Unexpected finds

After I'd finished cutting hazel for the day, I went to find a badger sett some people told me about.

This sett didn't look active and all around the holes there were fragments of pottery and glass. It was strange. I guess this must have been a tip at some point.

Nearby there's an old building, artfully decorated.

As I was walking back to my car, I met a man who said he'd been coming to this site for 48 years. It used to be all fields, he said. He knew where all the setts and warrens were, the foxes, badgers and rabbits. Course, he used to shoot them. the rabbits, at any rate. He and a few other blokes. One with terrier and one with a lurcher.

"This place is horrible now," he said.

Well, I guess he can't kill things any more.

Mind you, the trees in lines and the overgrown coppice are a shame. Also, as this man pointed out, the many people who come to walk their dogs.

I'm being unfair, of course. Why shouldn't people come? I regret the barking dogs

"She's giving a squirrel a headache!" laughed one man as his dog barked somewhere out of sight, maybe a hundred yards away - it had been barking for a few minutes already.

I nearly said, "The squirrel's not the only one with a headache."

What I did say was, "I feel really sorry for the wildlife at this wildlife reserve."

He called the dog.

Anyway, I had got a fair amount done before I sat down to lunch.

And at this point, I was treated to... quiet.

I watched tits and a robin. A wren landed close to me and then flew into one of the brash teepees protecting a cut stool. That tapping sound I mentioned before? Woodpeckers. Rather obviously.

When I packed up, a couple came by.

"Ah!" they said, "The worker! We saw someone was coppicing but never saw the person! We thought it was the woodland fairy!"