Nuts to dormice



Stuck for something to do this autumn? Why not spend a couple of hours scrabbling around on the forest floor, searching for chewed nuts? Not just any forest floor - you need to be under the canopy of a mature hazel coppice - and the nut you seek is a hollow hazelnut with a perfectly round signature hole. 

 This hazelnut is the holy grail of dormouse conservation. You'd be amazed how much you can tell from the marks on its shell.

Squirrels insert a sharp incisor and crack the nut apart. Woodmice like to hoard their nuts in secret stashes for the lean times in winter. Like bank voles, they leave distinctive bite marks on the shell. But the golden hazelnut hidden under leaf litter bears an almost perfectly round hole on its side with a smooth inner rim and tooth marks at a 45 degree angle to the hole.

a dormouse nut



Why so much fuss about a discarded, chewed nut? It's the only way to find out if dormice are living in the wood, without going to a lot of trouble and expense. These sleepiest of British mice are nocturnal and they scuttle around in the tree canopy. You are extremely unlikely to see one in the wild or find its nest. If you do find the remains of its dinner, you feel justified in putting up wooden nest boxes which at least some of the population will probably use.

Only then will you come face to face with the cutest critter in the woods and be able to weigh it, sex it and find out how many offspring it has.

 A few days ago we found seven dormouse nuts among hundreds of squirrelled shells on the floor of a hazel copse in Surrey, suggesting there is a viable population in the wood. On hands and knees, we sifted through damp leaf litter, disturbing spiders and woodlice and revealing buried fungi. Foxes must have wondered who had scraped so many patches of earth clean when they emerged into the wood that night. 



torpid dormouse

 Very soon now, the hazel dormouse will be curling up in a ball of leaves for its long winter sleep. It doesn't depend on hazel nuts to survive, so long as it has plenty of food from April to October: nectar, bugs, fruits and nuts. But it does need a connected habitat of woods and hedges and hazel coppice seems to suit it very well.








autumn beeches

I always think beeches are the most beautiful trees in woods. Here in the South East they romp across the chalk downs, scattering dappled shade and a carpet of beech mast. Autumn is a good time to see them, as the dying season turns their canopies from green to bronze.

Our ancestors planted beeches along ancient boundary banks. Their roots entwine along the bank, so you wonder where one tree stops and another begins. It's as if they've formed an unbroken line to keep enemies out of the wood. The pair above, seem to have lost their neighbours but are holding fast to each other like "best friends forever".

What I love about beeches is the sinuousness of their trunks: how they twist and turn, almost dancing towards the light. Somehow they are more light on their feet, more feminine than the oak. That and the beech's fractal foliage, a vivid lime green in spring contrasting perfectly with the bluebells at their feet, then burnished bronze in autumn against a stark blue sky.

Oaks are the kings and queens of the landscape, in woods and pasture. But beeches are their liveliest courtiers, dancing through the seasons.

Pondlife

Towards the end of last winter I dug a pond on my allotment and planted a bird feeding station nearby. The birds arrived soon enough, gobbling up fat balls and mealworms while they raised their chicks, and sometimes visiting the pond to drink in the evening.

Ponds take a little longer to develop. I planted flag iris, marsh marigold and water mint around the margins and water crowfoot in the pond itself. Two pond skaters were the first sign of animal life but my excitement was short-lived: they disappeared two weeks later, probably eaten by birds. Red damselflies made a brief visit in May, followed by a flourishing of not-so-welcome mosquito larvae.

In mid-summer, the water suddenly cleared, revealing teeming colonies of invertebrates: pond-snails, worms and tiny beetles. Soon after, a sprinkling of duckweed coated the surface and blanket weed began to form beneath it. By late August, my early amphibian dreams were almost forgotten...

As I sat by the pond one day, removing blanket weed, a pair of eyes caught mine, protruding from the water under overhanging grass. A tiny frog! I experienced a childlike sense of wonder and gratitude that it should choose to live in my pond. Then I glimpsed a diving beetle, rowing back and forth between the bottom and the surface.

Two days later I returned to the pond with my partner and a camera. He snapped away, as I planted some hollyhocks and over the next hour we counted at least six frogs, some of them much larger than the first I spotted. One of them was a giant and quite unafraid of us as he lazed in the shallows.

The magic of creating a tiny ecosystem more than rewards all the digging and waiting.

sap rising

Gazing up into the petals of this snowdrop in a West Sussex wood, I could almost believe in the idea of spring. The woodland floor gleamed with splashes of white under a gloomy sky and hazel stems dripped with golden cadelabra of catkins. Along the banks of a stream the snowdrops nodded their heads in the wind, like tiny white bells ringing in the annual renewal of life. Wild daffodils were just bursting open, above an understorey of violet leaves and bluebell shoots - promising a sequence of woodland flowers.

