Sunday 2nd September 2018

After a couple of not so nice weeks the warm weather was back for this weekend and it was sunny and dry.

After feeding the birds I started the day in gully behind the yardarm to clear the wood pile that had a huge rohdie growing up through it. I anticipated a big and messy job but actually the wood was in much better condition than I expected, compared to some of the other piles that must date from the same time, and almost all of it was suitable to go on the log pile. Access is not easy to I picked up a few scratches from the rose bush but soon had it all transported down to the wood store and then chopped and stacked

Ant arrived not long after me and spent the day adding to the wood pile with smaller bits of dead fall and rohdies from up by the top shed, once he had filled a section he carried on generally tidying up up there

After the wood pile was sorted I dug up the rohdie stump that had been hiding under the log pile and then moved around pulling bracken, hopefully for the last time this year, from up by the pylon, over by the hive, in the wayleave and over by the dam. I had intended to clear some brambles by toad bridge as well but ran out of time (and didn't want to go on holiday covered in scratches again!)

An update on the oak saplings progress (coincidentally!) At the moment I think we have lost two of them, with a third looking very poorly. All three are up at the top of the wood by the cars where is is very wet (usually) and also very shaded so perhaps they were up against it anyway. The others are all alive and growing although you could not say they look bursting with health. But they do seem to have survived the dry weather. I had not thought there was much growth this year (although I have no idea how quickly to expect oak saplings to grow,) but looking back to when we planted them they are actually significantly bigger.

August 2017

Now

Ant left around three and I took some time to just sit quietly under the Yardarm before I left too. Within a few minutes there was a constant stream of Nuthatches, Coal Tits and Great Tits as usual but also Forrest was busy under the stump, the woodpecker came in (to sample the trees rather than the food) and a young squirrel came down to help himself to the food right in front of the yardarm! which was a lovely end to a lovely late summers day in the wood.

Summer of 2018

Work has continued at Rais this summer, despite me not being there and of course the incredible heat wave that I have completely missed - typical!
Ant, Simon, Helen, Flee and Tracey have regularly been working at Rais as well as spending camping weekends and hosting visitors in my absence. I can't thank them all enough, not only for the work of course, but also for the photos and the snippets of news which brighten my days.
Simon tells me that the usual summer job of bracken pulling was not quite as big a task this year, and in the wayleave in particular the amount of bracken was greatly reduced. It seems that a combination of the previous year’s hand-pulling and the grass getting really established now has made a big difference. The areas more recently cleared of rhodie, on the east side of the wood, are still quite dense though - which is as to be expected when you suddenly allow sunlight to hit the ground for the first time in decades. Let's hope more wildflowers are also awoken from their forced slumber due to light deprivation.
The prolonged hot, dry weather would have affected all the flora and fauna throughout the wood, but the grass in the wayleave has survived well. The stream eventually ran dry and the trees suffered with the heat, shedding leaves to conserve water as necessary.  I wish I could have seen it, but Simon says at some times there seemed as many leaves underfoot as there are in autumn - so the canopy is also noticeably thinner than previous years. I am sincerely hoping the drought hasn't claimed our sapling oaks that were planted last year to fill the gaps left by rhodies.
Whilst I am out in Zambia, fighting a war against the tsetse flies, it seems the hot weather has caused a similar war at Rais with their cousins, the horse flies. Apparently all the woodland workers and visitors alike have had their fair share of attention from these bloodsuckers. So I feel somewhat a part of the woodland suffering out here even though I am not there in person.
Along with the bracken clearing, the ongoing job of digging out rhodie roots has also continued, although understandably mainly in the shadier areas due to the extreme temperatures. Housekeeping tasks during the good weather have included adding chicken wire to the deck, which will hopefully make it less of a slip hazard during the winter, and a second extension to the wood store to increase the amount of firewood that can be kept dry.
After several years the mice have finally discovered that the sheds contain an almost unlimited amount of food and eaten their way through the plastic storage containers so all the food has now been moved into metal storage bins, much to the dismay of the mice!
Now the summer is starting to draw to a close the last bracken will shortly be pulled for this year and after that the rhodie clearance will no doubt begin again in earnest.
So as we head into my favourite season in the UK, I am missing home more than ever. I miss the autumn colours and whilst I am enjoying amazing African sunsets right now, autumn is the best time of year in the UK to see incredible cloudscapes at dusk.
It's harvest time, a time of nuts and berries, bonfires and blankets. A time to forage, fatten, store and preserve in readiness for the cold winds and frosty air.  The temperature here in Zambia is easily topping 30 degrees every day and will be climbing still for the next few months.... where the mercury will be doing the opposite back home.
By the time I board that plane bound for Heathrow next January, I will have spent the best part of a year exploring the lowveld of South Africa, the Mashatu reserve in Botswana, Makuleke concession in northern Kruger and the Kafue national park in Zambia. What an experience, a dream fulfilled.  The knowledge and understanding I have acquired has also given me a thirst to explore every inch of Rais when I return. I want to know as much as I can about our own ecosystems, in the same way I now know so much more about the African natural world than I could ever have imagined.

