Shoreham Woods - The Beech Walk

Welcome to the Beech Walk at Shoreham Woods. A simple walk, of approximately one mile, suitable for all. Please remember the car park is locked at dusk and you will need to allow 30 to 60 minutes to complete the walk. Listen for the directions when you hear this sound… To start the walk, please head over to the Rangers’ Lodge, then follow the path from the rear of the lodge, over the motorway bridge.

1 sound

1 sound

1 sound

1 sound

Hello?.. Hello? Is there somebody there? Come a bit closer. Why not stop for a moment to admire my majestic spreading branches? Its nice to be appreciated when I’ve put so much work into growing all this wood. I’ve been here for 300 winters you know. I was here long before the invention of the motor car, never mind that noisy motorway over there! I’ve seen so many humans like you pass by, and you never seem to have the time to stop and look. Slow down, you might learn something. Can you believe how many seeds I’ve produced? They say I’ll drop 1.8 billion of them in my lifetime, you know. I put so much work into producing them, but only a few will grow up to be big, mature beech trees like me. The trouble is, the birds and mammals I rely on to disperse my seeds keep eating them! I must have fed thousands of mice, voles and squirrels, not to mention the deer! And its not just my seeds that get nibbled. My leaves attract so many caterpillars! Its always nice when a family of birds move into one of my holes, or build a nest in my branches. They feed those pesky caterpillars to their chicks by the hundred. Anyway, I suppose I had better let you go on your way. After all, you’ve only just begun your journey through these woods. Come back and see me again some time.

1 sound

1 sound

Have you ever heard an owl say ‘twit-twoo’? Tawny owls live in woodland like this and at night they come out to hunt for small mammals like mice. Their familiar ‘too-wit too-woo’ sound isn’t the call of a single bird, but is actually made by a male and female calling to each other. The female makes a ‘too-wit’ sound, and the male answers with ‘too-woo’. So if you hear ‘ too-wit-too-woo’ you know you’re listening to a pair of owls keeping in touch with each other and defending their territory.

1 sound

1 sound

What’s that squeaking sound in the undergrowth? That’s the sound of shrews fighting. Shrews are tiny mammals with a very fast-paced lifestyle. They only live for about one year, so they’re always in a hurry. They digest their food so fast that they must eat every couple of hours, just to survive. This means they need to be constantly on the move, day and night, taking only short naps between meals. They dash around in the undergrowth, hunting for worms, spiders, beetles and other mini-beasts to snack on. Shrews are territorial and very aggressive, but they have terrible eyesight. They rely on their long nose and sensitive whiskers to find their prey. Sometimes they don’t know another shrew is nearby until they bump into each other. When this happens, there’s always a fight, with lots of very high pitched squeaking and twittering.

1 sound

1 sound

Can you hear that knocking sound? That’s the sound of a woodpecker feeding. They use their powerful beak to hammer holes in tree bark and then extract beetle larvae with a long, flexible tongue. In spring, both males and females will ‘drum’ to defend their territory from outsiders. They hammer their beak against a tree trunk at incredibly high speeds – up to 40 strikes per second! Each rattle sends a message to all the other woodpeckers that can hear it – this part of the forest belongs to me.

1 sound

1 sound

The woodland comes alive at night. Lots of the animals that live here only come out after dark. If you were here late at night you might hear the hoot of an owl… You might hear foxes screeching… You might hear the barking of a deer… You might even hear the sound of playful badgers… But there are some sounds you wouldn’t hear, even if you were here. As they fly around the woodland at night, bats make super high pitched sounds that are extremely loud, but too high for us to hear. With a special device called a bat detector, we can record these sounds and translate them into a lower sound that we can hear. Bats use these sounds to find their way around and hunt for insects in the darkness. They listen for the echoes coming back to them and build a sound map of their environment. Did you know one single bat can eat thousands of tiny insects in just one night?!

1 sound

There is a picnic area through the gate to the left. If you’re ready to carry on to the end of the walk, take the path on the right.

1 sound

When the sun comes up, the birds begin to sing. Birds sing to defend their territory and attract a mate. You might be able to hear some birds singing now, but if you were here just before sunrise on a spring morning, you would hear hundreds of birds all singing at once in the dawn chorus. Dawn is the perfect time to sing as there is less background noise and the air tends to be still, so sound carries around 20 times further than it would later in the day.

1 sound

1 sound

You have completed the Beech Walk. Follow this path back over the motorway bridge, to the car park. This audio trail was produced by North West Kent Countryside Partnership, for Sevenoaks District Council, with funding provided by the National Lottery Heritage Fund in collaboration with the Kent Downs National Landscape.

1 sound