Swans, snails and gorillas

I had not run my customary loop for a long time, so it was good to see the swans again.

Next to their pond I saw a hole in an ash tree and when I looked in I found a surprise.

Either a snail nursery or a snail hotel.

This led me to seek out other holes. The only one with a snail shell inside had no snail inside the shell.

I continued on and crawled into a new little patch of woodland. Nothing to report but bramble scratches and the call of a bullfinch.

I listened to the ash tree by the stream where I once saw a kingfisher, but the tree had nothing to say.

Then I went into the patch of woodland by the path and saw evidence of... what must be guerilla conservation! Oh. Did I mislead you? Sorry. Easy mistake to make. No gorillas here. There's a lot of groundwork being done... I wonder if this is some hydrology measure to create ponds and prevent flooding.

There was more of this kind of thing upriver.

And the river in the wood had lost its meander... as well as being blocked by fallen trees.

But in the wood itself, the work wasn't like contractors... it was far more... random.

All over the place - but mainly on a newly made track (made by some kind of vehicle) scrub and even trees were down.

Maybe the gorillas... guerillas... live here.

And eat these.

The real reason I think it's guerilla conservation is that the vehicle smashed the fence on the way in to the wood.

You might say, oh it's just destruction. But how different would the passage of an elephant look?