Above the village of Eynsford across a wide fallow field freshly sprayed with herbicide, sits a long strip of broadleaved woodland.  Under a blue sky, a single swallow flies across the field calling. A slow worm rests under an old piece of matting and brimstones work the dandelions in the floristically dull field margin; a yellow on yellow encounter.

Fallow field with bird cherry in blossom on the horizon

Pheasant on the run

From a distance, the woodland appears nondescript in its winter colours and is composed of smooth-limbed coppiced trees, principally of ash and hornbeam but also oak, beech, silver birch and bird cherry. The understorey is sparse hawthorn, hazel and yew. The hornbeam, hazel and hawthorn and are in fresh leaf. There is no thick scrub or rolls of bramble but yellow splashes of celandine with occasional bluebell that soon gives way to a wide carpet of wood anemone.

The simple but spectacular carpet of wood anemone

The old coppice of tall ash, hornbeam, birch and beech with sparse understorey

Avenue of hornbeam lined with wood anemone

Another view of the hornbeam avenue

Wood anemone carpet

Brimstones fly down the path. Red admirals sun in the wood and a speckled wood circles. A single blackcap and chiffchaff sing in the wood. A treecreeper calls and hides behind the trunk of a tree, stock still for a minute until a another calls and it is immediately gone. A sparrowhawk flies low across the gap in the wood where the pylons run. A raven kronks and buzzards mew.  Jackdaws cry and stock doves wheeze and clatter from a great beech tree; bullfinches quietly sigh above the holly.

Red admiral among the wood anemone

Peacock

Bracket fungus on fallen birch

Early purple orchid

Early bluebells

Wood anemone is flushed pink before turning white

Unfurling fern

Treecreeper

Young adder

Large female slow worm