Woodland wonders

When you go down to the woods, you'll find a whole new world teeming with life

- LOUISE MIDGLEY

HABITATS GALORE

A multitude of living creatures gravitate towards dead wood for shelter, food or breeding, and these organisms also help speed up the decaying process, and play an invaluable part in the ecosystem. Invertebrates that can commonly be found scurrying through the nooks and crannies of the wood as it rots include spiders, woodlice, centipedes and millipedes.

Dead wood is a particularly valuable resource for saproxylic beetles at different stages of their lengthy life cycle - most notably the largest example in the UK, the stag beetle. (Saproxylic is derived from the Greek word sapros, which means rotten, and xylon, meaning wood.) It's estimated that over 600 UK species of beetle use dead wood at some point during their life cycle.

Birds also use the hollows and cavities of standing dead wood to make their nests, and insectivorous birds with long tongues, such as members of the woodpecker family, rely on invertebrates and larvae that have burrowed into the wood.