Standing dead wood

[David Humphries]

I've become a little obsessed with creating, managing, photographing & observing naturally developed ones.

Partly to help redress the balance where I work in restoring/promoting what is a valuable habitat niche, back toward a "healthy" ecosystem.

 

Apart from passing anecdotal photographic records, one thing, as yet, I've failed to instigate, is a controlled survey of what is actually utilising this resource, in terms of lichen, fungi, invertebrates, birds & mammals.

 

This morning was a case in point, where we had a spare half hour, whilst clearing up a recent mono-creation.

We re-reduced a previous 5 year old Ash monolith, as it was now too high/decayed to leave in falling distance to the path/target.

In taking a closer look at the decayed timber, this is what greeted me......

 

Dorcus parallelipipedus - Lesser Stag Beetle larvae

 

& Vespa crabo vexator - Hornet

 

& interesting slices showing psuedosclaratial plates of different competing fungi.

 

 

 

 

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[Dan Curtis]

That larvae is a mean looking thing! Found something similar last year felling ash, it seemed properly upset and was rather aggressive!

[Kat1e]

I'm really interested in what you're doing, I'd like to try and do similar things with an area of woodland, so any advice you may have would be much appreciated. Interesting post, thanks.

[Graham]

Nice:thumbup:

[Danavan]

Hope to get do do some more of this type of wrk & time to document it in some way. Look fwd to more of your posts on this subject.

[David oakman]

Nice one David i had an Ash tree last year with marching stags:thumbup1:

[David oakman]

I forgot to say one of my dead standing Oaks has Hornets in they have been in there a few years now and several trees have Bees:001_smile:

[David Humphries]

That larvae is a mean looking thing! Found something similar last year felling ash, it seemed properly upset and was rather aggressive!

 

 

Was this on a dead standing Tree, at the base or up at height on the trunk?

 

I'm really interested in what you're doing, I'd like to try and do similar things with an area of woodland, so any advice you may have would be much appreciated. Interesting post, thanks.

 

 

Pm sent

 

 

Hope to get do do some more of this type of wrk & time to document it in some way. Look fwd to more of your posts on this subject.

 

 

Dan, if you haven't already you should get either Helen or Jez to let you look at the data sets for fungi & inverterbrates. Burnham has around 60+ red data list species, a lot of these are associated with decaying wood.

 

 

Nice one David i had an Ash tree last year with marching stags:thumbup1:

 

 

Probably asked you this before David, (brains a bit like the galleries of stag larvae in rotting wood ) but do you or anyone carry out survey work around the ecology of your park?

 

 

 

Cheers

 

 

David

 

 

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Edited February 19, 2010 by Monkey-D

[Kat1e]

Pm sent

 

Think the pm went astray as I haven't received one! Thanks.

[David Humphries]

Think the pm went astray as I haven't received one! Thanks.

 

 

 

Oooops, another one on it's way

 

 

 

 

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