Episode 14: Early Bird Catches The Worm

Matthew Gudgin:

Morning Chris!

Chris Skinner (00:32):

Oh, Matthew, Good Morning. You're making it sound as if I've just got out of bed. 

Matthew Gudgin:

You've probably been up for six hours. 

Chris Skinner:

No, I was up at five o'clock and so four hours and it's a cloudy morning. I think we were promised some sunshine, but it's clouded over quite early this morning. 

Matthew Gudgin:

We've got a sky full of rooks and jackdoors and gulls.

Chris Skinner:

And gulls as well. So this time of the year, some things hugely changed for the gulls. And we're doing something on farms right across the country now, and it's called min-till. Basically it's two words joined together called minimum tillage. And instead of ploughing the fields and bringing up worms, which is the food source of many of the gull species. People used to call them seagulls, but mainly things like blackhead, gulls, lesser black back gulls and even herring gulls spent most of their life inland 

Matthew Gudgin:

And we are 20 miles from the sea here?

Chris Skinner: 

 We are, we're getting on that distance. So they're really land birds. And so the best way to describe 'em is just gulls really. And we've got a mixture flying round over our heads this morning and I just put some food on the lawn here. Normally I put few pieces of bread down, but I don't ever feed them. But I'm just going to illustrate something. So if we walk away from the little patch of food I've put out for them, they may come and descend onto the ground around us. We're actually on the farm lawn here, so you can see there's a good smattering of molehill and we'll talk about that in a moment. So they're still flying round and they've spotted that. And occasionally you'll have one individual gull, will spot some food and it will call the others in. And normally that would happen behind a tractor and plough the gulls, spend most of the darkness hours somewhere close to the coast, probably Breydon Water, which is about 10 or 15 miles away. 

(02:40)

 And they'll roost out on mudflats out there. And then they'll fly inland each day, fly in quite high up 200 to 300 feet up in the air and they'll just be listening and watching for a tractor on the fields. And because it's been so wet this year as well, there's very little agricultural activity carrying out on the fields.

Matthew Gudgin:

Because the tractors can't get out onto the fields?

Chris Skinner:

No, it's just too wet. And the second thing is when you perform min-till, it's about four times the speed of the old traditional way of ploughing a field, cultivating it, and then drilling it. There's three or even four operations required with min-till. You have the previous crops stubble, and then you drill straight into that. So you're not moving masses of soil anymore, saving a lot of diesel. And the main thing you're saving is time as well. And so you can get all the work done in a timely fashion. So now we're sort of close to the middle of December. There's very little field work going on. Obviously food feels the potatoes are still to be harvested and the main crop of sugar beet is still being harvested. And you'll see big flocks of gulls learning to change from following the plough to following the sugar beet harvester, which will bring up the roots, but it also brings up some worms as well. And that's what they're looking for and wanting to feed on. 

(04:09)

 They've mainly disappeared at the moment because we're standing quite close to where I put the food out. 

Matthew Gudgin:

What sort of food is that, by the way? 

Chris Skinner:

Oh, that's Fox food. This is a little bit controversial because I don't control any predators at High Ash Farm. And occasionally I feed the foxes here and it causes a lot of angst with neighbouring farmers and a lot of sort of upset. But if I'm feeding them, they're not eating the pheasants or the partridges when they're incubating their eggs because I'll provide an alternative food source. Foxes are rather lazy, but it works here because my job is to farm wildlife and I don't discriminate between what other people would call good and bad wildlife, but it does cause a lot of angst. And so I can tell you lots and lots of stories and people love the stories I tell. 

(05:09)

 But to show you the sort of venom that's dished out on me, I was at a local agricultural supply shop just a few weeks back and I came out to the shop, going into the shop, sorry, just as a neighbouring farmer, an NFU member was coming out and he looked at me, he didn't say anything for a few seconds and he said, ‘I’ve been happy for three or four weeks’. And he said, ‘somebody told me you were dead’. And that is a reaction to what I'm doing here at the farm because I don't control, I have buzzards galore, red kites, foxes badgers. It goes right down the predatorial list. Stoats, weasels. I have hedgehogs and many gamekeepers dislike them. 

Matthew Gudgin (06:01):

But generally I think, I mean judging from what I can gather, there are more farmers now in your school of thought than there were maybe 10, 15 years ago. 

