The drive into Rais from High Beeches was rather slow as a gaggle of baby pheasant (I think) were wandering down the path in front of me.
I followed them, slowly, the whole way down and they promptly took fight just before the parking site! typical.
The old ivy on the oak at the top of the wood has fallen now, barring a few bits quite high up in the branches and the warm weather with a bit of rain clearly agrees with the fungi as there are mushrooms of different varieties all around just now.
Autumn is quite obvious on some trees in Burgess Hill, but at Rais, although there are plenty of leaves on the ground the predominant colour is still very much green. Saturday was very wet and I could hear the trickle of the stream for the first time in quite a few weeks
I noticed that the buzzards sounded very close, and appeared to be actually down in the trees just to the south of Rais when I arrived, and several times during the day I saw them very low above the wayleave so I wonder if they are nesting nearby. You certainly realise that they are big birds when they come down a bit lower!
After the huge pile of brash generated over the last couple of weeks it was time for a fire. The prospect of dragging everything over the gully and into the main fire site was not at all attractive so, after some discussion, Ant and I had decided to reuse a previous site at the top of the gully behind the yardarm. As soon as I dropped my bag (and fed the birds of course) I set about clearing the last of the rohdie that was growing through the chestnut tree as well as starting to take down the chestnut, there turned out to be quite a bit more of it that I had thought. Time was passing quickly however, and there was a huge pile of stuff to burn, so as soon as the rohides were gone I started clearing the site for the fire, and moving the piles of brash that had just been thrown in the gully last time it was cleared, so we could get easy access to it.
Ant had arrived not long after me and set about using some of the charcoal from the wayleave to line the paths while I prepared the fire.
Ant started the fire (just to make sure we actually got one given my track record!) and showed no hint of sentimentality at all as he chopped up some boards from the van as kindling!
but 10 minutes later we had a roaring fire as usual.
Most of the rest of the day was dragging and burning, although I did manage to break yet another set of loppers. In the process of clearing all the old brash I uncovered the huge rohdie stump that was one of the first I ever tackled and that had taken me a good 3 hours to dig out. Finding it again I could see why it was such hard work! but also that I would probably approach it quite differently if I had to do it again tomorrow.
By the end of the day all of the piles in the wayleave were gone, as well as a good pile of stuff Ant had dragged over, and the gully has really opened up.
While the fire died down Ant and I had a wander around over the other side of the stream and found this rotten stump still just about standing upright amongst a fair amount of other deadfall.
