ENHS Nature Trails May 2005 Article 3

Finding Squirrel Nutkin, and other Tales of the Forest
by Reida Kimmel

In mid-April Chuck and I were walking up a very steep trail above Derwentwater in the Lake District of northwest England. The trail went beside a stream flowing over boulders and fallen branches. Waterfalls, ten and fifteen feet high, occasionally interrupted its course. Grey-green slate and limestone cliffs rising from the lakeshore towered above us. Beside the stream, oak trees festooned with mosses and ferns were just beginning to open their green grey buds. As the trail leveled into the Watendlath Valley, the ground cover became very mossy, broken by clumps of grass, ling (Calluna vulgaris), and bilberry bushes, (Vaccinium myrtillus), the European equivalent of our huckleberries. Though scarcely like an Oregon forest, this open oak habitat felt like home. Perhaps it was the conjunction of rock and water, the acid loving plants, or just the cold, crisp air, but this was a place unlike any other woodland we have experienced in England.

Although it is a land of precipitous slate and scree-faced mountains, rough moors and soft green pastures, many parts of the Lake District are wooded. For those of you who are fans of Beatrix Potter, the little tree covered islands along the shore of Derwentwater are the setting for The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin. Nutkin is a red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris), now quite rare. Of course we didn't even bother to look for one. Then two days later on the shores of another lake, Ullsmere, as we walked between the lakeshore farms and the moors above, we entered a small grove of beech and Scots pine trees. There he was, the prettiest, reddest squirrel I have ever seen! With his pointy tufted ears, there was no mistaking him as we watched his feeding and skittering about for as long as he would permit. What a wonderful serendipitous memory.

The reader might notice that so far I have avoided using the word "forest" to describe the English woods. Although the oak woodland above Derwentwater was probably of considerable age, let us say a hundred years or so, and the woods had never been logged, I cannot describe that beautiful place as either "ancient" or "forest-like," as those words have completely different meanings here. Since the Norman Conquest, the word "forest" has meant a royal hunting preserve, not even necessarily a woodland. The remnants of these medieval "forests" for the most part remain, and are called "ancient," though they are no longer royal property. Last Saturday we went to Hatfield Forest, two square miles in size, and unfortunately, just three miles from a major airport. Its present owner, the National Trust, is trying to manage the land traditionally as well as to make the area both accessible and entertaining for suburban Essex and Cambridge families. One can hike, fish, birdwatch, or just sit at a picnic table munching meat pies and French fries cooked to order at the food stand. We hiked slowly as we had two very young nature lovers with us. Walking around the lake and pond, we saw some amazingly huge oak trees, hollow, with "caves" for the children. But for most of our walk, we went through groves of coppiced hawthorn and hazel or through pastures where big oaks and cow-pruned hawthorns dotted the landscape. There were lots of rabbits, at least three badger dens, called "setts," and many, many anthills. The anthills had been dug into and scratched about. What had done the damage? Not rabbits. They don't eat ants. Perhaps badgers? We weren't just playing guessing games to entertain the kids; we truly did not know. Then, on the ground, at an anthill, we saw a large green bird with a red head, a long strong bill and grey wings with white spots. It was digging into the hill, tossing the earth about and eating the angry ants it exposed. I bet you can never guess what it was! The handsome bird was a woodpecker, the green woodpecker (Picus viridus), which the Collins Guide describes as a ground feeder that uses its tongue to capture its prey. It was perfectly suited to its pastureland environment in the heart of one of England's most ancient forests!

It is an astonishing fact that trees in England, whether in wooded areas, wood pasture or hedgerows, have been treated as a resource for at least four and a half thousand years. Archaeologists can trace the history of wood working back to more than two thousand years B.C. Stonehenge and other ceremonial centers of the Bronze Age were preceded by "woodhenges," ceremonial sites marked by enormous trees set into the earth. The Sweet Track in Somerset and the trackway and platform at Flag Fen attest to Neolithic and Bronze Age farmers' skills in constructing timber roads across marshy land. Wooded land has always been used for grazing by cows and sheep as well as deer, and trees and shrubs develop lollipop shapes as their branches can only grow above the reach of browsing animals.

We were amazed to discover that the real wealth of managed European forests comes not from the harvesting of trees grown for timber, but from the harvesting of poles cut on a regular rotation basis from "coppiced" or "pollard" trees: In protected areas, trees are "coppiced," cut off at the "stool" or base, after which they sprout numerous shoots which can be harvested every six to ten years. "Pollard" trees are cut off at a height of six or more feet, at which point the new growth of poles will not suffer from the teeth of grazers. Poles from both sources provide fencing and building material as well as fuel, and, today, paper pulp. The plastered walls of those gorgeous timber-framed ancient houses contain thousands of lengths of small wood (wattles) often woven together with fibers from the pollard linden tree.

Only about fifteen per cent of England is wooded. There is an increasing appreciation of native woodlands and we have seen new plantings, often in honor of the Millennium, in many of the places we have walked. Wherever grazing by sheep, cattle and deer is eliminated, land in Britain will become wooded, with birch and hazel as the pioneer trees, and hardwoods, like oak and beech, forming the bulk of mature forests. In contrast, there are the Forestry Plantations, managed exactly as Weyerhauser and other companies manage American forests, that is, planting with fast growing, generally alien species like Douglas fir, larch and Sitka Spruce, and then regularly clearcutting and replanting. These plantations are open to the public, often with picnic facilities and paths for birdwatchers and hikers, but they are generally as sad and disappointing as any tree farm anywhere.

What about ancient forests, you ask. Well, there are none, not as we conceive of them. Perhaps there is some true "wildwood" in Ireland, small stands of ivy covered oak trees on islands, or perhaps some of the wooded land hanging along cliffs is truly wild, but probably not. To the British, ancient woodland is woodland that is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 or in Anglo Saxon Charters, and still exists today. But those woodlands are in no way wild, just old. Whole ecological communities depend on this land managed from ancient times. Oxslips, cowslips, bluebells, and cow parsley have their associated insects; birds, badgers and rodents feed on the open woodland invertebrates. Many of the coppiced trees are hundreds of years old and eighteen or more feet around at their bases. What a lot of history they have seen!

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