Chris Skinner (06:11):

Yes. It's gradually, gradually changing and it's been helped by countryside stewardship schemes where you're kind of paid to look after the crop of wildlife. So I think that farmer, although he's a close neighbour, is a little bit unusual. And that is rather an extreme reaction. 

Matthew Gudgin (06:29):

Well whatever the rights and wrongs, that's not a very pleasant thing to say.

Chris Skinner (06:31):

Farmers don't hold back on what's in their head usually comes straight out of their mouth.

Matthew Gudgin:

We know that. 

Chris Skinner:

Yes. So that's normal for Norfolk. And I did walk away and smile because I'm very aware of what I'm doing is controversial. But somebody's got to start off looking after the wildlife and being a bit kinder to nature. And that's part of what we're seeing here at the farm, that mint-till is a way of keeping the carbon in the soil and looking after. And actually the soil types are improving. And as farmers, we have come along a huge way. 

Right back in the seventies and eighties, I was called Atilla The Hun in the village because I did all the bailing with a box of Swanvestas matches. Do you remember stubble burning? 

Matthew Gudgin (07:19):

I remember it very well in August, there'd be fields all smoking and smouldering, that terrible smell. 

Chris Skinner (07:26):

Yes. And it burnt the stubble. And then you could actually do min-till it was an early form of minimum tillage, but it got rid of a lot of the organic matter, which is what we're now trying to harvest. We're trying to put humus back into the soil. And humus is a form of carbon, if you like. And so it's also called humification where you're adding another component to the soil. And that's actually why we're standing on this lawn this morning. You diverted me. 

Matthew Gudgin (07:54):

I thought you'd invited me to a lawn like Buckingham Palace Tea party. 

Chris Skinner (07:58):

Yes. No, we're actually looking at the soils again this morning. If you remember the last few weeks we've looked at sands, we've looked at clays, we looked at last week in podcasts. We looked at peat, all of them very briefly because each soil type, you could do two or three hours actually talking about how it's composed, what importance it has. And this we're standing right in the middle of the farmyard here and years ago when you chose the spot for a farm, and it would be back in the 14, 15, 160s, so hundreds of years ago, you chose the best soil in that particular spot. And that's why where High Ash Farmhouse is, there's the house I was born in. That's why the soil here and in the farmhouse gardens, a lovely walled garden just over the building there with beautiful fruit trees in there. 

(08:52)

 That's why the soil here is the very best in this area.

Matthew Gudgin:

And your friends, the moles have done their business here because we don't have to dig up for it. 

Chris Skinner:

No, no. The moles have brought this soil up and this is alluvial soil. Now, as I said, we talked about sand and clay and peat and alluvial soil if you'd like, the best way of looking at, it's a mixture of all those things. So you've got different size soil grains in there and the mole, here it is, just look at this, it's beautiful, dark, lovely, actually fryable soil with a lovely, what we call a crumb structure. And you can see all the little parts of the roots from the grass and all the previous plants that have been growing here. And it's all kind of in farming terms, we call it flockulating. 

(09:44)
 And it's where all these components join together. And although it's been very, very wet in the last few days, that's not wet and yet it's got 50% clay, 50% sand in there, some silt in there as well. So you have all those different components joined together to make that. Just look at that. The mole has very kindly brought it up and it's all part of the conservation here at the farm. So this is my lawn, and if you stand back up, Matthew, just turn round, there’s probably a hundred molehill, but it tells us a lot as well. It tells us there's a very high worm population here, which is exactly why we're doing min-till. It's helping the worm population by not completely destroying the soil structure by ploughing either when it's too wet or very, very heavy machinery. So you've got the moles here saying an awful lot to us saying there's a good worm population. 

(10:42)

The soil is very fryable and it's also one of our most beautiful mammals as well. It's absolutely stunning little creature, only about a hundred millimetres long, big spade like feet at the front to dig the soils. And of course farmers rely on drainage in soils like this that can get very waterlogged in the winter. And we have a machine that does the same job as a mole, but mechanically and it's called a mole drain. 

Matthew Gudgin:

So it digs burrows?

Chris Skinner:

It makes burrows quite deep down in the soil so you can drain your field with gravel and then pipes and then above that so you don't damage the pipes anymore. You pull a soil expander and it's called a mole and it makes a little trail through the soil with a slot above it. So when you have these wet conditions that we've had, if you've got good quality soil, you don't want your crops with their feet in the water. 

