Walking the September Woods

Being laid up with Covid - or rather, laid low by it, plus the sudden death of my lovely cousin, Heather - I've decided to cheer myself up by looking back over the September walks I went on with Cwtch before illness struck. 

We visited our usual haunts, including the various woods on Purdown:

Pale Plantation is looking very autumnal already due to the early leaf drop from the horse chestnuts, and the trees in the park are colouring up too, especially the hawthorns ...

water mint, blackberries and haws, cyclamen

... though the really big change from summer is the flood of light into the summer-dark woods, making deep-thicket skulkers like Cwtch and me feel quite exposed. 

Long Wood

The last hole in the ground Cwtch will stick her snoot into for some time

We did try a different route up onto the ridge one day, via the lower part of Sir John Lane, where there was another small, feral wood to explore and the open spaces of South Purdown. 

Below Purdown, the River Frome is flowing more volubly than it was a month or so ago, although it's still quite low.

Wickham Glen

Snuff Mills

A tributary of Stoke Brook, which is a tributary of Bradley Brook, which is a tributary of the River Frome, at Webbs Wood, Three Brooks Nature Reserve

Meanwhile, the grass that was so sere is now green again, having completely forgotten the hot, dry summer.

Kings Weston Down at Blaise

assorted fungi

It's a funny thing, but you can sit for hours a week in an office, say, and hear nothing of any interest at all - just what offers the local carvery had on last weekend and how a certain dress from ASOS is so cheap, you could wear it once and throw it away and it wouldn't matter (yes, really!) - and yet bump into a volunteer stacking cherry laurel logs by the side of a path, have a chat for five minutes, and learn that a) cherry laurel wood contains cyanide, which is why you shouldn't burn it; b) there are nightjars in the woods - here in North Bristol! - which he knows because he found a feather and would you like to see a photo of it?!; and c) there's another wood just a mile or so away, which is fabulous at bluebell time and which you didn't even know existed. 

So, even though it's another six months till the bluebells start coming out, we decided to take a look at the wood, which is called Thirty Acre Wood and part of the Kings Weston estate.

As you enter the open space above it, there's a view down to nearby Avonmouth and the River Severn, which includes the newer bridge.

I found the wood quite hard to get around - it's spread over a series of rises and dips - but despite the usual type of rubbish that blights feral urban woods, it had its moments and I'll definitely aim to get back there next spring to see the promised swathes of blue.

Why would you screw some really old screws into a fallen tree, at a level too high to be a boot scraper (even if it wasn't in the middle of a wood)?

Part of a very extensive badger sett

A piece of carpet, released back into the wild and living its best life

We also visited a couple of places we hadn't been to for a fair while, namely, Narroways, where there are ponies within a couple of miles of the city centre ... 

St Werburgh's

Horfield Brook

... and Splatts Abbey Wood, tucked behind the MOD complex.

light emerald moth

Trees are still dropping large parts for themselves following a second excessively hot and dry summer. I think the woods could be pretty dangerous to walk in this winter, especially if there's an increase in the frequency of storms, as feared.

One of the paths at Snuff Mills is still reminding me each time I go there of where I am.

As for the season of falling feathers, it's just about done, though there have been some great finds this September:

tawny owl, jay, magpie, ring-necked parakeet, thrush, green woodpecker, sparrowhawk, buzzard, wren

This includes my biggest find this year, a buzzard primary ...

... and, on the same day, the joint smallest, my second wren primary of the season ...

I think it's largely by chance that I spot wren feathers; they are so tiny and I struggle to make out the pattern on the anterior vane without reading glasses. (I still live in hope of finding a tail feather one day, though.) 

My September tally also includes these two green woodpecker tail feathers to add to the two I'd already found in August, and absolute beauties they are too.

Finally, two more jay covert feathers to make a (surely final) total of sixteen - if you don't count the thirty-four I found at a predation site on Purdown, which I don't because you can't really celebrate finding all those feathers at once, and I'd much rather the bird still had them, even if it's the circle of life and all that. 

Bonfire Days

The last time I posted about the edgelands where we walk most days it looked as if this year's late, slow-burning autumn was about to catch alight.

Then I got Covid and didn't go anywhere for ten days - literally, in fact, as my partner omitted to catch it at the same time and, since he's self-employed, was keen not to miss work. So I sat in the bedroom for most of that time, with only a walk-deprived collie for company. 

While we were in seclusion, there was some wild weather, including storm Ciaran, so when we finally rejoined the world, it was a wetter one. 

And since the rain has continued, Cwtch and I have spent some time exploring The Small Dark Wood of the Mind, which affords some shelter.

The Small Dark Wood of the Mind is a feral, largely untended wood that wasn’t where it is now in the 19th century. Along with the Field of the Hollowing Oak and Rooky Wood to its east, it’s part of the edgelands sandwiched between the golf course, a housing estate, Charlton Road and the Airbus campus. The trees in the above photo grow on top of a bank or dyke alongside the footpath, which clearly isn’t a natural feature of the landscape and also doesn’t feature on the Victorian map. 

There’s another similar bank, also marking the boundary of the campus, where the rookery grows. You can see it in the recent video I took of a muntjac running up and down the wood.

I’ve been trying to work out why and when these earthworks were undertaken. I wonder if, because the factories have been used to build aeroplanes (or parts) and weapons for decades, they were put up during the war to make it harder to infiltrate the hangars and workshops. (Presumably the footpath would have been blocked for the duration.) I like this theory but haven’t been able to verify it online. Maybe I’m using the wrong search terms. And the people I might have asked who worked there - my father, my godfather, poet John Terry - are all dead, although someone on Facebook did suggest they might be bunds, designed as blast protection walls, also during the war.  

Haws barring the way to the Grove of the Silver Chair (and Ruby Crown)

Rubbish adopting an effective camouflage

Cwtch in the clearing where so many trees were felled about a year ago

Even though there’s a fence with razor wire and keep out notices running through the part of wood on the factory side of the footpath, paths running through it are still routinely blocked with branches at the junction with the footpath, presumably to deter German spies still. Doesn’t stop Cwtch and me having a nosey about every now and then, though I’m mostly interested in fungi and feathers, and she squirrels.

Of fungi, there are a few, most of them brown. I'm not skilled at identifying them, but might hazard, clockwise from top left, inkcaps x 2, milkcap maybe, candlesnuff fungus, waxcaps x 4, potato earthballs.

As for feathers, the falling season is over, apart from woodpigeon feathers. There are always woodpigeon feathers, and no sooner have disparaged them, than the God of Fallen Feathers says hey, these are beautiful too. 

As for flora and fauna, I again glimpsed the hindquarters of a muntjac scuttling into Rooky Wood (they definitely seem to have taken up residence there), while flowers have been restricted to the occasional hogweed (this one with a soldier fly) and common vetch valiantly having another go at blooming.  

Far more spectacular are the colours of autumn, which did indeed advance while my back was turned.

field maples

The ash trees in the Small Dark Wood of the Mind are starting to carpet the path with yellow leaves ... 

... while the oaks are stunning.

Looking towards the new Severn bridge

Oak and ivy on Golf Course Lane

Of course, my most fervent admiration is for my beacon tree, the hollowing oak.

One other big change during my absence ... the golf club has removed a wooden fence and an entire hedgerow at the top of the lane. It now looks like Colditz, instead of a lane with the occasional vestige of its rural past. 

As we were leaving, we watched a jay pick up an acorn, perch on the fence and drop it a little further away from the tree. Nature will prevail, in the end.