Woodland Habitats

Ancient sessile oak woodland

The Lake District contains some of the most significant ancient sessile oak woodlands in Britain. These are the woodlands that cover the lower valley sides in Borrowdale, Langdale, the Duddon valley, and around the shores of Ullswater and Coniston Water. They are ancient in a specific sense — many are recorded as woodland in historical documents going back centuries, and the species diversity of the ground flora and the epiphytic lichens on the oak trunks reflects centuries of unbroken woodland cover.

The sessile oak (Quercus petraea) is the dominant tree in these upland western woodlands, preferred over the pedunculate oak (Q. robur) of the English lowlands by the acid soils and high rainfall of the Lake District. Ash and hazel grow in the more calcareous valleys, birch on wetter ground. The woodland structure — tall, multi-stemmed oaks over a shrub layer of hazel, hawthorn, and rowan, with a ground flora of wood sorrel, bluebell, and ferns — is characteristic and beautiful.

These woodlands are the habitat for three of the most sought-after summer migrant birds in Britain: the pied flycatcher, the redstart, and the wood warbler. All three arrive from sub-Saharan Africa in late April and May, breed through June and July, and depart by August. May is the month to visit. The birds are singing at maximum intensity as they establish territories and attract mates, and the noise from a good patch of Borrowdale woodland in early May is genuinely remarkable.

Pied flycatcher

The pied flycatcher is a small, bold black-and-white bird that arrives in the Lake District oakwoods in late April and departs in August. The male arrives first and establishes a territory around a nest hole — natural holes in old oaks, or the nest boxes that RSPB and the National Trust maintain throughout the valley woodlands. The female, drabber brown, arrives a week or two later.

The pied flycatcher is a bird of the treetops. It snatches insects in flight and from leaf surfaces, and the male sings from a high perch with a rapid, varied song. RSPB Haweswater (CA10 2LX) has a nest box trail through the oak woodland that produces reliable pied flycatcher sightings in May and June. Borrowdale woodlands, accessible from the B5289 south of Keswick, hold good populations.

Redstart and wood warbler

The redstart is one of the most beautiful common birds in Britain. The male has a slate-grey back, russet-orange breast and tail, and a black face with white forehead. The tail constantly shivers. The species breeds in old oaks with natural nest holes and is present in the Lake District oakwoods from May to August.

The wood warbler completes the trio. This is the largest of the leaf warblers and the most specialised woodland bird in the upland oak woodlands. It breeds on the woodland floor under open-canopied oak woodland and is the most demanding of the three in terms of habitat quality. The song is extraordinary: a vibrating, increasingly rapid trill that ends in a liquid descending call — usually transcribed as a shivering note becoming "pew pew pew." Once you know what you are listening for, the wood warbler's song from a Borrowdale oakwood in May is one of the defining sounds of the Lake District.

Resident woodland birds

Nuthatch and treecreeper are year-round residents in the Lake District woodlands. Nuthatches — blue-grey above, orange-buff below, with a bold eye-stripe — are often seen moving headfirst down tree trunks, which no other British bird does. They are noisy, obvious birds once you know the calls. Treecreepers are smaller, brown and white, and spiral up tree trunks probing bark crevices with a curved bill. Both are found throughout the broadleaf woodlands.

Great spotted woodpeckers drum on dead timber from February to April, the sound carrying clearly through the woodland. The drumming is a territorial display, not foraging. The foraging itself — excavating timber for beetle larvae — produces a deeper, irregular tapping. Both sounds are reliable indicators of woodpecker presence.

Tawny owls are resident throughout the woodlands and call at night from late summer onwards. The hooting of a tawny owl carries across the valley on still autumn nights. They roost in old trees during the day and can be found by locating owl pellets — compressed bundles of fur, bones, and feathers regurgitated below the roost.

Conifer plantation woodland

Grizedale and Whinlatter are the major Forestry England conifer plantations in the Lake District. They were planted primarily for timber production from the mid-20th century and lack the biodiversity of the ancient oakwoods. But they are not lifeless. Red squirrels are at higher density in conifer woodland than in broadleaved woodland, because the grey squirrel — which outcompetes reds in broadleaved settings — is less successful in conifer where the food is primarily cone seeds.

Crossbills are erratic visitors to conifer woodland. These finches with crossed mandibles specialise in extracting seeds from cones. They are nomadic, following the cone crops across the northern forests, and periodically appear in large numbers in the Lake District conifers when northern seed crops fail. In irruption years (roughly every 2 to 4 years) Grizedale and Whinlatter can hold significant crossbill flocks.

Siskins and redpolls feed on the birch and alder seeds along conifer plantation edges in winter. Both are small, streaky finches that move in mixed flocks through the tree tops. Siskins have a characteristic call — a rising, interrogative "tsu-weet" — that draws attention to the flock. Coal tits are the dominant tit of conifer woodland, preferring the dense spruce over the oak woodland's great and blue tits.

Woodland flowers and fungi

Bluebells in the oak woodland understory from April to May are one of the Lake District's most photographed subjects. Ancient woodland indicators — wood anemone, ramsons (wild garlic), wood sorrel, enchanter's nightshade — mark the oldest woodland sites. The Borrowdale woodlands are particularly rich in the mosses, liverworts, and epiphytic lichens that indicate undisturbed, old woodland with a long history of high humidity.

Autumn fungi in the woodland floor include fly agaric (the classic red-capped toadstool of fairy tales, common under birch), penny bun (ceps, excellent eating), chanterelle (yellow, apricot-scented, under oak and beech), and the extraordinary diversity of mycorrhizal fungi associated with oak. The first frosts end the main fungi season. October is the best month for a deliberate fungi walk through the Grizedale or Borrowdale woodland.