27th August 2018 - August Bank Holiday Monday

Helen's walk on Saturday, followed by a total washout on Sunday scuppered any ideas I might have had for camping this weekend but Monday saw me at Rais under skies that were still dismal and grey, but mostly dry.

The first job was to transfer the seeds into the new feed bin in Immac, it looks like it will do the job and actually is bigger capacity than it looks. I had intended to use the freed up ammo box to replace the last plastic container in the Hive but there was no sign of any mouse activity in there (yet) and the box of  seed in Immac was covered in mouse droppings, even though the plastic had not yet been attacked so I decided to keep the metal box down there, at least until that seed is used up.

It was a bit cool so to get warmed up I spent the next hour digging roots in the gully behind the yardarm. The weedkiller I put on two weeks ago has made them look a bit sad, but they are definitely not dead yet so it is a bit disappointing, I think there is a lesson to make sure I buy the expensive stuff next time!
I only managed to get two stumps out in an hour! but the first one was pretty big so progress back there continues slowly but surely. The next step will be to sort out the log pile that was buried back there with rohdies growing all through it but a bit of rain came in just as I got to that, so I moved to a job in the dry and added chicken wire to the next board in the yardarm.

There are 8 boards done now and that was where I had intended to stop, based on my memory of where the slippery parts were last year but after Sundays rain I can see that in fact the next two boards also get wet. I think I will leave them for now and see how it is in the winter, we can always add more later!

Once the chicken wire was done I had a short rest and the birds were out in force for a while. There was a young Robin who was actually coming down to the seeds, I don't think I have ever seen a Robin on the seeds or nuts before, and he was making quite a distinctive call. Unfortunately it was a totally different one to the ones I've been trying to learn. Typical!
I had my camera and despite a low battery (and a dirty lens) I did get what I thought was the Dunnock on the ground by the log store, but now that I have checked I'm pretty sure it is actually a Wren, which I don't think I have seen before.

Up by the Hive I disturbed the Doves from the owl box, so it looks like that may well be occupied again but in the Hive itself there was no new mouse evidence so he has either been put off by the nibs now being in a metal box, or all the plastic he had eaten has done him in! There are still peanuts up there in a plastic crate so it will be interesting to see if they are the next target.

After some lunch I did some more work on the wood store, adding more of the crate sides to make stacking easier. They are definitely working, if not very attractive, but they will be easy to remove when we need to so, so far, I'm quite pleased with how that has gone. Now we just need to fill them up a bit more!

Ant has obviously been at Rais since I last saw him as one of the steps between the Yardarm and towards my tent has been fixed, but unfortunately he hadn't fixed the one a few steps down from it which broke as soon as I went down them. I was quite surprised as the log was a good 4 inches in diameter and looked mostly fine, but the middle had rotted completely. So I found a suitable replacement and quickly fixed that one too. It may need a bit of fettling next week to tidy it up a bit though.

Ants Step

My Step

After the very hot weather the first hints of Autumn are now arriving and some of the greenery is drawing back. The grass in the wayleave and around the Yardarm definitely looks less and I think it will not be long before it is time to cut it back for the Autumn. But over by Toad bridge it's still in full swing. I went over to the glove tree and had to look quite hard to even find the bridge!

Saturday 11th August 2018

This week the weather forecast was not so good for Sunday so I was at Rais on Saturday. I was on call so needed to stay at the top.

A quick look in Immac when I arrived showed little new mouse evidence, although they may just be biding their time! I did another bottle of weed killer and sprayed it on the stumps in the gully. This time I read the instructions properly and used much more than last time so it will be interesting to see if it works.

The mouse in the hive has been busy. I had put the metal cleaver over the hole in the box of nibs last time I cleared out his nest, to deter him, so he has just eaten his way round it and started again! It can't be good for him to eat all that plastic. I moved the nibs into the metal ammo box and generally tided up, hopefully that will be as successful as down in Immac.

Once the shed was clean I cleared brambles by the path up by the cars, it did not look like there was much when I started but I soon had a wheelbarrow full and it looks a lot clearer now. It looks like we  have the first casualty from the oak saplings though.

Even after a couple of days rain the stream is almost dry, it is not until the shower you can hear any kind of trickle of water. Walking downstream I found a very active wasps nest by the bridge behind the hive, and gave them a wide berth!

After some lunch I spent an hour with the camera. First impressions were frustrating but on review at home it was not so bad. I made a new suet feeder and the nuthatch and tits were very keen on it but most of the shots are overexposed so I need to work on that.
Today was mostly on auto settings but I did use manual focus later. I'm a bit annoyed as the manual focus was a key thing I looked at before buying and the review said it has a twist lens like a DSLR to set the manual focus, but in fact that must have been a totally different review because it doesn't and it's actually really fiddly, definitely not something that can be done quickly. (feel free to insert derogatory Canon comment here!)

