After the first frosts is the traditional time for picking your supply of sloes. The fruit is just about ripe now and late October/early November is a good time to pick if you want something to round off your Christmas dinner. Read more...

Good news for bats in the run up to Halloween.  The Bat Conservation Trust has won funding from the National Heritage Lottery Fund for a 4-year programme of conservation activities.  Read more...

Come the autumn, the leaves of many deciduous trees change colour – no longer green they turn yellow, brown, red or purple.  What has happened?  Read more...

Cepaea nemoralis (also known as the Banded Snail) is the most colourful and variable snail in the UK.  It occupies a range of habitats including woodland, grassland, hedgerows and garden shrubs.  The most striking feature of this snail is its array of shell colours and banding patterns.  They can be yellow, pink or brown and can have up to five horizontal bands across their shells.  Read more...

Ideal tools for the job: Posthole digger/Double shovel – these are two shovels connected together designed for digging holes. Available from farm suppliers and DIY stores Read more...

Anyone visiting woodland should be alert for ticks, which, though usually a harmless irritation, can carry Lyme disease. What is a tick? Ticks are Arthropods (animals with jointed legs). As they have four pairs of jointed legs, they belong to the Class Arachnida.This class includes spiders, scorpions, king crabs, and mites. Ticks are large mites. Mites are to be found almost everywhere.The vast majority are quite harmless; living on decomposing matter in the soil or leaf litter. A few, however, are blood-sucking parasites of mammals (deer are often hosts) and birds. These parasitic forms can spread disease as a result of their feeding activities. Read more...

Supported by The Woodland Trust , the  The Ancient Tree Hunt aims to create a database of Britain’s historically important trees. We know where our historic buildings are, but we have no proper record of our ancient trees, despite having the largest number of these in Northern Europe.  The Woodland Trust is asking for help from the public to record these venerable relics of Britain’s past. Read more...

The New Stone Age or Neolithic Period saw the development of settlements and farming. The transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer began and gradually spread across Britain. The construction of settlements and the adoption of farming (a practice that probably began some 10,000 years earlier in the Fertile Crescent) involved the clearing of woodland or forest. It was achieved with fire and the use of flint and polished stone axes. Pollen records suggest a decline between 4000 and 3000 BC in tree species such as ash and an increase in plants such as nettles and plantains.  As ash tends to grow on the edges of woods, its decline could well be associated with the clearance of parts of the wildwood for agriculture, though it may also have disappeared because of disease. Read more...