“I remember when these were all open fields,” said with a sigh, is a lament usually associated with open countryside disappearing under creeping urban sprawl. Not here at Low Burnhall Wood, two miles south of Durham city centre, where former farmland in the valley of the River Wear is now filled with thriving young native trees.
For 30 years I saw arable crops sown and harvested here, as I drove past on my way to work. Then, in 2008, no more cereals or oilseed rape: the Woodland Trust purchased the land and began planting 94,500 mixed, deciduous trees.
Today, seen from a hillside vantage point near the visitor car park, the fields below are a neat repair sewn into the fabric of an old patchwork landscape, reuniting ragged-edged remnants of ancient semi-natural lime, sweet chestnut and oak woodland.
Down in the valley, the new trees, many now five metres tall, are already coming of age. Hawthorn and rowan branches bend under a heavy crop of berries, a feast awaiting migrant redwings and fieldfares. Siskins and redpolls have already made inroads into the birch and alder seeds. In this mast year for acorn production, even juvenile oaks have produced an acorn crop of their own; the new planting is becoming self-perpetuating.
In a few generations, the new patch will be an invisible mend in the landscape. Walking in its shelter today, along footpaths and grassy rides, it has the authentic autumn aroma of woodland, an earthy hint of fungal decay saturating the still air. And it sounds like woodland, with the soft rustle of falling autumn leaves rattling against bare twigs, a spell broken by the nerve-jangling screech of two jays. It’s rare to get a decent view of such wary birds, but these two were caught unawares on the ground. Foragers of acorns, caching and sometimes forgetting, these are absent-minded accidental creators of new oak woodland, carrying on the task begun by human tree planters.
They were away in an instant, flapping and swooping up and over the trees, leaving behind the shock of their electric blue wing covert feathers imprinted on my memory. Like so many wildlife encounters, over in seconds but, unlike the jays’ cached acorns, unforgettable.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
