Woodlife

On Friday I went off to Mark’s in Berkshire. Mark was kindly hosting the Woodlife AGM, where the volunteer Network Management Team get together once a year and have a chat about the ever increasing success of the Woodlife Network.

We were a couple of people light, but there was a lot to chat about especially with the changes in service coming up on the network. More about that later.

It wasn’t all talk, in fact it turned out to be a great weekend for wildlife.

Mike and Adam went foraging finding amongst others Comfrey and Pignut while Andy, Mark and I went out looking for snakes. Only Mark saw a fleeting glimpse of brown adder, but we did see several Common lizzards. The refreshingly lemon taste of Wood sorrel leaves was available.

The birds were active and we saw a pair of buzzards and a Greater-spotted woodpecker. The cuckoo was very vocal in the vicinity of the camp.

On Saturday evening Adam and Mike reported back with no less than 6 Muntjac and 2 fallow sightings, while earlier, Mark and I had a good view of a Roe doe.

We spotted these tracks which I’m sure are stoat, but I will double check and confirm.

Later, Andy and I watched a couple of Badgers at the local sett through the night vision monocular before they went off to the field to forage.

It was a good chance to test the new Karrimor Predator Patrol 45 from Lakeland Bushcraft. I’ll do a full video review later on in the week.

As the weekend whiled away in the brilliant sunshine, I suddenly noticed that everyone else was whittling away. I realised that I hadn’t done any woodcraft for a good while. so I quickly joined in making my first spoon of 2010.

This morning we had a bit of rain. It wasn’t a down-pour by any means but still we had to put our tarps away wet. Mike reported his shelter was comfortable but more importantly, waterproof.

Thanks to Mark and everyone for a great weekend as usual.