The Scent of Spring

Today he was like a spring day, the sun was shining the birds were singing and there was a real buzz in the air. Therefore, I wanted to go and have the wonder and the woods to see if I could discover the signs of spring.

As I had things to do in the morning, it was not until just before lunchtime that I was able to head out towards the woods. Even then it took me a full hour before I even got into the woods as I kept on bumping into people who I had not seen for some time. Such is my normal early starts. The first person I encountered and said hello to was a former close neighbour from when I lived at the other end of the village. He can meet talking for at least 20 minutes if not longer. Then as I was on the path heading into the woods, I saw and said hello to the conservation officer for the friends of Chopwell wood.

While I am no longer involved with that organisation, I have a fundamental disagreement with their lack of conservation policy; I am always interested to know what is a occurring for the benefit of the forest. The brought some good news as some much needed preparation work has now been done. However, it amused me that the results of this ecological survey and plan of work matched what I had worked out a need is to be done, with the advice of the forestry commission ecologist, back in 2007. Well better late than never.

As well as some gossip that I will not repeat here, I was glad and to hear that the company that is doing thinning work in the forest will not be invited back to forestry commission land. Right from the start, they have failed to carry out the work in an environmentally responsible manner. This also included the deliberate destruction of a red kite nest. As red kites are schedule one protected species, their actions what criminal. However while I did see the red kites building a nest, I was not on hand to see the destruction of the nest therefore no offence could be proved.

The damage that this company have done though goes much further than felling the tree that a pair of rare birds was trying to build a nest in. I fully accept that there from the thinning work required heavy machinery, but they operated that machinery in a way that has created very deep Ruts along the tracks and footpaths in the woods. This has damaged many of the wild species of flower and plants that grow in the woods including rare orchids. These may re-grow, only time will tell.

But the more serious environmental damage this company has caused, are the gallons of hydraulic oil that had been spilt everywhere they have operated. At a later date, I will be postings some of the evidence of this in the form of video here.

Talking of video, I suffered a disappointment today as the plastic on the base of the video camera where the tripod brush is located, Broke apart. I’m not sure if I will be able to fix it, but while I can still use camera I cannot mounted on the tripod at the moment. Therefore I will be returning to wobbly cam.

One of the main purposes for growing out today was to look at the sites where I would be most likely to see activity of spring. While I no sighting of them, I could hear the drumming of the woodpeckers. As well as that delightful sound, it was clear that some of the birds were starting to sing to attract a mate. I even got a brief sighting of wren that was collecting moss probably to line a nest with.

However my main purpose in going out was to visit the ponds where the frogs, toads and newts breed. There was no sign as yet of them arriving, and there was no spawn in the ponds. It is however my plan to start visiting the ponds on a regular basis so that I can film the activity.

One of the things that has amused me as a result of keeping this web log, is the way that Americans use our language, it was ours first, and over here a pond is normally a small body of water. In America, the definition of a pond body of water that is not feed by a river but from groundwater. Therefore, when talking to American friends and I mention a pond; their perception of what I mean is vastly different. What I would call a pond my hobbit footed friend would consider nothing more than the pool and a small one at that. That does mean though that spotting the wildlife will be much easier as I can survey the whole bank from a single location.

On the journey home, I was treated to a sighting of one of the red kites in the distance. As I was on a footpath that runs through the farmyard, every time I stopped the heads of two farm dogs chasing after me and trying to round me up as I was a sheep. Either that or they practice on Wood Mice.