At Woodlands.co.uk we encourage people to buy, own and enjoy their own woodland.  We've been selling our woodlands through Woodlands.co.uk for 20 years, but we want to make more woodlands more widely available. For buyers it can be difficult and time-consuming to find out what is available, so we have developed a website where people can buy and sell woodlands  : http://www.forests.co.uk.  For sellers of larger woodlands, www.forests.co.uk is intended to help market these more widely. Read more...

Once upon a time, we only had to worry about the impact of the imported grey squirrel on our native red squirrel (see blog https://www.woodlands.co.uk/blog/conservation/red-squirrel-grey-squirrel/  ).  However, it now seems there is another player on the scene: the black squirrel.   Whereas red and grey squirrels are two distinct species, Sciurus vulgaris and Sciurus caroliniensis, black squirrels are variants of the grey squirrel. Read more...

When did you last listen to the 'dawn chorus'? April and May are the best months for hearing it, but if getting up early is a bit too much to ask, then you could pay a visit to the Breathing Places site at the BBC, where you can select a location and listen to a recording of the 'dawn chorus'. Alternatively, you can download their excellent guide to the dawn chorus and bird song. Read more...

Now the weather is warmer, dragonflies and damselflies are quite common around ponds and areas of water. Their beautiful iridescence and double wings are quite distinctive, but what is the difference between a dragonfly and a damselfly? Read more...

Butterfly Conservation has just launched a £900,000 conservation scheme to encourage better woodland management for butterflies in the South-East. Read more...

Already some buttercups are in flower.  They may be found in fields, pastures, hedgerows meadows, and of course, lawns and gardens!  The early flowers are often those of the bulbous buttercup (Ranunculus bulbosus).  These may be distinguished from those of the meadow buttercup (Ranunculus acris) by looking at the way the green sepals are arranged beneath the flower.  In the meadow buttercup, they lie against the flower, whereas those of the bulbous buttercup are said to be “reflexed” – the sepals hang down. Read more...

When a tree has been cut down or felled, then it is relatively easy to work out its age by counting the growth or annual rings that can be seen on the sawn-off stump. Under the bark of a tree is a special tissue (called the cambium) which forms new cells so that the tree can grow. Differences in the rate at which cells are produced by this tissue give rise to the annual or growth rings.  If conditions are good for growth (warm, regular rainfall) then the ring that is formed will be wider than that created in a year where the tree struggles for water, or it is cold.  There is one ring for each year of a tree's life. (In any given year, an annual ring will have two components - a lighter coloured band of tissue (larger vessels) formed in the Spring and Summer and a darker band (smaller vessels)that is created when growth is slower in late Summer / Autumn.) Read more...

Watching the swifts swooping around in this week’s blue skies reminded me of the BirdTrack (originally Migration Watch) online recording scheme.  BirdTrack, run in conjunction by the British Trust for Ornithology, the RSPB and BirdWatch Ireland, tracks migration patterns and distribution of species in Britain and Ireland. Read more...