Walk at Studland 3

At Studland on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset the natural habitats transition from the sand of the famous beach and dunes through heathland to wet woodlands and freshwater lakes. This is the third in a series of images showing some of the things that caught my eye on a walk there on 6 September 2021. In the woods are many muddy, boggy, hollows where the roots of trees stand in shallow water for a large part of the year but are presently fairly dry. Among the contorted trunks and twisted low branches of one such place I found an ancient stained skull – it was the size of a sheep but I think it could have been a female deer – with gnaw marks on the nasal bones.