Winter is a surprisingly busy time in the woodland. It’s the main time to do hedging work. That way we can be sure we’re not disturbing nesting birds. When the wood was planted about 30 years ago a lot of blackthorn was put in along the main path. I have mixed feelings about blackthorn. I love the white blossom in early spring and the sloes in autumn. But it’s getting too close to the path and so needs to be cut back.
We’ve done some ‘light trimming’ in the past, but thirty years of (almost) uninterrupted growth means that its now very dense. That’s probably our main ‘winter work’ for the next few seasons. It’s very easy to get infection or ‘blackthorn arthritis’ from the long, sharp thorns so it needs heavy gloves and careful, slow cutting to avoid them. In December we tackled one of the bridle paths that had been really overgrown. Still needs a bit of work but it’s much easier to walk along now. In January the Lothian Conservation Volunteers helped us out for a day and made a huge difference, clearing some of the most dense areas.
Storm Eowyn in January took down a few trees and completely blocked one of the paths. We got away quite lightly compared to many other places. We had funding last year from Paths for All for chainsaw training for just this sort of thing. There are still trees in the woodland that are half down that will need to come down fully, but we’re concentrating on the trees alongside the path first.
It’s not all about cutting things back or chopping down trees. We were given six apple trees by West Lothian Climate Action to add to our small collection of fruit trees. It’s not quite an orchard as we’ve planted them in two different sites, and it’s a total of only 12 trees. The project included a really useful day learning how to prune fruit trees. I’d always found written descriptions a bit confusing so it was really helpful to be shown in person how to do it properly.
The fruit trees add to what is already quite a diverse mix of trees in the wood. We’ve added labels to some of them to help people ID them.
As the season moves into late winter there are a lot more birds about. We did the RSPB bird count at the end of January. It was snowing but it was the day after storm Eowyn so that probably encouraged more birds to be out. We also put out feeders which attracted plenty of bluetits, robins and chaffinches.
Now, in (almost) mid-February there are early signs of spring. The snowdrops we planted a couple of years ago are getting really established and the catkins are almost out on the willow trees.
