A walk in the woods

Inspired by this article on the local paper's website, Mr C and I went to explore Heartwood Forest on Sunday afternoon. Back in 2008 I remember being woken up one morning by the radio news telling us that St Albans was going to be home to the Woodland Trust's new forest. At the time exact details were a bit sketchy, but the site is all now agreed, and purchased I believe, and access has been made for the public.

The plan is for them to create a 840 acre wood near Sandridge, on the outskirts of St Albans. There are already about 45 acres of ancient woodland in the land that they have, but they plan to plant another 600,000 trees on what is currently farming land. 170 acres of land has now been opened up to the public and this is where Mr C and I went exploring. 

Obviously the areas where there is still farm land is a bit bare at the moment, but some of the ancient woodland was quite spectacular. In many places it looked like quite a covering of bluebells would come out over the next few weeks. In one section were were delighted to see a very large number of chaffinches flying up from the wood floor up into the trees. I certainly had never seen so many before. 

Using the binoculars we were also able to spot several skylarks in the open fields. Their song was particularly noticeable, although they were somewhat difficult to spot unless you saw them drop down from the sky to a particular place. Flying over one bit of woodland we also think we say three buzzards. It's hard to be exactly sure that that is what they were, but looking at various guide books and the internet we think we're correct.

On the subject of bird identification, it may be worth mentioning that Mr C and I recently joined the RSPB having been meaning to do so for ages. Several people we know are members and all speak very highly of the members magazine that they receive. The RSPB also have quite a unique way that people can pay for membership by paying as much as they want, either annually or monthly. From only £3 a month you can become an adult member. Our free gift upon joining was a copy of the RSPB Handbook of British Birds. So far I've been using it quite a bit after walks like today and it certainly seems pretty useful. I guess we're officially turning into birdwatchers, but not quite in the category of being twitchers!