The woodland is muddy, dark and full of hart’s tongue ferns. Limestone cliffs appear behind great yews and tall oaks and ashes. Marsh tits, wrens, blackbirds and nuthatches sound out bringing life to the narrow valley where the winter sun tries hard to penetrate but rarely succeeds. Above the native woodland, plantations of beech are…
Tag: SSSI
Hatfield Forest’s fritillaries
The little, flint church at Bush End was built in the 1850s; a medieval pastiche that has aged well under magnificent trees full of noisy jackdaws. The church was constructed at the edge of the perfectly preserved Royal Hunting Forest established nearly a thousand years ago. Hatfield Forest is part ancient wood pasture and part…
Winter woodland
Christmas Eve morning is layered with fog with a heavy dew dripping off the dead leaves. A solitary woodcock lifts from a muddy fallow. The wind is gone and the woodlands at Elsenham are alive with small birds: goldcrests chase through the low branches of a hazel laden with catkins, great tits call like bicycle…