TITLE: My spot in Summer
DATE: 2019-08-25
AUTHOR: John L. Godlee
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Looking back through previous posts, I've commented on the state of 
my woodland spot just outside Edinburgh in Autumn and Spring, and 
now I have something to write about in Summer. Though I have 
officially moved out, I have returned to Edinburgh for a week 
before I go and teach on a field course in Oban for undergraduates.

I went out to my spot with none of my usual woodworking tools, 
because they're all away in the new house, so I had to divert my 
attention to something different, though even with only a penknife 
I still managed to make a blank for a door knob for my new bedside 
table. The table came from a British Heart Foundation Shop and was 
VERY cheap, because the plastic knob had snapped off.

Now that it's summer, the patch of woodland seems a lot closer than 
normal because of all the leaves. It drew my attention to the 
smaller saplings and trees which are shooting for the light. I 
noticed that most of the smaller trees are ash (Fraxinus 
excelsior), while many of the very old trees are silver birch 
(Betula pendula). A lot of the birches have started to die, 
especially down in the wetter bit at the bottom of the ridge, they 
stand for a long time, going soft and becoming riddled with bullet 
holes from wood-boring insects. I guess that observation fits with 
classic ideas of forest succession, but I wonder if that is the 
true driver of the apparent change in species composition.

Twice, while I was sitting in the sun, I heard taps like a river 
pebble being bounced off a larger rock. I think this must have been 
birds smacking snails off a rock to break open the shell, but it 
might have also been squirrels eating hazelnuts. I found a few 
middens of scraped out hazelnut shells, which the squirrels had 
obviously made. I found a few hazelnuts for myself to eat, but I 
don't yet have the knack of identifying the ripeness of the nut 
before picking it. All the mushrooms I saw were dried up and dead, 
it's the wrong time of year I imagine, but we've had such a hot 
summer, I hope it's not a sign of things to come.

The limb which fell off the oak tree on the ridge is truly dead 
now, but thankfully the tree is still going strong. Some of the 
smaller branches have lost their bark and the heartwood has started 
to turn dry, with a hollow sound when knocked.

One of the big ash trees near the cliff overlooking the river gorge 
has lots of woodpecker holes near the top where a part of the trunk 
has died and snapped off.

There are a lot of quite big and evil looking spiders in the sedge. 
They have plenty of mummified prey. I watched one disemboweling a 
fly it had hung from the bottom of its web. A harvestman got stuck 
in the web and it struggled for a long time to try and get free, it 
pulled off one of its own legs in the process.

I'm even more convinced that the track I use to come in and out of 
the woodland is just a very well trodden game track. The only 
tracks I've ever seen are from small deer and badgers. Also the way 
the path winds around obstacles low to the ground makes me think 
its not a human path, which would be more direct. I followed some 
of the tracks on the steep side of the ridge and found an active 
badger sett.