(11:42)

 So drainage of all the soil types we've talked about, you don't perhaps have to worry so much with the sands because large particle size means the water goes straight through. So down in the Brecks where you have sandy soil and all around the Norfolk coast, we have the barley lands that we looked at, those soil types when we went down to winter and on sea, the sands very free draining, but with the clays, the loams and the silts and even the peats that we talked about in the Fenn District last week, you do need to drain the soil and you can do that with land, drainage, pipes, gravel, and also that mole drainer. And so you can learn a lot because we're standing on soaking wet ground and it's not at all wet because of the natural drainage. And remember, worms make holes in the soil. It's rather like a colander. The water goes in and goes down the worm holes and then percolates away into the subsoil. When you've got good natural soil, it hasn't been run on by tractors in wet conditions. So we're still learning an awful lot. We're learning about the environment and we're learning most importantly of all how to look after our precious soils that grow our food. 

Matthew Gudgin (13:01):

Seeing all these mole hills reminds me that I should ask after the health of your subterranean creature, Rat!

Chris Skinner (13:07):

Rat.

Matthew Gudgin (13:08):

Who if you were tuned into our podcast last week, Chris told us about a close encounter of the fox kind. 

Chris Skinner (13:15):

Yes. He came out, I managed to call him out of the hole. He was barking a good 20 feet down, a very large rabbit burrow, and he'd got a fox. He'd cornered a fox down there and I called and called, called him. I could hear this muffled barking. Anyway, after about 15 minutes my heart had sunk. He came back out just for a second and he was bright yellow. He had a red nose because he'd encountered the fox close on and got bitten on the nose. That is healing up nicely.

Matthew Gudgin (13:50):

That didn’t put him off then?

Chris Skinner (13:51):

He turned around in a millisecond once he got and saw me and he was off back down the hole because a terrier, the terrier in him says ‘One of us has coming out of this hole dead and it won't be me’. He legged it and I just managed to catch his hind leg. He turned around and yanked him out and he looked at me. It was worse than that local farmer, the look he gave me. And I grabbed him and got him back into the truck. I had to bath him and he's lived to tell another tale, but how I managed to grab him because he'd virtually out of sight before my hand got his hind leg and pulled him out ingloriously. He's only just forgiven me for this because the terrier in him says I'm not letting go. He's got a touch of chihuahua in him, but don't laugh. And the chihuahua loves laying in front of my open log fire in the evenings. There we are. He's all right. 

Matthew Gudgin (15:00):

We're just out and about on the farm Chris, an a marvellous sight, one of your buzzers in open country, 

Chris Skinner (15:06):

I'll just stop the truck, Matthew, look at that. It's just effortlessly soaring away on the wind there. And he's being mobbed and mocked by half a dozen jackdoors. They don't like the look of that. And he's just ambling across the field only about 30 feet up off the ground. And he's making his way across from the wood that's in front of us to the small area of woodland in such a successful bird here at the farm now. It's a daily site. In fact, I can't remember a day in the last year when I haven't seen a buzzard or two and so successful with all this area of woodland. We've got high population of rabbits, so a lot of natural control here. And we had three pairs of buzzards nesting here this year. And we have six youngsters together with the already we have the adults here. So we've got quite a population and they're spending some of the day here and then they often just disappear. And I think we've got a question this week. 

Matthew Gudgin (16:12):

Yeah, I'm just to prove that buzzards are thriving and particularly in the county of Norfolk, Pamela Morgan who lives in the Broadland area says ‘Recently, between the last week in November and the first few days of this month, I've travelled past a field of winter wheat near Rockland St. Mary and have constantly counted up to 25 buzzards. I thought they may be feeding on earthworms, but they're all just sitting quite motionless on the ground. The ground has been frozen during this time having seen a spectacle like this. I wonder if you might know what is going on.’ 

Chris Skinner (16:46):

Look, running up the track there, Matthew. Oh, a stoat.

Matthew Gudgin (16:50):

Oh a stoat. Yes. 

Chris Skinner (16:52):

A stoat into the trees. Wow. I was watching something under the tree while you were reading the question out, and it's a stoat and it ran up the track in front of us. Wow. So quick, legs in a blur, quite sort of about eight to 10 inches long and a smooth line between the brown coat on the back and the creamy white underneath. So stoat is smooth. Weasel, which is much smaller, is a wavy line. So weasels, wavy and Mustela nivalis for the weasel and Mustela ermina or ermin for the stoat, and that's the one who can change his coat colour during the winter months. 

