Apologies once more for the delay between blog posts, the Wood of Cree is a place where a warden can get lost - in his/her work. Autumn is here; with the shortening of daylight hours, changes in colour through the landscape and even more windy/wet weather. I love it. It's my favourite season where plants produce their seed and fruit ready for hungry animals to feed on, once they've done that they shut down for the winter.
Just now there red squirrels scurrying around storing hazelnuts and acorns in abundance for the winter ahead. The seeds they don't recover will undoubetly become a sapling, then a tree and so the woodland goes on. Some squirrels just now I 've seen have taken on a 'grey' sheen as thier winter coats come through - they are definitely red not grey squirrel - and one can get quite close to them; some of them being young from earlier this year.
As well as squirrels cacheing their food so too are jays. The woodland is a noisey place when they squabble over one acorn in a wood full of over 100,000 oak trees. Occasoinaly you can spot a jay quickly burying an acorn on the woodland floor before going back to the canopy for more. Sometimes another jay will watch one burying an acorn wait until it's left and then rob the buried acorn for itself burying it again elsewhere. Some jays get caught in the act doing this which in turn creates even more noise before one of them takes the acorn and flies off. Jays have also learnt to wait until there are no other birds (jays) around to bury acorns so the store is safe; demonstrating learned behaviour from being robbed or being a theif.
Having a walk around our one mile Woodland Trail you will see plenty of fungi from birch polypore, fleecy milkcap, chanterelle, amethyst deceiver and beef steak fungus to name a few. The waterfalls are also looking and sounding impressive at this time of year, well worth taking picture especially with the changing leaf colours.
Cheers for now
Will