Pablo’s Woodlife: Wildlife, Tracking and Bushcraft

You probably don’t know how much this photo means to me. Ok so it’s dark and blurry but it’s my first photo of one of my local Badgers.

After many hours trying to even see one of them I managed to actually get a photo at last.

There are a number of problems with the local sett. Firstly, I don’t get up there too often although it’s not too far away. The second problem is that the sett is on a long, low rise with many sett entrances. Most of these are on top of the rise so if they do come out, you only tend to see a fleeting glimpse of a silhouette as you’re generally at the base of that rise. Grass growth makes it almost impossible to see anything in the late spring and summer. The final problems is that the area is in the middle of a field. The prevailing wind is not conducive to where the best lay up position is.

On this ocassion, I said sod convention and went on top of the rise and laid up about 10 yards away from the most recently dug hole. As the sun went down out came this chap. He immediately ran to a hole even further away before I could even point the camera. When he came out of that hole, I managed to get a couple of shots off. Only one was good enough to put up.

I’ve heard reports that there are cubs about but I didn’t see any here. In fact, this was the only animal I saw. Perhaps I was too close and he got a scent of me. There was no movement for the next hour (in the area I was watching anyway) and so I called it a night.

Nevertheless, a nice result for me and I went home grinning all the way.

Pablo.

Woodlife forum

You may have noticed a new tab at the top of the page. This leads you to a new forum page. I created this especially for the Reading/Bucks bushcraft group so they can arrange and discuss their meets in private, but I’ve also created a general discussion board for anyone.

The intention is not to outdo the excellent forums already out there, but to create a friendly online environnment so that everyone can have a discussion or chat or ask advice about anything to do with the outdoors. Hopefully we can share knowledge and ideas. Think of it as a virtual campfire. If you want to join in please follow the instructions on the page to register.

You may also have noticed that I’ve moved from blogger to wordpress. There are a number of advantages, particularly if you have your own domain like this one.

One advantage is that you can create extra pages so you can put up other stuff up on the site either for others or for yourself.

I’d like to expand the site to offer something more. I’ll do this slowly but surely, as and when I have the time. Any ideas would be good.

I’ve asked for feedback on the readability of the posts. A couple of people said it was too dark but most have no problems. Thanks if you commented. I have brightened up the fonts slightly. If it’s too bright it tends to blur the text.

I was lucky enough not to lose any posts when converting to Wordpress. Since then I’ve been a little concerned despite the ability to back up posts electronically that one day I would lose 4 years worth of journal entries. This post is number 200 by the way.

I’ve recently found an excellent little tool that converts the Wordpress blog to pdf format. Although it’s still in a beta version, I found that it formats the posts reasonably well putting the oldest posts first. Hence you have an archive of posts including all the pictures and potentially a hardcopy book.

Here’s an unedited extract from 2006 (2MB). Included free are all the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.

Any publishers out there? No, I didn’t think so.

Thanks for your continued visits to this site.

Pablo.

Have a look at this picture. What do you see?

Perhaps a few trees or layer of Dog’s mercury. A bit of mist. Not exactly pretty woodland I’m sure you’ll agree.

Shall I tell you what I see? Silence. Peace. Tranquility.

It’s been quite a busy week culminating in a birthday party for my wife last night. We were invaded by people. It was a good party but… well, you know what I mean. Too many people for me and far too loud. I’m getting old.

Today, I escaped. It was bliss even with a chilly easterly wind blowing through the wood. I set up the hammock, cooked up some beans and watched the squirrels leaping around the trees. After a few hours, I was completely chilled out.

On the way back I noticed these plants in the hedgerow.

Stitchwort, Ground ivy, White dead nettle.

Apparently stitchwort and acorns were added to wine to assist in ailments like the stitch. That’s why it’s called… Stitchwort.

Thanks for the visit.

Pablo.

At the weekend, Mark was good enough to host a meet at his wonderful woods just outside Reading.