Matthew Gudgin (17:38):

Our stoat wasn't in ermin though?

Chris Skinner (17:39):

No, he wasn't, but I still picked him out because I noticed the sort of pale colour underneath the creamy yellow colour on the under part of the body. So there we are, another distraction, 

Matthew Gudgin (17:52):

Dozens of buzzards all in one place on a field and just sort of having a bit of a mother's meeting. Really? 

Chris Skinner (17:59):

Yes. And that's exactly perhaps what they were doing, but there'd be dads there as well. And at this time of the year, the buzzards are pairing up, they're actually doing courtship displays. They're quite early nesters, but they'll choose a site somewhere. So they have their own territory and the territories are getting pushed closer and closer together across our country at the moment as there's a more enlightened view on having buzzards in your patch by local gamekeepers. And so they're fewer and fewer of them are now being persecuted. So that's really, really good news. But what the buzzards were doing is they will congregate like that, quite large gatherings, and they could have been looking for worms. We've had a few frosts then we've had water log conditions on the soil and that's brought the worms up. And surprisingly, although buzzards are quite large birds, they do spend quite a lot of time on the ground terrestrial feeders. 

(18:59)

 And they will not only feed on worms, but they'll feed on beetles as well. And they'll find that on water log soil. So you'll often have a congregation of them, but the sole reason that there isn't just for feeding, it's for finding a mate as well. So you have these large numbers gathering and as we go through December into January around about midday, you'll often see them on a sunny winter's day spiralling round. And your eye will just pick out one or two buzzards. And when you stand and watch and you look up even higher, and there can be half a dozen, even 10, all in this kind of vortex high up, and they don't seem to flap their wings, they'll find one of these little air movements in a circle and follow that up almost to the cloud base. Even on cold winter days, they just love flying and midday they'll take to the air and you'll have quite large numbers, so you just have to watch, particularly if you've got a pair of binoculars because the high ones got to two, 3000 feet. They look like little pinpricks in the sky, and yet they're quite large birds. And we've had almost a pure white one here this year. It has now gone across to that area that's recorded there. It's close to Rockland, it's been seen there. And we think it's related to some of the Scandinavian buzzards, which are often quite light coloured, but it's still a common buzzard. 

Matthew Gudgin (20:30)

Sally and Mike Saville live in Bedfordshire. They're sent a note asking about tips for sparrow box installation and sighting and what elevation is best. And I'm sure you'll be sending them a full answer, but people should be encouraged to have these sparrow boxes.

Chris Skinner (20:45):

Yes, sparrows have red list species, they're still fairly common birds, Passer domesticus, the domestic bird. So as opposed to Passer montana, which is the tree sparrow, and that is quite a scarce bird now. So they're both at the farm, but we don't have many tree sparrows anymore. But I did miss them about 25 years ago, got down to almost a single pair and I started putting nest boxes up for them. And my largest nest boxes, a row of 42 on one of the new buildings. And all those nest boxes are occupied doing really, really well. And I've also put up various other designs. And on last week's podcast I posted off a design and a full set of instructions for a six hole house sparrow communal nest box. They like being together, they're very gregarious bird sparrows. And so I sent that off and the correspondence last week should have that by now. It's gone off by first class post. And I'll do the same for the request this week. 

Matthew Gudgin (21:58):

And here's a note from Carolyn, Carolyn Skipper, who's at Catfield in Norfolk. Look forward to hearing you each week. Chris. Very interesting podcast. I've attached a photograph my brother David took at New Costessy in Norwich on Monday the 28th of November, Waxwings feeding on sorbus berry. We'd taken more photos the day before at Beeston Common on the north Norfolk coast where we'd gone to find them. And we're lucky to see many high up on leafless trees. We're also so lucky to live in this beautiful countryside, aren't we? And there's the photograph and my word. They look so exotic, don't they?

Chris Skinner (22:34):

They do! And yet they come from northern regions way up north Scandinavia. This time of the year when the weather's cold over there, they will migrate across the North Sea and they’ll plunder, our well sorbus, a species of the Rowan. And when my youngest son was born, I helped name him Rowan because Rowan is also known as the mountain ash and as this is High Ash Farm, that's how my youngest son got his name. So I planted 24 Rowan, they're not really trees, they sort of get to about 20 feet high and generally that's as high as they go. But during September and October they're absolutely laden with bright orange berries. Sorbus is the scientific name of the Rowan species. And their leaves are rather like ash trees, although they're not closely related to the ash trees that we have here at the farm. Nevertheless, they are absolute top food for the waxwing. 

