Firewood and Gunfire

Sunlight through beech trees on Wapley Hill last week, before high winds had taken many of the leaves

Up on the hill this morning, foraging for firewood. A cool, wet day, good walking weather. The woods on Wapley hill are enormous, from the old-stand pine woods around the hill fort to the long rides of beech trees that run across the hill like Roman roads, dead straight. Many of these have now lost their leaves and the leaves that are left have lost their shine, their lustre. Perhaps these will stay all winter. With the falling leaves it was possible to see the planting arrangement, the long double row of beeches across the hill, maybe a mile long; Nazca lines of beech trees, invisible from the outside but presumably visible from the air. Some of the beeches on the hill are enormous and so presumably quite old; I don't know how fast beeches grow.

The fields around the woods are set aside at this time of year for the pheasant shooting. The beaters were up in the woods to get the birds back onto the fields - where there is still plenty of cover - and the guns were further down the hill, strung across the field at 40 yard intervals. The dull crack of shotguns; like a plank dropping onto a concrete floor, a short, sharp noise. I wonder what percentage of pheasants survive?