There has been a lot of squirrel damage in the wood this year.

The bark is ripped off by the squirrels to get at the sweet sap in the phloem tissue just under the bark, but this means that the tree can no longer move food around. If the tree is ring-barked all the way round its trunk then it will inevitably die:

Even if it not completely ring-barked, the growth of the tree will still be impeded and the scars will allow access for pests and diseases:

The squirrels target beech, oak and hornbeam trees in our wood which are exactly the trees we particularly admire and would want to keep:

It is not fully understood why the squirrels damage trees like this although there are many theories. I am particularly persuaded by a study at Wytham Wood near Oxford where they discovered that it was the females and juveniles that stripped the bark at a time in early summer when they were depleted in calcium – the juveniles were growing fast and needed calcium for bone growth and the females were calcium-depleted after lactating. The sap of beech and oak trees, the trees they particularly target in our wood, is especially high in calcium.

As well as killing our trees, grey squirrels predate birds eggs and young, damage the dormouse and bird boxes and eat hazel and other tree nuts that would otherwise be feeding dormice.

There are several large raptor bird boxes up in the wood, hoping to attract tawny owls, barn owls and kestrels but squirrels nest in them all, rendering them unavailable for birds. We have a camera on one of the tawny owl boxes shown below. Tawnys did actually nest in this box in 2022 but, for the last two springs, both squirrels and owls have tried to nest here and unfortunately the squirrels have won out:

Squirrels have also competed with green woodpeckers for nesting sites in an old cherry tree which is covered in old woodpecker holes. Last year the squirrels drove the birds out:

This year the green woodpeckers returned and successfully reared three young in this hole, but the squirrels were not very far away, nesting in a different hole further up the tree:

Although we feed the birds in the wood, we are confident that the squirrels do not get this food – ‘Squirrelbuster’ feeders very effectively exclude squirrels and we have put trail cameras on the feeders to confirm this. However, the wood itself provides them with plenty of food:

Our wood is supporting a high density of squirrels and we would love their population to be reduced. There is a contraceptive being developed that solely targets grey squirrels, but it is still years away from being available to us. The only option at this time appears to be to shoot them and we understand that this is what many wood owners in our area do. One big question is: do we have what it takes to shoot squirrels and the answer is a resounding No. But another big question is: would we be able to commission a competent professional to humanely shoot our squirrels and, following the death of so many beautiful trees in our wood this summer, we are not sure that we know the answer to this yet.

After several years of training, this summer I was finally granted a dormouse disturbance licence by Natural England. This means that I am now able to monitor the dormice in the wood myself without the kindly eye of my trainer watching over me. I did the August tour of the boxes this week with Dave assisting.

Box 6 had an adult female, an adult male and four young:

We often find yellow-necked mice in the boxes but this month we found wood mice in two of the boxes for the first ever time. They are significantly smaller than the yellow-necks.

There was a large gypsy moth in one of the boxes

The moth that we usually find in the boxes is the copper underwing, a woodland specialist species that causes no harm. We found a few of these this month:

It has been a poor year for butterflies, but there were still plenty to be seen in the marjoram glade in the wood one sunny morning:

The warm weather has brought some lovely woodland birds down to the ponds to drink and bathe:

And I have been enjoying seeing some young birds on the cameras:

We have a cameras on a hole in the ground where a family of rabbits were living earlier this year. This hole must still smell interesting since it receives daily inspections from both foxes and badgers:

Over in the meadows, the ringed female kestrel has been hunting here so often that I have enough photos of her to fill a whole post.

Here she has caught a lizard:

And a great green bush cricket with its long green wings:

But I haven’t yet seen her eating a vole which would be her food of choice.

She does do some high-energy hovering….

…but she much prefers to sit in a tree or on one of our perches as she hunts. She does need to defend these perching posts from the crows and magpies who also like to use them:

The magpies are moulting now and look in a right state:

They are one of the birds enjoying the crop of blackberries now looking so wonderful on the brambles at this time of year:

Blackbirds are the other big blackberry consumers:

Owls have been putting in some ghostly appearances:

And sparrowhawks are ever active in the meadows:

A male sparrowhawk with what could be house sparrow prey…

…which was eaten on the gate:

I am pleased to say that two of this year’s three badger cubs are still going strong. They will have absolutely loved the day of rain we had on Saturday, bringing out the slugs, snails and worms:

Foxes have been keeping a low profile recently but I’m pleased to say that every one of them looks healthy for once. It’s not often that we are completely mange-free here:

This is the first time that we have seen a ploughman’s-spikenard in the meadows. This is a sturdy, short-lived perennial that grows on low-nutrient, calcareous soils. In day’s past this plant used to be rubbed on the skin to act as a cheap and cheerful aftershave for country folk – it does actually smell really quite nice:

Until recently there were three UK native species of cockroach that could survive our winters and lived outside. In the past few years, however, several other species have expanded their range northwards into southern England from Continental Europe. The species below is one of these newly-arrived species and might be Planuncus tingitanus senso lato although these new species are difficult to identify by photo alone. I have seen several of this particular cockroach species around the meadows this summer and have now sent my photos to the cockroach expert at the Natural History Museum. I await his comments:

I finish today with this magnificent wasp spider. The raindrops on her web on Saturday meant that Dave (always sharp-eyed and excellent as an invertebrate-spotter) noticed her amongst the grasses. She is a very large spider with a body length of 2cm, but is also well camouflaged and we had thought that perhaps we might not find one this summer:

She is a grasshopper specialist and I am looking forward to seeing what she gets up to for the next couple of weeks before she leaves her web in early September to build a cocoon structure for her eggs before dying. Once she has gone from her web, we will take that as our cue to start the annual cut of the meadows which we try to delay until as many invertebrates as possible have finished their life cycles.