Matthew Gudgin (23:44):

And aren’t they splendid looking because they've got dove grey underneath and there's a flash of yellow on the wing and red and there's this punk hairstyle on their head as well.

Chris Skinner (23:53):

Yes, I'm glad you noticed. It's a punk hairstyle. It's a kind of a crest and it's quite large. They have black roundy eyes and a little bit of black under the chin, and they get their name from bright red tips. It looks as though the tips of the secondary wing feathers have been dipped in hot red wax. So they're called waxwings. That's what we call them in this country now. They're fairly quiet birds. There’s two bird species that come across the North Sea at this time of the year. One is the red wing and the other is the waxwing. And both of them have a very similar call. It's very, very high pitch. Some people call it a kind of sea noise like that. And when red wings migrate across a North Sea, they'll sometimes come to Norfolk in the hours of darkness. 

(24:47)

 And you'll hear this, (sfx descending whistle) it's very high pitched, very thin call. And that's given the waxwing its name because part of the territory of the waxwing is Russia, Northern Russia in particular. And the Russians call it the Reedpipe bird. And that's what sivistril is. That's the name of what the Russians call wax wings because it sounds exactly like you blowing very carefully and very lightly across the top of a reed pipe. So that's where they get their name from. 

Now when they arrive, some years you'll have wax wing gear and some years, two or three years in a row you won't see them. And it really depends on the weather. Right up at the Arctic circle almost there's sort of tundra up there is their breeding territory. And then when they've raided all the juniper berries and the sorbus, the mountain ash berries up there, and sometimes Hawthorn in that scrubby area sort of midway between rock and snow, it's very harsh climate up there. They'll move south into northern Scandinavia and northern Russia. And then if the weather continues to be cold and it can be really harsh, they've eaten all the berries and the food, they will then come across the North Sea, particularly down the east coast of our country. But this is embarrassing for me. I dread to tell you I've seen lots and lots of birds. I have never yet seen a waxwing in the flesh. So there we are. Those pictures always make me 

Matthew Gudgin (26:23):

You have actually gone a shade of green. 

Chris Skinner (26:26):

I have. I'm green with envy  it’s the only way to describe it. And yes, I've yet to see one. I haven't travelled to see them, but I've got cotoneaster planted around lots of the buildings at the farm. So you get those bright red berries and I'm expecting them, you know what lazy farmers are like? I'm expecting the birds to come to me. 

Matthew Gudgin (26:46):

Mohammed comes to the mountain. 

Chris Skinner (26:47):

Exactly. So there we are. So there's your waxwings, beautiful words. You've found out how they got their name. Those little red tips, not on the primary flight feathers, it's on the secondary flight feathers. Sort of beige pink underneath that punk crest on the top of their head and black under the chin as well and beautifully you happen to see them flying over. There's a lovely rusty red base to the tail as well. So really attractive. But to give you an idea of the size, it's about Starling size and the jizz of them when they're flying does look like a flock of starlings. 

Matthew Gudgin (27:26):

Well thank you for the photo Carolyn and Chris is just sort of a light shade of green now 

Chris Skinner (27:32):

My mother would be pleased, she said he's been eating his greens. 

Matthew Gudgin (27:36):

It's a marvellous photograph. And thank you to everyone who's contacted us with questions and comments. 

The email address is chris@countrysidepodcast.co uk, but there's still more to come from this week's episode and we're about to proceed in a sort of a northerly direction…

Chris Skinner (27:56):

Yes, we are. We're heading up the hill here and we're just going into some woodland as something I'm desperate to show you. 

Matthew Gudgin:

Oh look. 

Chris Skinner:

20 feet from us. Matthew, what did you see?

Matthew Gudgin (28:24):

I saw a buzzard in the trees. A big bird to be flying amongst that really quite crowded environment. 

Chris Skinner (28:30):

Yes, that's what they love. Sort of open woodland like this, but big large mature beech trees. Scots pine, some ivy on the trees and it's obviously taking shelter, but lots and lots of small mammals down on the woodland floor 

Matthew Gudgin (28:46):

Like stoats?

