fiery brown

She'd be kind of all right too maybe after losong a couple of pounds. Woof woof woof woof - I'm getting better at it!

Two conifers which grow well as an understory are western hemlock and western red cedar. I wouldn't plant them throughout the wood as they would spoil a nice hardwood environment. They would be ideal along edges to keep the wind down and to act as flushing points. Planted sympathetically, they should benefit a native woodland environment within. You would want to cut them down at 10 years or so before they get too big and replant in stages. I find bare leaf litter areas under mature hardwoods are favoured by pheasants for scratching in, especially if you scatter grain now and then. I

Unfortunately access is difficult even for a mini digger as it would have to pass through an oak plantation which hasn't reached thinning stage. I'm happy enough to spend an odd hour after work with the spade and shovel (an antidote to sitting at a desk all day). I reckon that by the time I have 10 hours clocked up I will have a pond capable of attracting a few teal at least. There is a large pond a couple of hundred yards away (out of my bounds) which isn't fed and is rarely shot so there are lots of ducks around. I'll start a seperate thread when I get a few more pics. Hopefully I can p

Thanks Wag, Sounds encouraging, although I guess the pond will only measure about 15 yards by 4 this year and maybe a little extra each year after that. The attached picture is taken at the end of March when the water table was up to ground level. Now it has dropped about 2 foot althoough the pool in the foreground is still full as it is directly on a spring. I might enlarge that hole and leave unconnected to the rest of the pond so that there will be a small permanent pond. I've found that it is a lot easier to dig dry clay than it is to dig mud and I got a good bit dug yesterday wher

Just wondering how small can a flight pond be to work? I'm not after numbers, just a brace every month or so. I'm digging by spade which is not as implausable as it may sound as I'm digging around a spring in a wet part of a wood. I have a few square yards test dug in an hour. It's near my back door so very handy to feed. There are plenty of ducks in the area but not much water to entice them on my patch.