Saturday 10th November

There was heavy rain overnight on Friday with more forecast for Sunday so Saturday saw me at Rais. It felt like the first proper autumn day, wet and muddy with a cool or even cold breeze all day. The rain had gone by 10 when I arrived but there was broken cloud , with some sun, all day

There has finally been enough rain to restart the stream and for the first few hours everything was very wet. Autumn is well underway elsewhere too with the bracken going over and the oak saplings are finally starting to lose their leaves.

Wandering around I found another tree losing it's bark, so I guess that is in a bad way.











I was not feeling too good so avoided the pickaxe today and just chopped. I probably overdid it but ended up with a good pile at the end of the day. I did come across a burrow of some kind that seemed fairly fresh,

I think all the leaves were from my chopping

















and I also came back across the potential burrow I found earlier in the year in the stream bank again and it looked pretty tidy so I suspect it may well be in use, maybe we can try your trail cam when you're back to see?

This is this week's clue as to where I was working!

The birds may not come down to the food up by the Hive much when I am there, bit there certainly do after I'm gone, I don't think the new suet feeder is going to last long! Now they have been at the bottom hole too

Saturday 3rd November 2018

Visits to Bristol and Shepperton have meant that I've had two week's off from Rais. I've definitely  missed it!

The weather forecast was not so good for Sunday so I went on Saturday. I expected it to be clear and cold but it was actually quite overcast in the morning and surprisingly mild so I ended up quite overdressed and with not really enough water for the day. The clocks have gone back and dusk is around 5pm at the moment so I made what I thought was a fairly early start, although somehow I didn't actually get there until about 10 only to find Ant already hard at work with a good fire going. He's had the last week off work and been at Rais most days and he's been a busy chap! However, I think the odd surprise for when you are back will be nice, so the only picture you can have of what he's been up to is this one.

There was the noise of what sounded like a big earth mover or similar machine coming from what sounded like over by the new pond in the wayleave, although I did not see any actual machinery. Ant said it had been going all week and he thought he had seen two big lorries of hardcore going down that way, So I wonder if they are are putting in a proper road to access the pond?

To start off I finished the strimming in the wayleave now that I have mended the cutting head, including the bank behind the yardarm, where there are lots of tree saplings coming up, and the steps. (Of course I will be buying some new solar lights again after someone hid all the old ones in the long grass!) and raked the wayleave by the dam again.

Then I went to put some feed out for the birds by the Hive. I could see the mouse has been in the paper shreddings in the hive but he has not got to any of the food, but the birds have been busy on my new suet feeder and pecked away all of the side of one hole!

The new feeder is much narrower than the old one so the hole was quite close to the side, but really! it's really hard wood as well.

Once that was done I headed over to help Ant for the rest of the day, and we got a good amount done.
At one point as I pulled out a rohdie root I found half a red house brick underneath it!! Which got me thinking, how interesting it would be to be able to look back in time and see how it got there?

After lunch I got the ladder out and went up to clear out the owl box and got quite a surprise. There was no evidence that the stock doves had nested there at all this year, even though I did see them in and out several times, but something has clearly started a nest and quite recently too as the grasses and twigs lining the bottom of the box are still green. So after a quick look to check all was in good shape I left it all alone.

The main stream is still all but dry despite a reasonable amount of rain on a couple of days, I guess the ground water will take a while to recover after such a dry summer, but after some rohdie chopping again in the afternoon I decided to rake the streams which were pretty clogged up with leaves to finish off the day. Once I started though I realised that not only are there still really a lot of leaves on the trees just waiting to fall in my newly cleared stream, but there is barely a trickle in either stream at the moment so I think I was a little premature.

Wandering around I saw quite a few mushrooms again, at a least a couple of which are likely rather poisonous

and I noticed that the tree that lost all it's bark so suddenly earlier in the year has now definitely died.

The clouds had disappeared during the day and the late afternoon sun was coming through the trees as we called it a day at around 4. The days certainly seem a lot shorter all of a sudden.

Sunday
I didn't have much to do Sunday and it was still mild and cloudy but dry so I went up for a couple of hours in the morning to carry on digging up stumps in the gully. I was there just after 9 and two hours was long enough to police the area from the hive to the cars and take out about 10 rhodie shoots that were coming back up and also get 15 smaller stumps removed in the gully, which felt like good progress. Next step will be the really big ones just there though and I doubt they will come out quite as easily as today's ones did.

On the way out I drove up the lane a little way to the wood with the pond and sure enough, it looks like a decent road is going in to access it

Tuesday 23rd October

It was a nice day, overcast but with some sun coming through the cloud so I popped up to Rais with my camera at lunchtime.