On this clay-covered corner of the South East we're splashing through the puddles of an unusually wet winter. To say nothing of the mud. When day after day dawns dim and watery, it's hard to believe that seasons scented with blossom and buzzing with bees are just weeks away. But despite the deluge, temperatures have been mild and the sap is rising. Buds are ready to burst on willow, hawthorn, apple trees and beech and hazel stems are bearing their tiny but exotic female flowers.

Last week we basked in warm sunshine on a fleeting and premature spring day: the first brimstone butterflies of the year took to the wing; sleepy queen bumblebees crawled out of winter holes; and the teeniest tadpoles hatched in a pool. Earth, keep spinning and roll us into another spring!

Wildlife friendly allotments

On a bitterly cold grey morning at the end of January, the allotment was looking bleak and devoid of life, but birds were singing from the hedgerow and a great tit was checking out one of the bird boxes on the fence: time for my first step towards a wildlife friendly plot. I put up the RSPB bird feeder requested for Christmas and filled up containers of seed and mealworms.

It wasn't the first step really. I've grown fruit and veg on this plot for two years without using any pesticides or artificial fertilisers, and while I had to clear some of the scrub against the fence, I left a decent patch of nettles for ladybirds and caterpillars and a bit of bramble to shelter other creatures. The ladybird larvae gobble up all the aphids on my runner beans and sometimes get loaned out to neighbours when they're overrun with blackfly.

Most of my neighbours are excessively tidy growers, removing every weed and cutting back the grass around the edges of their plots. Sometimes I feel a tiny bit ashamed of the messy bits on mine - but the shame disappears when I encounter a giant frog sheltering under a grassy bank.

Blue slug pellets seem to be de rigeur in springtime, especially around infant pea plants on my neighbours' plots. All the slugs end up in my little organic sanctuary - at least until they tumble into my beer traps. I don't like to kill them, but at least I'm not poisoning the birds and amphibians which eat them. My efforts at persuading fellow growers to shun the poison seem to fall on deaf ears, but I did manage to rescue a clump of teasels from the autumn tidy-up next door, so there must be some kindred spirits around.

Roots

"You are old, Father Oak", the Sapling said,
"And your bark has become very gnarled."

I'm lucky to live close to one of the best collection of veteran trees in England, with thousands of carefully tended ancient oak pollards. Walking among them on a winter's day, I see contorted old men and women lifting their craggy arms towards the sky.

Few of the human characteristics of old age fit these trees. They are not decrepit, frail, senile, past their sell-by date...

In the winter of their days, after a lifetime of 500 years or more, these veterans have reached the peak of their majesty, strength and usefulness. They have become living pillars of the landscape, sheltering bats, birds and hundreds invertebrates in their trunks and limbs.

Many of the great oaks have hollow trunks, rotten branches - all have cavities, cracks and crevices in their bark. But they have weathered the storms of centuries and seen many generations of mankind born and die. In that time they have given timber (through pollarding), shade to people and livestock, homes and food for wild creatures.

Their steadfast presence in the landscape engenders a deep sense of place in me and, in middle age, a desire to put down strong roots. As something of a nomad and a keen traveller in the early part of my life, I've always been driven by a restless spirit. Looking at these old men and women of the woods, I feel a growing urge to settle in one place and let the flotsam of life settle in my branches. For the first time I am in awe of rootedness.

Life in the snow

Colours and sounds drain from the landscape as winter sets in with an unprecedented heavy snowfall at the end of November. Wading through drifts on the Common, I find myself in a silent monochrome world. Brittle autumn leaves scattered on the snow like golden freckles are the only flecks of colour. Birds flit as dark flecks between the trees: restless and nervous.

Near the frozen ponds I spotted a roe deer resting on the snow at the edge of the woods. A heron flew over the ice without settling at any of its favourite fishing spots.

Yesterday, as the snow and ice melted and water vapour wrapped the trees in a gentle mist, our walking group set out on a circuit of the Surrey Hills to celebrate the midwinter festival. We trudged past a field of rabbits, so intent on grazing the first patches of grass emerging in the thaw, they didn't seem to notice our presence.

Starkness gives winter a quiet beauty. A time of reflection perhaps, before life re-emerges from the cold dark earth in spring. I'm reflecting on the changes at the pond below - photographed yesterday and in mid-May.