As I write this heavy rain is pattering on the skylight of my den. Willow is fluffy from a rub down and water and mud prevails. We had been watching a treecreeper making its way up an oak then flit down to begin its upward spiral on the next. This woodland is its domain and it will probably never leave it, the trees its larder and nest sites.

With about 300 insect species living on oak roots, bark and leaves the treecreeper is well cared for, the greater habitat of the oak wood offering protection from hard weather in winter and cool shade in summer, temperatures less extreme inside the wood than in the open fields nearby. Then there are the mini-habitats. Just beyond back gate is a rooting stump housing its own exclusive community. Fungi, mosses, polypody fern, small animals and such all live in and upon it as the stump slowly but surely returns to the soil whence it came, from an acorn, some 300 years ago. What tales it could tell.

I know a smallish level patch of ground amongst the trees where I am tempted to site a little pond this spring. The range of life in such a place depends on the amount of shade cast by trees but some creatures will gain from it. There is already muddy ground fed by springs, and yellow flag iris, so it is worth a try I feel. Maybe a pond existed there many years ago.

Now a nuthatch feeds on one of our hanging nut feeders. A tree hole nester often found in woods frequented by treecreepers it, too, will probably live out its life here for there is little or no need for such birds to move on. The rain comes on harder, lovely to watch.