Sunshine Walk

It is ages since I set off for a walk - I've thought about it, but then it hasn't happened - too cold, too much snow, too much to do, after I've ... and so on!  A few rays of sunshine did the trick.

What a lovely time - the beginning was marked out for me by many previous feet - I love the twisty tree roots exposed by the wear and step over them carefully.

There's further evidence of others having come this way too.  Though it was sunny, there was a biting wind and it flurried and swept at the captured wool, teasing the tufts.

I can tell which flock grazed here and to which farmer they belong by the red wool caught.

And evidence of another squeezing under the barbed wire fence.

Out into the open grassland, there are many small feet walking, underground.

I move to the field edge, to the shelter of the hedgerow.  My eyes and nose are streaming from the stinging, icy wind and my cheeks and ears burn.

A skin like this is good protection.  It offers me respite.

How beautiful wood is, alive or decaying.  Twists and knots, whirls and marks of growth, wounds and wonders of shape.

I've written another post about the woodiness on my walk.

The hedge petered out and I was left with an old fence.

It got very boggy and I was brought to my senses by the upflight, from only a foot away, of a curlew - which must have been feeding in the soft, wet ground - proddling with its beak in the easy going soil.  Then moments later another, its mate?  How I wished I could be less threatening in the landscape and to have spotted them before I caused alarm.  Along the way I scattered a number of rabbits too, and pheasants.

The sight of an old hen-house signals I'm close to the overgrown path back home.

Quite the most wonderful way to spend an afternoon.

I glance back at the lovely time I've had and promise it I'll be back very soon.

Woodpecker and Wood

The soundtrack to my recent walk was rich in curlew calls, occasional lapwing, distant sheep and the drumming woodpecker (oh, and the wind!).

The wind I heard in the trees too, creaking, twisting and bending of wood fibre and the whip and clash of branches together.  Some of the wood was silent, perhaps torn down by previous winds and I spent some time looking over the beautifully textured knobbles and fissures in the fallen limbs.

Where the bark had fallen away, the wood was making more skin like surfaces.

I'm not sure what caused these pimples.

But burrowing insects made these little drill holes.

I came across a tree, dead, but still standing, which was the home of the woodpecker and full of the results of all that drumming.

This tree was riddled with the workings and markings of the woodpeckers, with many holes, new and old.

And beautiful fungi.

I heard woodpecker, drumming and calling, but didn't see any until, after having walked some distance from the dead tree, I heard the distinctive, loud, almost laughing, ringing woodpecker sound, and turned to see the undulating flight and a Green Woodpecker returning to the tree.

No wonder they've made home here, they feed on the grubs of wood-boring beetles and moths which they remove from the bark of trees with their long sticky tongues. They also love to eat ants which they will take from the ground as well as from the trees.  This would appear to be perfect habitat.  This one is possibly marking territory or making a new nest hole - egg laying time is in April or May, when between 5 and 7 are laid and only take fourteen days to incubate.  It is a long way off, but this is a female - the males have a red stripe, rather than black, under their eye.  Happy nesting Mrs Woodpecker.