8 Sep17 °C · calm
100 % canopy
100 % canopy
Baseline. Everything green except the three leaning trees at the ditch end, which are yellow at the top already and always are. Ground clear enough to see last year's litter had gone.
Eleven weeks of counting what came down, in one stand of silver birch on the sandy rise east of the ditch.
Stand 3 is not impressive. Forty-one birches on eighty metres of sandy rise, planted too close in the early nineties and never thinned, so half of them lean away from their neighbours and four have gone over entirely. What makes it useful is that it is small enough to count.
Every Monday from 8 September to 17 November 2025 we walked the same line, photographed the canopy from four fixed points, and estimated how much leaf was left. The number in each entry below is that estimate: the share of the canopy still holding leaf, as a percentage of the first week.
The estimates are rough. Two people disagreeing by six percent was normal, and we recorded the average rather than arguing. What the log is good for is the shape of the curve, not any single week.
Weekly estimate, 8 September to 17 November. The drop between weeks five and six is the storm of 13 October.
Baseline. Everything green except the three leaning trees at the ditch end, which are yellow at the top already and always are. Ground clear enough to see last year's litter had gone.
First real fall, but only from B-07 and B-11. A warm week. Two of us counted independently and got 97 and 99, which set the tone for the rest of the season.
Yellow now general across the upper third of the stand. The four trees on the north edge are visibly ahead of the rest, which we had assumed was light but is more likely the ditch drying out under them.
Windy Saturday before the count. Leaf on the path in drifts for the first time, mostly small and undamaged, which suggests it came off ready rather than being torn.
Still and warm, and the fall slowed to almost nothing during the week itself. Most of the loss on this line is carried over from the previous weekend.
The storm. Seventeen percent gone in one week, nearly all of it on the Thursday night. B-22 lost a limb about four metres up, which is now propped against its neighbour and will have to be dealt with before spring.
Half the stand is through. From the south photo point you can see the ditch for the first time since April.
Cold and quiet. What is left is concentrated low and on the inside of the stand, where the wind has less purchase.
Second windy week and the last big drop. The litter layer is deep enough now that the count has to be done by canopy alone, since nothing on the ground is attributable to any particular week.
Mostly bare. The remaining leaf is brown rather than yellow and hangs on in a way that fresh leaf does not.
Last count of the season. Two trees, both in the sheltered corner, still holding a scatter of leaf that will probably stay into December. Seventy days from first fall to effectively bare.
| Tree | Girth | Bare by | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| B-03 | 61 cm | 3 Nov | North edge. Consistently two weeks ahead of the stand average, every year we have looked. |
| B-07 | 54 cm | 27 Oct | First to drop in every season on record. Leans hard north over the ditch. |
| B-11 | 49 cm | 3 Nov | Twin stem from about a metre. The two stems turn a week apart, which we have no explanation for. |
| B-22 | 72 cm | 10 Nov | Largest in the stand. Lost a limb in the 13 October storm; wound clean, no rot visible. |
| B-38 | 44 cm | — | Sheltered corner. Still holding leaf at the final count on 17 November. |
| B-41 | 46 cm | — | As above. The two of them are the reason the season never closes at zero. |