Birds, horses and frogs

I spent Saturday in Treswell Village Hall at a meeting arranged by TWIG, the bird monitoring group for the wood. It was a remarkable day, 50 people gathered to hear about and discuss the work that’s been going on there for nearly 40 years. Treswell is one of the best studied sites for birds in the country now, a fact acknowledged by Andy Clements, director of the British Trust for Ornithology. It's the BTO's mission to get the sort of data they've been gathering for years at Treswell. There’s such a mass of it, and it’s been so carefully collected, that academics are starting to publish papers without having to do any more fieldwork. A couple of them presented published work on how the changing climate is affecting tit species and how coppicing can benefit a range of woodland birds. It was good stuff to hear. The bird monitoring will be an important part of the book so it was good to have the opportunity to catch up with all the people who’ve been involved and to see how it is beginning to be appreciated in the world outside of Treswell Wood.
Early the next morning the ringers were back in the wood and I went along to catch up with them, at the nets catching and recording the local birds, like this treecreeper.

And on Wednesday the volunteers and woodmen were back in the wood. There were horses too, brought in for a course on horse logging, extracting timber without machines. The horses were magnificent Shires, Alison and Emily, and they were very patient being driven by, mostly mildly terrified, novices and picking their way through thickets of rose and bramble. Spring was in the air and a mass of frogs were spawning in a small pond by the track, intent on their own business, despite all the horsey activity.