Bexhill volunteers aid Forestry Commission study

Members of the public taking part in Saturday's Summer Walk organised by High Woods Preservation Society were shown an example of the way volunteers from the registered charity are assisting the commission.

One of the reasons that the 87-acre wildlife habitat was accorded Site of Special Scientific Interest protection is that there is evidence that the ancient woodland was once a rural "industrial" site.

Charcoal-burning for the local iron and gunpowder industries was carried on there. Hurdle-makers worked there as did furniture-makers and a host of other trades.

The ancient practice of coppicing was carried on extensively. This was predominantly of chestnut and hornbeam.

But one of the deciding factors in gaining SSI status was that Bexhill's High Woods was a very rare example of coppiced sessile oak.

Today, the Forestry Commission has so little evidence of oak coppicing in practice that it has asked High Woods Preservation Society to coppice an area for study.

Saturday morning was an almost equally rare example in 2008 of a dry day without high wind. More than 40 members of the public taking part in the walk under the guidance of society president and former woodland warden Alan Malpass were shown the glade which has been created by cutting the oaks down to low "stools."

As the trees re-grow, each will produce several trunks instead of just one.

There was much for the walkers to see and learn as Alan Malpass took them along Red Walk, one of the paths the society has way-marked through the woods.

Nature is opportunistic, as the visitors discovered. Alan showed them where Nutchatches had taken over a disused Woodpecker hole in a tree and plastered the entrance with a mud-and-saliva mixture which had set hard to reduce the size of the entrance hole.

A family of Great Spotted Woodpeckers had then repossessed the hole - to be evicted by a family of larger Green Woodpeckers.

Now, another part of the hollow tree has been colonised by bats. Society volunteers recently watched 13 emerge. They believe many more roost there.

At a pool-side, the visitors learned of the dragonfly's remarkable life-cycle. Larvae can live in the pond for as many as four years before emerging as adults - to live a mere three weeks.

Even more remarkable is the Brimstone butterfly. The emergent young are programmed to eat only Elder Buckthorn. To locate this, the adults have a sense of smell so acute that they can home in on it from up to a mile away.

That is the equivalent of tracing a specific plant in the High Woods from Little Common!