RXwildlife Sightings

Yesterday I noticed some curious icicles on an ash sapling on the footpath near Rye Harbour church. On closer inspection there were several examples of an icicle forming where sap was oozing from a fresh cut - by secateurs?

There have been few articles on flowers recently, so I thought I would have a close look at the Oak trees in my garden where the flowers have just emerged. The male (long and yellow, hanging down like tassels) and female (tiny red, just visible top left of photo above) flowers are quite different.
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12 years ago when I moved into a new house a young two-stemmed oak sapling gave me the opportunity to create a young pollard.  This was something I did partly because in English Nature I had been responsible for a magnificent wood in this area full of oak and hornbeam pollards, but also because I wanted to plant native deciduous trees for insects, and pollarding the tree every 2-3 years was one way to stop the sapling getting too big for the garden.

12 years on the tree is developing well, and three years ago I hung a bird box between the two trunks.

Pollards were created in the past Read the rest of this entry »