Woodland Wander

Mid afternoon I took up my camera and went out to the woodland at the top of our road, ostensibly to capture a sunny blip, then it clouded over.  I decided to simply wander the paths and look out for what I might have missed in forty plus years of walking this way.  The woodland is still sleeping after winter, there are few signs of it bursting into Spring just yet.  The valley echoed with the sounds of children on school holiday playing at the Gruffalo Rocks; a solitary pheasant calling from across the beck; a woodpecker hammering nearby and a distant chain saw abuzz.  I caught a glimpse of a treecreeper skittering up the trunk of one of the many silver birches, and beyond it a single long tailed tit, both too far away for a blip so I made do with watching them till they were out of sight.  Further along the path,  a father was helping his young daughter to scale a tree, they had just been fording the beck with a felled branch, well done that Dad.

Heading towards home I took a different path to pass by this den made by the children attending the Forest School.  One plus of this pandemic has been the increase in children being outdoors enjoying the kinds of things we did as kids.