Gnaw

If you've watched 'Band of Brothers' you'll understand what I mean when I say that, the woods today appeared drained of colour in the way that that series was filmed; all the intensity of colour was gone, drained and matt. Along the woodland fringe adjoining the stream the woolly horses in their winter attire were at the Holly trees again. I don't know what nutritional or medicinal benefit they get from the bark but they appear to like it. You frequently see trees with fresh or healing gnaw marks, where tough horse teeth have removed the fleshy bark; the Holly trees don't seem to suffer too badly from these attacks, you see some very mature trees which have been harvested by horses over many years.

As I got closer to the nearby waterway I saw the Egret again, he (or she) has been a frequent visitor to this stretch of stream for some time now. On the old maps of the area the brooks and streams were marked as fish able and an old guy told me once of regularly landing Brown Trout from forest streams. Now days you see fry and the occasional small Trout but nothing for the table, well, I've not seen a dinner fish; not alive that is, last winter saw a big full grown Sea Trout (dead) right up in the upper reaches of a woodland stream. I believe that all ordinary Brown Trout, when exposed to the sea become Sea Trout and maybe this fish was returning to the gravelly reaches of it's home stream to spawn; that would be a welcome healthy sign of the forest streams fecundity.