We are a Community Project which means that without local support we won’t be able to go forward with plans to bring Taymount Wood and Five Mile Wood into Community ownership. You can read here about our latest progress, some of the projects and activities we’re involved in and our ideas going forward. Also here are some wonderful blogs for WSWG from Margaret Lear and The Barefoot Woodland Wanderer!
You can go back through the archives from 2018 to learn more about our whole journey so far to bring Taymount and Five Mile Wood into community ownership.
Please join us and let’s make this happen together.
May Day sightings and soundings in Taymount Wood this year included three pairs of common crossbills, blackcap, willow warblers, jays, song thrushes, sparrowhawk, robins, blackbird, woodcock, siskins, greenfinch, wrens, wood pigeon, great tits, coal tits, great spotted woodpecker and (… summer’s nearly here!) TWO swallows.
Although I was born and grew up in a London suburb, awareness of nature was hammered into me, partly by my family, partly by primary school, where the “nature table” was obligatory in every classroom and was always piled high with artefacts, and partly by the nature books that lay around the house. It was while poring over these behind the sofa that I began to learn my flowers.
Our big news of the month is that on 5th April West Stormont Woodland Group was officially registered as a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO). The SCIO number is SC051682. WSWG will shortly be looking for a few more WSWG members to join as Trustees to help guide the group in its environmental, recreational and woodland acquisition aspirations.
We’ve been enjoying the lovely bursts of spring weather in between the grey and wet days! We hope you have been too. On 4 March and 13 March, 17 enthusiastic volunteers turned out for our WSWG “Protect a Wild Tree” events in Taymount Wood. A fun time was had by all and even the weather was good to us!
There has been more windblow in both woods during the recent successive storms of early 2022. Although we have still come off relatively lightly, there appears to be a bit more damage in Five Mile Wood than Taymount, but it has added to the clearance work required already from Storm Arwen.
We had our first ever WSWG Carol Singing event to celebrate the winter solstice in Taymount Wood on 21 December.
Whew! We are relieved to say that, apart from general debris, both woods seem to have come off relatively lightly in Storm Arwen compared to many forests across Scotland.
It does seem to be all very administrative news this month! But a lovely thing to let you in on is that there continues to be a pleasingly steady flow of new people signing up as WSWG members, and welcome to all. The most recent local people joining have taken us up to 472 Members with a further 282 named Supporters on our books.
“Soggy Saturday in October” – this month’s wonderfully descriptive blog from Margaret Lear on the “olfactory hamper” that is Five Mile Wood at this time of year. Although it has to be said that we have had some amazingly warm and sunny weather this month too!
The turn of the season is felt, not so much as a drop in temperature or the way the need for warm socks and waterproofs creeps up on you, but in the way the woods smell different. Decaying leaves, leaves still on the trees but for whom decay is imminent: the smell, for me, of being 11 years old and at a new school, where our introduction to Biology was the invitation to compile a Biology Scrapbook over the course of a year.
More litter-picking required at Taymount Wood car park this month. And in the nettles and ditches too. It would be so nice if it stopped, wouldn’t it?
Finding consensus on specific woodland management proposals on a compartment by compartment basis in both woods has been the main activity for WSWG’s Shadow Board and advisers lately.
Whilst Membership of West Stormont Woodland Group is FREE and always will be, fundraising is a major objective in our journey to bring this woodland under community ownership. Please consider making a donation, however small, to keep our bid process on track. Thank you.
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