August

In August it rained. I am afraid that's about it for August, looks like commitments will keep me away from the wood next weekend, oh well, roll on September.
Despite the rain August was pretty good. Max and I got to spend some real quality time together. I am really pleased with the success of my bird hide and have put out two more feeders. We have discovered grass growing in the clearing and are pretty excited, you'll see why later, maybe next year. Buoyed on by the success of my bird hide (wait and see, I know about these things, it's gonna be great) I have a new project... a boar hide. I am becoming more and more convinced of the presence of these animals, from anecdotal evidence as I meet my neighbours and the very strange behaviour that I have seen from Max. Something in the wood is scaring him and Max doesn't do scared. Couple of times he has started growling and refused to move forward, even laying down to resist being pulled. He has even let me leave him and go on alone. On Sunday night he woke us about three am, growling and barking. I got up and went out to investigate and he stayed in the tent, very strange. He appeared to be hiding behind Sue. "You go, I'll protect the women". Yeah OK mate.

More on this project later, It will take a bit of time. Problems to resolve...


Little acorns.

The next is a picture of our clearing, taken by my neighbour Mike, last march. It is a pretty desolate sight. You could go through our clearing on a horse with no name.

Photo courtesy of Mike Pepler

All that is going to change. Eat your hearts out Cheech and Chong, we've got grass. Why is that important? Sue knows, she has started gardening it.



Remember last month, when I set out to do some seduction, well call me Cassanova.


Great spotted woodpecker-Dendrocopus major Red underpants?



You can see that I am having some problems getting good sharp pictures of my pecker. I think this is mostly because the hide is too far from the feeder (30 foot away) and the light in the wood is very poor. I am going to move the hide closer and pick all the leaves off the trees to allow more light in and just see if that helps.


This is "Shooters path" so called because it winds from the shooting chair to the campsite, passing some good old oaks and various interesting dead wood and it will be the access path to the boar hide. It is not finished yet.


And this is the third of my feeders, it's about halfway along "Shooters". The other feeder is on the edge of our campsite. It only went up on Saturday and by Sunday was being used by at least one nuthatch.

Let sleeping dogs lie
"Come a little closer. We only want to be friends. We really are asleep"
Sorry




And finally... If you are gonna camp in the rain, well what do you expect?

This beautiful little creature is a leopard slug-Limax maximus How much do you wanna know?


I like it.



There is one more thing I need to tell you about Limax maximus Don't eat them!