Reminder : Be Tick Aware
We are aware that the woodland is home to many ticks and it is now tick season. Please check yourself and your children regularly after visiting the woodland.

Another fabulous day in Gillies Hill Community Woodland, today with our wonderful friend Amos Higgins. Amos brought his birch tree tapping gear with him and helped us tap some sap from birch trees. We learned so much from him today! We were able to identify birch trees in our woods from their bark. We discovered that birch sap is a little bit like blood, it is inside a birch tree in the same way blood is inside our bodies. When we drilled a hole (tap) in a tree sap comes out just like blood comes out our bodies when we get a cut or graze. We found out that birch trees produce sap at this time of year (Spring) as they get ready to make their leaves. We tried to tap a broken birch tree and found that there was no sap coming out and decided that was because it wasn’t going to be able to make any leaves 😒 We tied to tap a beech tree but there was no sap in it. The birch trees we did tap gave us cupfuls of sap and all of our children were keen to taste. We decided it tasted like water and like apples. Since trees need their sap to make leaves, we were please to find out that they are able to stop leaking themselves. We’re going to go and check the trees are all ok tomorrow!

We had a wonderfully busy day today helping plant some more trees in our woodland. Today we were asked to plant some horse chestnut or conker trees that Cambusbarron Community Development Trust had been growing in pots. We worked hard digging the holes and then tapping on the bottom of the pots to free the conker roots and then planting the baby trees in the ground. We spotted lots of other plants in the pots and checked out how different all of their roots looked.

We noticed how warm we were when we were working hard and wondered how big our muscles will be with all the digging we were doing. We also wonder how long it will take for our conker trees to grow conkers. We’ll decided to come back and check on them tomorrow.

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen our friend Emma the Ladybird in the woods so we were delighted to spot(😆) her today along with some other treasures that included some signs of winter and some of spring!!

We took a walk around the woods today to see some of the damage that Storm Eowyn caused. We saw that many trees had fallen down and some of the places we like to play now look very different. It was hard work walking around the fallen trees. We had to keep looking all around and up above us to make sure we were still safe.
We were amazed at how tall the trees are, how big their root plates are and how deep the holes they left are. We stood beside them to measure them and they were bigger even than the grown ups.
We were pleased to meet with some of the volunteers who are working so hard around the woods to clear paths and make the woods as safe as they can for us all to access. Yesterday we made biscuits to take up to say “Thank You” to them for all their hard work and we were pleased that they had time to sit and shared a picnic with us.

In light of the red weather warning for tomorrow (Friday) we have decided that nursery will be closed for the day. I hope you understand that this is not a decision we take lightly but is in the interests of safety for all concerned.

We will open again as normal at 9am on Monday January 27th.