There are more dead trees to be seen than I recall seeing in my younger years - and that's a good thing. Dead trees add to the diversity and richness of habitat required to make our natural surroundings support the widest range of animal and plant life. In the days when a narrow range of trees were grown like cabbages - i.e. plant, tend then crop - dead trees were seen as failures taking up the space that could support a thriving specimen. Today foresters think beyond these narrow confines and plant for wildlife as well as timber, intermingling, selectively cropping and even returning to "old ways" through coppicing and other methods. The example in the photograph shows a dead parkland specimen tree in the grounds of Chirk Castle near Wrexham. I wouldn't be surprised if it was home to woodpeckers and a larder of life for birds and insects.
photo © T. Boughen Camera: Nikon Z 5
