Dead Wood is so ALIVE

Happy New Year to all Filnore Woods Blog readers!  

As the old year dies, the new year begins.  New life springs from death, not only with years but also in nature.

Dead wood is full of life whether it's fungi, beetles, fly larvae or springtails.  

Fungi recycling dead wood

lesser stag beetle

Tipula maxima - a crane fly with beautiful wing patterns

a springtail - tiny creatures in the soil and leaf litter

or the predators that feed on them

          

 Nuctenea umbratica hides under dead tree bark                                        Woodpeckers find insects in dead wood

Centipedes predate other invertebrates

If you would like to follow up some fascinating stuff about dead wood, have a look at the latest edition of the Woodland Trust periodical by clicking on   Woodwise

OR

watch the Sunday before last edition of BBC1's Country File from Tyntesfield on i-player.
The bit about dead wood is near the end.

Jay walking - and squawking

Currently I hear jays calling every time I go up to Filnore Woods.  They are pretty secretive birds (except fot the yelling) so you rarely get as good a view as this.  The pinky grey plumage and the black moustache are surpassed by those beautiful blue feathers on the side of the wing.  In times past one of those feathers or even a whole jay's wing was used to decorate lady's hats.  

The most I ever see is a silhouette scudding from tree to tree squawking angrily.

I don't know why they sound so cross.  There are plenty of acorns to go round.  This is their favourite food and because they cache stores of acorns in the ground for winter snacks, jays are responsible for planting scores of oak trees.

Thanks, Jays.

Try this video to hear that raucous call.

You can hear and see two jays scolding a magpie which chatters a few times in the background.

Hazel - a promise for the New Year

Reliably the hazel catkins, in their unexpanded form, are ready for blooming in January, when they will be at least twice the length and golden with pollen.

Unfortunately my phone camera always focuses on the background when I try to take tiny things.

Guerrilla tree dressing

One of our Scots pines has acquired some tinsel and a bauble, 

placed there by some jolly person.

   Feel free to add some more if you are passing.

Maybe it was in imitation of Chris Packham's  'stand for the trees'  video.

Our stream

 Our stream, which rises on Mount Pleasant Farm is usually dry through the summer but at this time of year it flows so ferociously that it can surge over the track, eroding the repairs to the bank.

 In the left photo the water is nearly up to the top of the culvert entrance.  After the blockages were removed it was a bit better but there is still nearly too much water for the culvert to cope with.  You can see the puddle on top where the water was previously pouring over.

Then it travels on past the Paddock and the Sort-it Centre, 

past the Industrial Estate and down Vilner Lane by the Community Compost Site (currently closed due to lack of funds.)

Then it merrily pours under the gate into Vilner Lane Wood, which safely absorbs the flood water.

Could you let me know whether the videos worked?

Prowling for Owls

What are all these people doing in the woods at night?

This was one of the four nights we hosted cub packs from Bradley Stoke Cubs on an owl prowl, led by Ian Mcguire of 'Wild Owl'.

Ian imitated the owl calls and played recordings of them so that the owls responded, looking to see who was trespassing on their territory.  When they flew over us Ian shone his very powerful flashlight and we could see the bird flying to a new perch in a nearby tree.

He also told us a lot about British owls at various stops round the woods.  It was quite exciting walking round quietly in the darkened woods.   Ian says that keeping some of our grassland long encourages voles and that's what the owls like to eat.

And here is a five minute video about tawny owls by Ian McGuire, our guide on the night(s).  If you don't want to listen to it all, the calls we heard are featured at the beginning.

All der year round

An excellent source of food for finches especially siskins, are the conelets of all three alder species found in the UK.  Common alder and grey alder produce large bunches of small conelets full of tiny seeds. 

(In the picture below the leaves are ivy and the bark is grey poplar)

Whereas the Italian alder has larger conelets but not so many in a bunch.

They are called conelets because they look like fir cones but alders are clearly not coniferous (bearing cones).  Here are some more Italian Alder conelets with the right leaves and bark, photographed in Vilner Lane Wood.

It's an old joke - or a way of remembering - that alder trees keep their conelets on into the winter until the new green conelets develop the following year so they can be recognised by having conelets on 'all der year round' (boom boom)

Wildlife or vermin

This rather sweet and furry little chap is not actually having a rest.  He was kindly brought in by my cat Polo, who is just as keen on wildlife as me but is unfortunately a psychotic, serial killer.

Rats are nearly always associated with humans, either in compost heaps, sewers, warehouses or on farms but they are wild creatures of some considerable intelligence and not entirely unattractive.  

They do however suffer from a long association with the spread of human diseases from bubonic plague to weil's disease.  They are very successful, which like sycamores, dandelions, ground elder, bindweed, bluebottles and mosquitoes makes them unpopular.

There is also the mythology such as 'You are never more than six feet from a rat' or 'There are more rats than humans' which persist without any supporting evidence.  This is sensibly dealt with in this    BBC article  .

Well my solution to most instances of unpopular or harmful animals is that if they are in my house then I fight back but if they are out there in the wild I let them be.

Invasive plants and alien creatures are a bit more complicated - worth another post.

Path round Vilner Lane Wood

In November, in the wet, six of us marked out a path in Vilner Lane Wood.  This is the little wood under threat from development.  While campaigning to save it we are giving people the opportunity to follow this circular route if they call in at the community compost site on a Saturday morning when the volunteers will be on hand to let them in.

Visitors will be able to choose the path to the left or the path to the right.

You can follow the path in either direction as it winds amongst the trees and back to the start.

 And while you're there you can buy a bag of firewood or compost, on sale Saturday mornings or Wednesday afternoons, although the site is currently closed to those who wish to leave green waste.  This is largely because there is no funding left for processing the waste.

Campfire or amphitheatre

If you turn up this pathway opposite one of our huge beech trees  ..  ..  ..

..  ..  ..  you come to the ruins of a former cowshed.  This was cleared of brambles and other undergrowth by our volunteers in late October.   It looks full of potential but we never quite get there before the brambles re-grow and smother it again.  It could be a place for a campfire site or a barbecue.

And looking from above I often feel it could become an open air amphitheatre  ..  ..  ..

..  ..  ..  rather like the Minack Theare in Cornwall that I visited this year.

Well, that might take a while!  

Fallen oak, dead but alive

When Filnore Woods was first re-created in 1987, there were two large oak trees side by side.  But in 1993, one of them fell over.  

The roots had rotted.  This apparently dead hulk, with the branches forming antlers like a stag's, still supports a myriad of small life forms:  beetle larvae, mosses, lichens, fungi.

 In the cracks and splits of the old wood, you can find tiny but graceful toadstools

While the old tree's twin continues in robust good health alongside. 

Turkey Tail

The American name Turkey Tail is jollier than the rather prim British name 'The many-zoned plypore'.  But both names describe the concentrically zoned colour pattern on this fungus - like a turkey's tail (see below)  

It grows on dead wood and sometimes living trees 

especially on a broken branch or pruning wound

The wavy edge of the clustering brackets has a white edge, which fades as the brackets age.

btw the white edged fungus in my previous email about sulphur tuft fungus was apparently a very young crop of turkey tail - info thanks to Simon Harding

Hi guys!  Are you ready for Christmas?

Image New Hampshire PBS