I had cooled down quite a bit, which is a bit of a novelty after the last couple of months, so I spent another half hour clearing brambles behind the hive then called it a day to sort out the car track setup before tomorrows rain.

Summer Holiday - 1st August 2018

About this time last year I had some time off and stayed at Rais for 4 or 5 days. I was mostly by myself and it mostly rained but it was so enjoyable that I planned to do the same again this year. Tracey is also on holiday with not much to do so she said she'd come along too. The plan was to stay from Wed to Sat and the weather promised to be far better than a year ago.

Wed
I arrived about 11, put the food in the fridge and generally got set up. There were a few more mouse droppings in the shed but not nearly as many as last week so maybe they are getting the message.
It was sunny and warm, but nowhere near as warm as the last few weeks, or the next few days were forecast for so I took the opportunity to spend the first hour digging roots in the gully behind the yardarm. In winter it would be about a day's work to clear it all but it has been more like 6 weeks of slow effort in the heat and I'm barely halfway! In one of my frequent rests I saw something I don't think I have ever seen before, a butterfly gliding. He drifted past and at first I thought he was a leaf, but he glided right down the gully and just before the bottom started flapping his wings again to recover some height. I guess even butterfly's get hot and tired!
Tracey arrived about one, so we immediately had some beers then spent the afternoon chatting. I was tired after all that digging (and beer) so had a nap for an hour late afternoon. Once I was up again we went for a walk over to the pond they are digging in the wayleave as Tracey had not seen it yet. It looks like they are done digging, the machine has gone and they are starting to add plants and a shed etc. there is even a "Danger - Deep Water" sign. It looks more and more like a fishing lake to me.

Tracey had not been into the other parts of the wood before and she was really surprised at how open the wood is really very close to Rais. She really liked it and immediately started making plans to thin out some of Rais, so it might look quite different when you make it back!! Finn found a huge bone so he quite liked the other woods too.
Curry, more beer and then wine with a nice fire wrapped up the day.

Thursday
It was noticeably hotter on Thursday so after a leisurely start Tracey did some bracken clearing by the Hive and then in the wayleave

and I worked on the wood store to add the panels from the patio crates, with a little help from the hatchet. it seems to be working well so far so we will see. Even the days rain we had last weekend had got the wood quite wet though, especially the more rotten stuff so maybe some roofing felt on the roof of the wood store will be worth a try.

 


In the afternoon we spent some time with our cameras trying to get a picture of Forrest under the stump, which I finally more or less managed,

In focus - sort of

Tracey waiting for Forrest

and I checked out the owl box. There is the start of a stock dove nest there but no eggs or evidence it was really used so I guess the sick dove I saw earlier in the year caused it to be abandoned. I will leave until the end of the year to clear it out though.
Interestingly after only one days rain the birds are much more in evidence, both in birdsong and coming down to the feeder. There was a very odd new sound we could not identify though, it sounded sort of like a pheasant alarm call but was definitely different. Whatever it was spent most of the day hooting from various points in the surrounding woods and then we didn't hear it any more for the rest of the week.

We had another nice evening round the fire (not that we needed one) with a chicken and chorizo dish I had found the the freezer!

Friday

It just kept getting warmer and Friday was baking. We did spend half an hour doing a bit more bracken pulling but then had to call it a day, it was just too hot.
Ant and Helen were due down for dinner and Tracey had found and cleaned up the hot plate she got with her cast iron cooking set so the plan for dinner was steak! cooked on the fire. We had originally planned to nip up to M&S at the services for the food and to try and get a shower but then we realised that we could not leave Finn unattended so we decided to pop back to Burgess Hill and Tescos (and also nip into my house for a quick shower!) instead. Tracey was a bit worried how Finn would be in the car but he jumped straight in with no prompting at all, much to her surprise. Maybe he knew it had air conditioning!!
Refreshed and stocked up for the evening we chilled out (or mostly sweated, we saw 32 degrees in the car on the way to Burgess Hill) for the afternoon while Tracey tried to tempt Forrest out of hiding with bits of croissant (and Finn ate them all every time she got distracted!)
Before Ant and Helen arrived we chopped some wood and prepared the fire. Tracey had a go at chopping with the hand axe and it was hilarious, I only wish I had thought to get some video!
Ant and then Helen arrived about 7 and we had a good evening of chat, steak and wine

Steaks on the fire!

Saturday
Dawned still really hot. After breakfast the three of us (Ant did not stay over) cleared the final bit of bracken from the wayleave and then generally tided up and made sure all was ready for the next few days. Tracey will be back on Sunday and Sarah and Charlie are coming down on Monday for a night. Helen and I left around 1 as I have the first track day in the new car next week to get ready for.