Paul in the woods

May not be the soil, I've got 1000s of 35ish year old ash with dieback and the roots rot off even when the top has a reasonable canopy of leaves. Luckily I've got a lot or regen hazel, which suits my plan, so I'm just felling out the ash.

I don't know what it is, it has a look of a cross between mechanical damage and ash die back. I get lots of squirrel damage in my woodlands and it doesn't look like that, and the tree rats don't seem to go for them. If it goes above 1.5m or so then It's not deer damage. Are the leaves damaged at all? It might just be a reaction to the very dry and very wet weather? This thread might he worth a read:

If they are common wasps then the new queens will hibernate somewhere and find a new nest site next spring. They're likely to be nesting in an old rodent hole and there will be loads of them to use. There's a chance they'll nest there again but I've only known them nest in somewhere like a loft in multiple seasons.

It's getting late in the season now, they'll die out naturally in a week or two.

The fungi look more like velvet shanks, which grow on rotting or diseased wood. Could be something else but not honey fungus.

Probably a parasol Macrolepiota procera, Parasol Mushroom, identification WWW.FIRST-NATURE.COM

If you do shoot them it's worth baiting up an area with cheap bird food, corn etc, a few days before hand. They often get used to an area to feed and you can settle down and pick them off.

I've had this out with a few insurers with a domestic 4x4. Unless I could prove items were fitted to a car in the factory they classed stuff as a mod. The car was some special edition with a different bumper and a few other visual details. Simple answer is to tell your insurance company, ideally via email, then you're covered. Unless they don't like the mod and refuse coverage of course.

Why do they need a protection order to be looked after? Are they your trees or a neighbours? Depending on where you are the sycamore could get badly damaged by grey squirrels, worth checking to see if there's any bark stripping going on. If you like wildlife I'd plant some more trees in that grass, or leave the grass to grow longer.

It's more than a letter, it's couple of page report and I thought all forces will not accept a renewal or app without a completed report these days. Cost anything from free to a couple of hundred. £100 is quite common.

Yep, another vote for squirrel damage, grey squirrel. It's been a very bad year for damage down here and I've heard other people around the country say the same.

It's not as simple as shooting a piece of paper from a set distance. Many air pistols will be well under the legal limit so marginal for rats and add in a rather loopy trajectory, moving target and a varying distance I wouldn't do it, but I know I'm a rubbish pistol shooter. What I have found is rats, squirrels etc seem to know if you've armed. I can be outside and they just sit there until I get the air rifle and then they're off. An air rifle would be my choice. I would also agree with the opinion you shoot to kill, not maim and hope something else does a better job. Having seen hens get mice etc the poor animal can be alive for quite some time as the hen with it runs around trying to find somewhere away from the rest of the flock. If in the UK you legally shouldn't shoot something unless you have the ability to kill it. I'd also add I would want to use lead free pellets if the hens are likely to eat the corpses.

Google images suggest Leopard moth, Zeuzera pyrina, and it looks similar but I had no idea if it would go that deep into such a large piece of wood.

Yes, it looks like a goat or grey willow. Seedlings often sprout from bought in compost or spread from nearby trees. Looks like an old catkin in your hand.

Our hens would eat almost anything that moved but I never liked the idea of eating a squirrel that has spent most of its life eating cheap supermarket fat balls. I would also wonder about them ingesting rat poison etc.