A new section has been added to the domain : Knelle Wood South.  John has also kindly provided some video clips so there is now proof of wild boar living in the wood.

We are about to go down to Great Knelle so there may be more to report later.

After spending some time working on Main Ride near Five Bar Gate [it is getting very muddy there with the amount of traffic] we went for a walk through the woods.

We soon found signs that the deer had been through the eastern part of the wood not that long before :

[I must remember to take a tape measure when visiting in future!]

It has certainly been a strange winter so far.  The day was very mild and even the honeysuckle is in leaf as if spring were already upon us :

At noon we retired to the White Hart : Happy New Year to one and all!

We visited the woods on Boxing Day : fine winter weather for a stroll in the woods so we started to wander further afield, visiting Open Pond for the first time.  It was a dark and almost foreboding stretch of water in the winter light :

I didn’t like the look of those R ponticum plants growing at the far end  – or, rather, I did like the look of them but they really should be pulled out for the sake of the woods.

We also found some deer droppings over in that direction : now there is a great debate as to what species left the clues.  They were only about 7 mm in diameter and perhaps 12 mm long with the characteristic point at one end, rounded at the other.  Can anybody help solve the question for us?

As Win reports in her first blog, the ponds are filling and Eastern Stream is flowing again : winter is really here at last [although you wouldn’t think so from the temperature].

Recent rains have at last partially filled the ponds. Various fungi, whose identity we have yet to establish, scattered about. Surprising number of youthful foxgloves springing up. Still a dearth of birds- nervous of human intrusion?

Well, I  am back from the trip to the Far East and it is past Win’s birthday so the domain can become more generally known now that there is no secret to keep [the Knelle.net domain was partly a present for that].

We went down to the woods on Sunday : the wind and rain had gone by 11:00 to be replaced by clear skies and a low wintry sun.

We started to clear what we think of as our ‘camp ground’, that part of Titania’s Bower which will be our base when visiting for work or for relaxation.  It is close to the banks of the stream not far from the badgers’ sett, partially sheltered by an old oak and ringed about by old coppice stools.  There are quite a lot of volunteers to be removed, most of them very spindly hornbeams ‘fit only for beanpoles’ as Pat from next door described them.

While talking to Pat and Mary a strange sounding crow flew over which Pat was able to identify not as a crow but as a raven [Corvus corax].  Apparently they are spreading from the west – or we are closer to the Tower of London than we – or they – think.

Whilst grubbing out some of the volunteers we unearthed some bulbs which we think are bluebells [our native Hyacinthoides non-scripta, at least we hope so and would be horrified to find they were Spanish ones or crosses between the two].  They are already showing signs of growth with shoots perhaps 10 mm long.