Garden Wildlife UK

Thank you very much, Nuthatch. Can't be a whitebeam then 'cos I get confused with everything .......

My Hazel tree has started to drop nuts. A time of year I always greet with mixed emotions.

Do you eat them, Jacksparrow? They're nicer green, I think - I usually buy some cobnuts

I know someone who used to gather and eat sweet chestnuts raw. They were half the size of foreign shop-bought ones and he reckoned they were wonderful. Used to eat them by the bagful.
Never tried one myself.

nuthatch wrote:Do you eat them, Jacksparrow? They're nicer green, I think - I usually buy some cobnuts

I have eaten them in the past put tend to leave them under the tree for the little critters nowadays. The Filberts you can but at Chrimbo taste better to my palate.

I thought you would do that, Jacksparrow

I used to do that, Placi with chestnuts - they're lovely ... sweet (as a ...) Easy to peel .. nice to bite into, good mourhfeel but can have a dry finish.

Despite this, I agree that they are very moreish

While on my afternoon stroll today I passed under a Beech tree. The ground underneath the tree well covered by fallen beech nuts and shells a.k.a beech mast. If that is repeated in our woods and forests the birds who like that kind of thing are going to be well fed for some time.

Hurrah!

Back in the Dark Ages (before electricity was invented) the local villains used to loose their pigs into the woods where said porkies would hoover up the beechmast.
Bacon was much tastier then , but we didn't have tomatoes.

I had a bit of a shock when I came home today as the lovely big tree (that does block a lot of our view) was half chopped down.
As far as I knew, it had a TPO on it, so I immediately got on to the council. I got passed onto the tree officer who told me that he'd seen it last week and it had the same fungus that a tree in Birmingham had some years back and fell down killing 3 people and that over-rides any TPOs.
He thanked me for letting him know and said he wished there were more people like me
So I'm glad it was official and not some nasty neighbours. Yes, it's old and manky, but the birds love it.
As it happens there's actually 2 trees there and they are going to do some tidying of it.