Chris Skinner (28:47):

Yes, that would've been a top meal for that buzzard. 

Matthew Gudgin (28:51):

And it’s only a few feet away from where you saw the stoat.

Chris Skinner (28:53):

That could already be a dead stoat.

Matthew Gudgin (29:07):

We've had a week or so of freezing conditions last week everything was white here and we had a certain degree of frost. This week though, everything's looking more green and we've got the autumn colours. The leaves are virtually all down off the trees, but there's still a keen edge to the wind.

Chris Skinner (29:23):

Yes, there is. That wind swung around a bit this morning, Matthew. And it's coming in almost from the due east. So yes, a few years ago we called it the beast from the east when we had the snow accompanying the wind like that. So I'm standing sideways and so let the wind go past me rather than through me this morning.  

Matthew Gudgin (29:43):

I have to say I've got two coats on and gloves and you are standing there just in a sweater. 

Chris Skinner (29:46):

Yes, yes. Well you see I’m hot-blooded that's what that is. And I'm particularly hot-blooded because I've been felling some trees here this week, Matthew. We've had quite a lot of mature trees die at the farm this year. Scots Pine in particular, and I've found out why. I've been talking to some timber experts. Paul Osborne is one, I've consulted him and he could tell me what's happened. And so we're standing right by quite a large scots pine and if you follow the trunk up, Matthew, there's not a single bit of green at the top of it. It's completely deceased. And it died July last year when we had that 40 degree temperature. So it's been standing here completely dead for a year. And as it's right by one of the small permissive walks at the farm here for safety reasons, once trees have been dead a year or so, I actually take them down because they just fall over, particularly scots pine will come out by the roots. 

(30:54)

 The roots are very shallow and that's the reason for its demise. This particular tree, it's going very close to a beech tree only about 10 feet away and then only 15 feet away from a very large oak tree and further beech trees there. They're all quite deep rooted. Whereas the scots pine, because it doesn't need to have deep roots, its home is up in Scotland up there. Although we curse the rain here in East Anglia when we get sort of two or three inches of rain. Up in Scotland, you can have at least a hundred inches of rain in a year. The rainfall up there is much, much higher. So Scot's pine have learnt to have shallow root systems just really enough to hold the tree in the ground, but it doesn't need to go right down because the water table in Scotland would be much higher. 

Matthew Gudgin (31:49):

So during the drought conditions of the last 18 months, and I know we've had a very wet last few months, but generally it's been drought and that's what's done for this. 

Chris Skinner (31:58):

That’s what's done for the tree now. So isn't a disease, nothing else has killed it, but something interesting has happened to the tree. So if we walk up a little bit, and this is kind of really interesting. Now, can you see around this side, Matthew, some tiny little holes. It looks as though somebody's shot a shotgun at the bar. 

Matthew Gudgin (32:23):

Oh, they look like woodworm holes. Like in people’s old furniture.

Chris Skinner (32:24):

That is exactly what they are. Yes. Anobium punctatum. But I love some of the scientific names of the tree and it's peppered here. Look, I can put my finger on five holes. Look. There you go. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Can you see them? Yeah, absolutely peppered. And so what's happened is a woodworm has come flown in. It's a winged little beastie like a fly, a tiny fly, and it will come and lay its eggs on the trunk. They then hatch out and just under the bark, if I chipped the bark off, we would see woodworm marks with the little grubs hatching out. 

Matthew Gudgin:

There's some very big holes this side?

Chris Skinner:

So that's the next part of the story. 

Matthew Gudgin:

I'm sorry I've gone ahead of myself. 

Chris Skinner:

No, well that's good. I'm glad you're observant because that's good. So we just walk around the tree a little bit and there's some very large holes here. You hardly get a match head in those so almost. Well it's over an eighth of an inch in diameter and that is a really interesting creature and it's called a giant wood wasp. 

There's two or three species of wood wasps in our country. And this one, it looks absolutely formidable. The only way you can describe it, it looks like a hornet and it's about that size. And at the back end of the female giant wood wasp, you have something called an ovipositor, which is a great big long needle and it looks like a kind of stinging organ. So it puts people off if you ever see them, they do look a bit little bit different. They're still black and yellow predominant colours, but they don't have that waspy waist. It's a continuous sort of body at the backend. And then this fearsome ovipositor coming out of the backend of them. 

