Matthew Arnold

Yeh i read his post but we have three spaniels. i don't think a tipper would be suitable. lol

The seats are from the brand new Defender series. so they are extremely comfortable

Lats Tuesday my dad and i collected our new Land Rover Defender 110. We are both keen sportsmen (i.e shooting, beating, off-roading, etc) so we needed a vehicle sutiable for the purpose. We sourced the vehicle from Rudkin Vehicle Services and gave them the wish list for bits too be added. We had it fully upholstered (due to seats being rusty and the foam falling apart) by Exmoor Trim. We only paid £7070 for it ( that includes truck and bits). Feel free to criticise me for putting it up in a tree forum but i am sure you will find it a lovely example of a P reg.

Met the boss this morning. Checked the tree and its neighbours. The slightly fuller and thicker one to the left is also hollow but less so. But he has already given the go-ahead to drop it. He will be the one doing it sadly. I shall hopefully get a video put up on here showing its demise. He has already booked it in for next week.

We would hopefulyl leave somesort of habitat in its place whether it be a hollow stem or somthing similar. We have had woodpeckers nest in the trees next to it which is rather cool.

The main reason for waiting til winter is coz of the stupid pigeons nesting about 15ft up. but we wil probably only wait about 2 weeks then fell it. or knowing my boss, fell it to make it safe then clear up later thus removing the hazard.

We have been keeping an eye on some trees on a riverside site that floods atleast 4 times each winter. We strim (carefully) around each tree so we can see any fruiting bodies or weaknesses around the base. One of the Poplars hasnt been strimmed around all year due to a very active Hornet nest. We knew they were coming from the tree but not sure where. As the weather hasn't been at it's best i thought it would safe to go and check the tree as we check them every 3 months (a bit extreme i know). Unfortunately i found out why the hornets were liking the tree. A nice big cavity with a hollow stem. When i tapped the tree it does sound like i am tapping a drum. So it will be coming out this winter as the footpath it is next to is used on a very regular basis.

lol. i forgot to add more pictures last night. The split in pic 6 is very fresh (still had a litle bit of sap seepage) but i have a picture that has quite possibly the most obvious split on it. One of my colleagues thinks it can be braced. I couldnt beleive it. And i have an image of a fungi that we have alot of on our site growing on Blackthorn and Plums but i cant find it in any our fungi id books. It causes white rot and brown rot. Any ideas?

Whilst doing a check on a new peice of land we have just started to manage. The site is mentioned in the Doomsday book. I found some rather nice mature oaks with some less pleasant fungi growing from them.I know one of the fungi growing off a pair of oaks is Inonotus dryadeus but i am not sure about the rest. As we have found these fungi we have informed the relevant local authority to come and survey the trees ASAP. The pics show the fungi/ defects and proximity to roads and houses. The defects are fairly obvious but there is an oak with what looks like the start of a split running from the base up the trunk. I apolgise for the large number of pictures.

It is scary. If they did get caught they would have been let off with not even a slap on the wrist. As they wouldnt have been able to prove they were our bits of kit. Apart from the security stickers we have just inside the air filter covers. And the security pen markers on them too.

Most of the paths are more desire lines than official paths. The trees that are next to the much more used paths are checked on a regular basis especially after gust of 20 mph or more. We have a a few close calls with large limbs from trees on well used desire lines but the trees being felled are normally ones that are in a very bad state and overhanging the surfaced paths. We are also removing the large deadwood from the crowns of the trees that are over the paths. The only trees we fell are ones with extremely severe weaknesses ( big splits, hung up limbs, moving rootplates, large groups of fungal fruiting bodies, etc). We do have a tree which is due to come out in the next couple of years (unless it fails on its own) with a severely damaged root plate caused by the old favourite giant polypore. There is a lift of approximately 2 ft on one side but luckily it is leaning away from the grade 1 listed cottage. If it does go it will take out about 20 trees.

I am taking no offence to any of the replies. If anything it is helping me out. So any replies are being taken on board correct or not.

lol. we generally have two or even three tree officers come round to look at the trees. sometimes all at the same time as it is nice to get three opinions at once and if they all say the same thing then it makes it alot easier. our head tree officer in the council has a masters degree in arboriculture so he is pretty on the ball. what confuses us is that he tells us the fungi names in latin not english. so when you have a tree with 5 or more fungi around it. it can get rather confusing.

I know it sounds a bit confusing but the ex-tree surgeon is also a tree officer and has a degree in tree related matters. he is insured under the county council insurance policy so he can climb the trees to give them a thorough survey. We had them surveyed today as we were in the area as was he. We are going to be following his recommendations as closely as possible. Most of the work is contractor work as only one of us has the relevant tree climbing courses under his belt. And we cna only do "minor" tree works (deadwooding and dangerous limb removing). But we carry out the winter felling unless its over a road or near houses. We are getting the district council tree officer to survey the trees next tuesday so hopefully he will say the same thing about the trees. If not then we would have to wait and see what happens next.

We had an ex-tree surgeon with 30 years expirience of tree surgery and tree inspection and he had condemned the 2 with Dryad's Saddle after doing a echo sounder check. Both of which were rather rotten at the point of entry for the fruiting bodies and got more so towards the base but the sycamore has to be monitored and if needs be we can have it braced so if the roots do give way it will fall either sideways or back into the wood.