Birch to increase the diversity in the woods.
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Meanwhile, over in Sweep Wood, the Sycamore buds are beginning to swell a little. I guess they noticed that the Winter solstice has passed....
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The Honeysuckle is also growing leaves. Not Spring yet, but the plants are planning ahead...
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Even though the work's done, when I've been to the woods since I've always taken a snack for the Robin which got used to my company:
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The other birds are busily enjoying the bird feeder too:
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I also got a puzzle solved thanks to friend who's a better bird-spotter than I am. These birds had been flying over the wood regularly, but I had no idea what they were:
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Well - now I know they are Shelducks, mostly juvenile females apparently. There's a lake not far away, which is presumably where they are coming from.

We did have a brief break in the work for Christmas, and joined a couple of friends in a wood adjoining ours for lunch on Christmas Day (Red Thai Curry - we're not traditional...):
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Finally, with the coppicing done, I also went to help my friend Rich with some saw milling over in Tunbridge Wells:


Looking forward to Spring in the woods now, though hoping for some snow first!

Mike

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