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On a fresher late-August morning at High Ash Farm, after just under ten millimetres of welcome rain has begun to tint the parched pastures with the faintest green, Chris Skinner and Matthew Gudgin begin at the duck pond. An extraordinary mallard mother who successfully raised nine ducklings earlier in the spring has now returned with a second brood of thirteen tiny balls of fluff. The youngsters form a tight “football” when geese approach, while the attentive mother keeps constant watch. Nearby, moorhens continue their own remarkable family life, with older chicks helping to feed the latest brood.
The pair then walk into Cantley Hill Plantation to examine the beech trees, here close to the northern natural limit of the species. Chris gathers the hard, hairy cupules of beech mast, explains their value to squirrels, birds and once to pigs during pannage, and recounts how the dry, scrunchy leaves were once stuffed into mattresses known in France as a “talking bed.” A remarkable horizontal beech that keeled over in the 1987 storm but re-rooted and sent up new vertical trunks illustrates the tree’s resilience, while drought is already forcing some leaves into early autumn gold.
In Barnwood they discover a deep clay pond — a vital woodland drinking hole. Trail-camera footage has already captured a female green woodpecker (the yaffle) and a great spotted woodpecker coming to drink, with hopes of adding the elusive lesser spotted. Dead trees and thick ivy stems provide further habitat, while Rat the terrier briefly becomes stuck in a bramble thicket.
Listener letters bring a perfect mossy wren’s nest (and a discussion of polygamy), a discarded whisky bottle posing a fire risk, stressed cattle and early silage use in Northumberland, a kidney-spot ladybird, a mysterious wood-pigeon nest containing four eggs, and a long list of sightings from recent walkers including nuthatch, treecreeper, clouded yellows and roe deer.
This episode is a gentle celebration of maternal devotion, woodland resilience and the quiet drama of late summer — ideal for savouring the determination of a mallard mother, the beauty of beech mast, and the vital role of a hidden woodland pond for Britain’s woodpeckers at High Ash Farm.
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