(34:18)

 So the tree, I felled three of the trees already and once I started logging them I noticed something strange. You see all the saw dust where the trees landed and you've got one that's survived? Yes, that one's completely all right because it's not near any other large trees. Look. So that's Scots Pines still completely okay. And they're scattered right through the woodland, but it's when they're under stress with the shallow root system, they can't compete for water. And of course the time they need the water, most of all is in July and August when we had those hot periods and they're just not used to it. So down in Thetford where you have forestry conditions, there's also been quite a large kill if you like, caused by the droughts. Now I've kept a couple of the logs here. I want to show you something we might be lucky. And so what I've done, I've brought an axe. Do you know what this is? It's an axe. 

Matthew Gudgin:

It's a manual chainsaw. 

Chris Skinner:

Yes it is. Yes. So what I'll do, I'll split one of the logs, here we go and we'll look in and we'll see if we can see anything. Yes, I can see one. I'll try another one. I'll see if I can get a little better example for you. Here we go. Let's have a look. 

Chopping wood fx

Yes. Good. We haven't actually got one, but you can see the hole goes into the wood and it works its way right into the heartwood. This log is about a foot diameter. And look at that. 

Matthew Gudgin (35:54):

And that's where wood wood wasp would be is it?

Chris Skinner (35:57):

That's where the lava wood wasp would have been. Now. It probably just dropped out when I chopped this one and you can well look. 

Matthew Gudgin:

Look. 

Oh, excellent. There’s the lavae.

Chris Skinner (36:09):

It's like a little caterpillar, a cream coloured caterpillar. I did say it dropped out. Let's have a look at it and it's wiggling. Now this is a lavae. This is two years old, this lavae, it's about an inch long, about two centimetres, and it's got a black tip to it, which is the head end of it. I feel rather sorry that I've done that, but it's actually dropped out of the log. Well spotted and it's got a lot of secrets. So it migrates right into the middle of the hardwood and it wrecks this particular piece of timber. Although it wasn't going to be used for roof construction or timber construction, it is just going to be used as firewood. It's not enough here to sell. 

Matthew Gudgin (36:53):

So the poor thing probably would've been done for anyway.

Chris Skinner (36:54):

It's already let water into the side. You can see the black staining all the way around the outside of this log, but it's wiggling and wiggling. It's good food for robins and things now that particular caterpillar’s out. So spend about two years in the tree on the third year, it migrates to the outside of the trunk again and pupate so that the little adult when it emerges as a giant wood wasp in perhaps next spring doesn't have too far to dig itself out. Now there's a lot more to giant wood wasps than meet the eye and I love it. Absolutely love the story. When the female wood wasp drills that ovipositor into a wood, she won't use a lovely live tree. She'll only do it in dead or damaged trees or drought stricken trees. They have to be under stress. She then lays, she drills in with this little needle and it's amazing. 

(37:54)

 She'll sort of stand up on her legs very high up, and then the ovipositor goes down just like a sort of pneumatic drill into the wood. How they do it, it's just amazing because the wood's quite hard. She then sort of has a sawing action and once she gets right down perhaps half to three quarters of an inch into the wood, she then lays two or three eggs. But at the same time she does something else. She introduces a fungus, which is on her ovipositor, and that fungus rots the wood ahead of the larvae…

Matthew Gudgin:

To make it softer?

Chris Skinner:

To make it softer. And now we can see the channels where the wood wasp has dug through. And it's this like powder coming out. 

Matthew Gudgin:

It's all mushy, almost like old polyfiller. 

Chris Skinner:

It's like chewed up paper. Look at that. There it is. It's like a dust.  And that's got a name. It's called Frass. So amazing life history. So she injects the trunk with a kind of dissolving solution, although it's a fungus and it's on her ovipositor and inside her ovipositor together with her own eggs. What an amazing life story. There we are. You're absolutely spoiled and well done for spotting that lavae. I was going to try and find one in the wood for you. There's a small one, there's a year old one. Remember they spent two or three years and that's in the wood that I split there. And there you have one of the channels and there's another wood wasp lava just there that's come out and there's a little cavity and there's the frass. So the head goes first with that little black tip on the head of that really juicy lava and the frass comes out of the other end. This sort of powdery papery substance there it is blowing away. It's exactly like sawdust, which is exactly what it is, but it's been right through that lava There we are helped by the fungus. You couldn't make it up. Nature just blows me away every time.