Whole Lotta Logging

In the woods out near Romsey, there's been a whole lotta logging going on. We were in Spearywell Wood at the weekend, and large areas of tall, straight beech and pine trees have recently been felled, leaving stumps and "brash" everywhere, and creating huge piles of logs. Many of the woodland trails have been churned up by tractor-sized wheels, leaving deep, water-filled tyre tracks. In places it looks rather like a war zone.

Trees can just fall over all by themselves, too, of course, even without anybody around to cause or witness the event, or to process the resulting vibrations into "sound" (there, solved that old philosophical chestnut for you). When they do fall over in an uncontrolled way, however, they have a habit of not reaching the ground, as in the example below. Or, worse, they leave large snagged branches behind dangling on neighbouring trees; a dangerous condition known to forest-workers as a "widow-maker".

Someone has a sense of humour...