Pablo’s Woodlife: Wildlife, Tracking and Bushcraft

Despite a couple of quite sunny days, the temperature dropped and the wind turned a little chilly. I could just feel a slight coolness on my fingers as the wind turned to blow from the north. Some say Autumn has started but I still say it’s late summer. (Ever the optimist.)

I went out to Poor Park Woods yesterday and unsuccessfully tracked the Fallow deer around the woods for a few hours. They led me on a hilarious merry dance which I’ll talk about another time. I ended up exhausted and, after a rest, decided to gather the last of the blackberries for my special Christmas brew. I had to be selective as many had passed their sell by date.

The landscape looked decidedly weary. Fields have been ploughed and the foliage looks decidedly tired and droopy. An occasional yellow leaf fluttered gently earthward on the breeze. No. It won’t be long, but it’s not here yet.

To prove a point I went to Broaks Wood today. It was actually warmer and the wind was again coming from the south west . 

I concentrated my efforts on the ponds and the dragonflies. I’ve not taken many photos of dragonflies this year and there wouldn’t be too many chances left.

The bright morning sunshine brought out the larger ones first. An Emperor was hawking the main pond. Despite the 45 degree angled stick trick, he wouldn’t land for love nor money.

The male Common darter didn’t disappoint when I tried to get it on my finger.

The female’s were a little more shy and tended to stay in the higher branches.

The Southern hawker preferred to “hang” on the gorse waiting until a little later for his flight.

This Forest bug clung to my trousers as if to hide from the aerial battles although with all that armour, I’m sure he would be fine.

This unidentified spider spun it’s web quickly in the hopes of catching one of the dragonflies.

You find strange things in Broaks Wood ponds (after a design by Fenlander - cheers mate) much to the delight of the young naturalists in the area, who didn’t see me put it in the pond!

Yes, it will soon be Autumn by my calculations. This weekend was definitely the Last of the Summer Wine.

Thanks for the visit.

Pablo.

 

I could only manage a few hours in the woods this weekend. I decided on the spur of the moment to have a go at making a fork. If you’ve ever tried this you’ll know that it’s not easy. I gouged away carefully at the gap between the prongs, but still managed to split the wood slightly. I’ll probably also have to harden the ends of the prongs over a fire or they’ll break too easily. Although it doesn’t look too bad, I don’t think it will last very long under constant use. I think I need more practice!

 

I spent the rest of the time looking at the plants growing on some waste ground. This is a good time to identify these plants as there’s a lot in bloom.

Cinnibar Moth catapillar on Ragwort - Ragwort is poisoness to most mammals

[edit] Burnet moth (possibly six-pot Burnet) on Common centaury

Tall melilot

Great willowherb

Birds-foot trefoil

Scarlet pimpernel

Vetch

Field bindweed

Cinqfoil

Common mallow

Small tortoishell on thistle

Self-heal

Thanks for the visit.

Pablo.

My mate Paul and I headed south to meet up with the Reading Group on Friday afternoon. A little rain was forecast but the whole weekend turned out fine and dry.

After a hot and sticky walk-in we arrived to find the parachute already up and a brew on the go. Mark presented me with a fine looking kuksa as a gift for doing the Reading group forum. I was completely overwhelmed and promptly planned what liquid substance should go in it. Well - it’s got to be sealed properly hasn’t it?

We woke up to a beautiful day on Saturday and after breakfast, a couple of us went roving with the bows to do a bit of stump shooting. I’d brought along the Samick SKB, the length of which proved ideal in the particular closed-in area of woodland we chose to shoot in. We all did pretty well getting close to the challenging choices of target and in a couple of instances even killed a stump or two!

Mark had brought along a large awl which enabled the construction of some wooden chairs. John decided to assemble what can only be described as a throne, which was in keeping with his heavy-weight style of camping. Hence he was dubbed “His Majesty, King John” for the rest of the meet. The chairs will be kept on site ready for the next meet.

Some of us went for a wander after lunch and ended up tracking along the moderately fast flowing stream. There was a lot of damselfly activity and I spent some time trying to photograph the amazingly coloured and aptly named Beautiful demoiselle (Calopteryx virgo).

We followed some tracks along the stream bank and decided it belonged to a small fox. The tracks ended up at a kill site where the only evidence left of the prey was a claw of a crustacian. Looking again at the photo I’m not too sure if there might be other tracks in there and I wish I’d studied the area in more detail at the time. Other tracks seen were roe, fallow, muntjac, mouse and a number of birds that had hopped along the bank. There was still no sign of the elusive water vole tracks.

The evening meal was a barbeque of literally tons of meat mostly provided by King John.
Earlier, Steve (who was on my Shadowhawk tracking course) and I identified a good sit spot covering an area where there might be some evening mammal activity. Andy had already spotted a fox cub, and muntjac had been heard the previous evening. After the barbeque, along with Andy we sat for an hour being bitten to death by mosquitos! The sum total of our sightings? One rabbit, five hundred and three mosquitos - oh and some sheep! Well, you can’t win them all.

