Eight of us wildlife heroes made it this morning. Matt, Steve, Mark, Ian, Martin, Reece, George, and Paul.

It was especially nice to see George, who is off school with it being half-term. Whilst George does a super job with us, his presence also helps with the group diversity, or rather, the extremely obvious lack of diversity.

So thanks, George, in more ways than one.

We carried on with the thinning of the trees. You will see why this is important later on, so just bear with us, and also bear in mind that I spend what seems like all of my awake time studying stuff like this.

139 pages of bedtime reading…

We really don’t want all these whips to come up, and then all start fighting for light and nutrition. It seems harsh, but only the strongest can survive.

This is how it looked afterwards.

Pools of sunlight, decent forward vision (40+ metres is the recommended minimum, so people don’t feel anxious), and the tree canopy broken up.

We have one more week on this section, and hopefully, we can push the scrub out a bit to allow a wildflower-rich grassy margin to grow.

We also did a bit of bird nesting-box maintenance.

The open robin box had come away completely, and the closed box was hanging on for dear life!

With Andrew joining us recently, I wanted to give a shout-out for the fantastic geocaching trail that he has put together for us.

The triangle is the creation of Andrew and is a good 7-mile walk, so hours of fun searching for the treasures. The yellow faces are the ones that I have found. The zoomed-out picture shows how popular geocaching is in the wider area. It is like this on a worldwide basis and is incredibly addictive.

Go to geocaching.com and give it a go!

A quick YouTube to try and share the vision.

And lastly, a naughty fungi photo to make you smile.

Dunchurch Bridleway

Three of us turned out last Friday morning. Ian, Dave, and Paul, and we got the first 1,000 metres finished.

The trees here are ancient because the bridleway has probably existed for centuries. What we are trying to do is ease the scrub back and make it so that the path sort of splays to bring the trees into the trail.

For me, I want the trees to stand majestic and proud, and for kids and dogs to investigate behind them to make walking or cycling on the trail more interesting.

This is why we are thinning the trees so much on the Cawston bit. If we can get big trees down there, it just makes it so much more interesting.

We broke for coffee and Halloween biscuits…

I’m such a big kid.

And then I noticed all the wildflowers coming up in the area where we ripped out the scrub a few weeks ago.

This is going to be such a nice place to sit and just relax with a coffee and a bit of a pack-up. It’s south-facing, so it will do really well, and it looked really messy a few weeks ago. Give nature a chance and look what happens.

Lastly, the usual litter pick.

And that is it.

Until next time!

Paul