I opened up the Hive and put some food out for the birds and then had a wander round, I disturbed a male pheasant over by my tent and a large stag complete with antlers on the other side of the stream  but apart from that did not see anything of note other than to notice that the leaves really are falling now. I could hardly hear myself think from the noise of the chainsaw next door though so the neighbors were busy.

The wasps nest in the stream bank looks nearly abandoned now, the entrance is covered by leaves and there was only a very occasional wasp looking to get in. The proximity of the Hive to the nest obviously makes it an attractive hibernation spot though as there were wasps tucked up on all of the windows as I opened them up,

and several flying around and trying to find a spot as I was sat there. I must have asked at least 10 of them to find another spot by the time I left! so I suspect there will be a few more taking the free spots there by the weekend.




I sat for a while with the camera ready, but although I could hear them nearby, today the birds were not hungry, I think I need to put food out up there more regularly. The closest I got to seeing one was a robin up in the trees, but he was gone before I could get a shot and apart from that the only shot I got was of the empty feeder.

Despite the lack of action it was nice to get out for an hour and shut work out.

Saturday 13th October 2018

It was a hot, dirty but productive, or more accurately destructive, day at Rais this weekend. Deja vu!

The weather has been unseasonably warm so for last three weeks I have been trying to find a day to stay over and camp. Unfortunately, although the weather in the week has been good the weekends have been wet or cold on at least one day and after a glorious few days during the week this weekend was no exception. The opportunities to camp this year are rapidly reducing!

Helen was up for a day at Rais and Saturday was forecast to be the best day of the weekend, although the forecast for Sunday seemed to be changing every few hours. It was warm with some cloud and quite windy so we headed up about 10am.

After parking up we walked down and I noticed that one of the oak saplings that had looked really very dead actually has some new shoots on it.

Slightly further down we disturbed three squirrels by the hive, there seem to be plenty of them around at the moment. Arriving down at the Yardarm we saw that the woodpecker has been back at the tree by the yardarm and started a third hole











Once we got set up Helen trimmed back the rhodies in the wayleave, not reducing any of the area where the deer hide but trimming back one side where it was encroaching into the wayleave. There turned out to be a lot of bramble and straggly rohdie and took most of the day to clear




My plan was to spend a few hours strimming the wayleave but the first setback was that the fuel can I thought was nearly full, was actually nearly empty, necessitating a visit to the services half way through the day. Wow their fuel is expensive!

The second setback was how long it took. I strimmed, and strimmed, and strimmed and still there was more to do. A few weeks ago Flee suggested bringing in a lawn mower, so we could give the wayleave some nice stripes. I think I (probably) talked him out of it at the time but after 4 hours of solid strimming and the main wayleave was still not done I was wondering why I had bothered! It was a really big job and by the end of the day I had finished the main part of the wayleave but had no chance to start over by the dam.

I did some research a while ago on how to encourage wildflowers, and all the advice I saw said to rake away the cuttings when the meadow is cut, to make sure the nutrients do not go back into the soil, wild flowers apparently prefer very poor soil. But it's such a big job that it's beaten me mentally before I even start so the cuttings remain where they lay!

Helen had discovered that while Ant had thoughtfully put some of the charcoal from the fire site down buy the toilet to improve the pathway, he hadn't checked if the door still opened! but after a bit of digging she was able to get in.







As we put the tools away at the end of the day I noticed a small chicken wire enclosure where Ant has been working, which on closer inspection turned out to be sheltering a tiny yew sapling!

Sunday
On Saturday night the forecast for Sunday was wet in the morning and drying up later in the afternoon so I thought my weekend was over, and I had a good lie in on Sunday morning. But when I woke it was to grey skies but no rain, despite the forecast telling me it was raining heavily at that very moment! As the forecast was for a drier afternoon I set off to Rais to try and finish the strimming by doing the section of the wayleave by the dam.

It was dark and dull at Rais and of course, not long after I arrived it started raining, but it was just a drizzle so I carried on. Firstly with the metal brush cutter blade and then with the plastic strimmer head. This section of the wayleave is smaller and the grass not so well established so I did rake it this time.

Unfortunately about two thirds of the way through I had to fix the cutter blade, only to find I had tightened the head so much I could not get it undone, so that was the end of my strimming for the weekend. It was very frustrating not to be able to finish it after so much effort!



It was still raining so I had some lunch and then
trimmed the rohdies on the bank by Immac a bit, just to take off some of the new growth and height. They have grown quite a bit since you last trimmed them. The rain was getting really set in, despite the forecast, so I called it day around three and headed home, complete with the strimmer to fix the head.

So much focus on striming meant I had no bramble scratches this week, but I more than made up for it with a burn from the strimmer on my arm and a blister from the rake!

Sunday 7th October 2018

It was a hot, dirty but productive, or more accurately destructive, day at Rais this weekend.

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.