One of the best things about meets is that you can share experiences and stories around the fire. With new faces comes new stories and experiences. Knowledge is shared, kit examined and compared, and tips are passed on. This meet was no exception. John was busy dying a leather water bottle while Mark had made a fantastic flute case. You can see these pics on the network.

Prior to packing up on Sunday, conversation meandered on to the dreaded tick subject mentioned in my last post. This prompted everyone to start examining themselves. Low and behold ticks were found on nearly everyone’s legs. A tick removal session then took place. Anyone watching would be forgiven in thinking that a strange bunch of primates had invaded the woods and were busy de-fleaing themselves. Mark’s pocket microscope (is there nothing that he dosesn’t have handy?) showed in real terms what a monstrous looking creature the tick is.

A certain lesson learned and a good tip is to tuck the trousers in to socks or put elastics around the bottom of the trousers. Those with sleeping areas on the bracken slopes (myself included) should also have cleared a path through the bracken leading to the hammock. Whatever the precautions though, it’s inevitable that you will get a couple if you go tracking or exploring through the undergrowth.

All too soon it was time to say our goodbyes and leave the site. We doused the fire and cached the pot hangers. Another excellent weekend and a big thanks to Mark for organising the meet and everyone else that came along.

Pablo.

As you can imagine, after a week indoors with a chest infection, I couldn’t wait to go back out to the woods. So far, I’ve not missed a weekend throughout the winter, which was something I didn’t expect when I first started Bushcraft. I think I described myself then as a fine weather Bushcrafter, but I’ve been out in the rain, shine, snow and frost and enjoyed every minute.

I started the weekend by doing a bit of Archery practice. I decided to set up a target as opposed to going into the woods itself. I wanted to really hone my point of aim. After a couple of hours, I was quite pleased with the grouping. I made a mental note to come out a practice more on the target just to ensure the point of aim is consistent.

It felt good to be back in the woods, even though I didn’t really have a specific project. I took the 3×3 tarp just to practice a couple of different configurations. I actually found it more difficult to do this than the smaller tarp and concluded that I would probably just use the larger tarp in the most simple configuration, extending the sides to the ground if the weather got bad. I do like to look out from under the tarp and the raised front type configuration is still my favourite. The large tarp is pretty good for this.

The weather was quite mild (10 degrees C) and the wildlife seemed to appreciate the reprieve from the latest cold snap. I managed to get close to a herd of 35 fallow deer in a nearby field (photo above). I also spotted what I think is lesser celandine shooting through the leaf litter (edit: please note that these leaves are from the poisonous Arum Lilly and not Lesser celandine). Apparently, these young leaves are good in salads. I need a positive identification first before I try it though. A sighting of a dog fox, red legged partridges and mosquito larvae in a slow moving stream finished off a good weekend for wildlife spotting.

A bit late posting this one, as I went out Friday (see last post) and Saturday. I wandered back into my usual woods. I’m so delighted to find the ’secret clearing’. If it doesn’t get flooded in the winter, I can see this being one of my favourite spots. I will be careful not to frequent the spot too often. After a while an area does look ‘lived in’ and I don’t intend that to happen in any of the areas I visit. I couldn’t resist though making it a little more comfortable for future visits.

I dragged a couple of loose stumps over from another area. I think it’s quite important to have somewhere to sit on (even though I use the hammock as a seat) and a good solid stump to do some knife and axe work. A smaller stump would do as a stand for the trangia. I call this basic site furniture. Ideally the stump for the knife and axework should have a ledge at the rear of the stump to rest the wood you’re working on. If it hasn’t been cut through properly then it will have ‘barber chaired’ which will act as a natural rest.

A bit more foraging and enough wood for a some basic tools was found. A baton is always useful especially if no axe is available. This in turn leads to a couple of pot hangers. I practiced batoning until I had made a notch in the pot hanger in about 45 seconds. Next came a couple of ‘Y’ shaped standards and cross pole for a cooking fire. Finally I made a tripod. This could have a number of uses, but primarily I use it as a rucksack holder (for larger rucksacks that can’t be hung on a branch). Another use is as a tripod stand for cooking where, instead of a cross pole, the pot hanger is put on a long pole and balanced on the tripod. The pole can then be varied in height (by using a cantelever method) to raise and lower the pot hanger, hence putting the billy closer or further to or from the fire.

I had a bit of wood left over and carefully stashed it away for future use.

Before I left the site, I cached the tools and furniture so as not to make it obvious that anyone had visited the site and also to try to keep the wood dry for my next visit.

On the way back I bumped into this little chap. As you can tell he wasn’t too pleased to see me! For those not sure, it’s a Devils coach horse and isn’t as harmful as it looks. The threatening posture is enough to put anyone off though. According to Irish folklore, it is a symbol of corruption and eats ’sinners’. The raising of the tail casts a curse. If that’s not enough, if we were lesser animals or birds, we would be on the receiving end of some foul smelling chemicals emitted from anal glands. Nice!