Pannage.

/ Andy Finnegan / 10 Comments

This year, Pannage will take Place in the New Forest from Monday, September 16th, until Friday, November 22nd. During the autumn months, it’s common to see pigs roaming the forest floor. Pannage is the practice of releasing domestic pigs into a forest (also known as ‘Common of mast’).It goes all the back to William the Conqueror, who founded the New Forest in 1079.

The pigs are released into the forest to eat fallen acorns, beech mast, chestnuts, and other nuts. Green acorns are poisonous to New Forest ponies and cattle, that roam the forest.

Up to 600 pigs and piglets will wander through the forest eating the acorns and nuts from the forest floor. It is the only time of year that the pigs are allowed to ‘roam’ the open forest, the rest of the time they are kept in their smallholdings by the commoners. In the 19th century, the number of pigs released for pannage was as high as 6,000.

Street art.

/ Andy Finnegan / 3 Comments

A street artist known as Winchester’s answer to Banksy is said to have painted a mural of a little girl on a bus stop at Bishop’s Waltham. Creative Hendog is known for his murals, which have appeared in urban and rural locations across Hampshire.

The Rut.

/ Andy Finnegan / 4 Comments

This was another trip into the New Forest to look for Fallow Deer and see if we could watch the rut. Although no confrontations were seen between adult male Bucks, one dominant male was calling, and I think the competition from others were not a match for him and they made no challenge to his status and just kept their distance.

A short film best viewed with sound on.

Rupert.

/ Andy Finnegan / Leave a comment

WW2 British D-Day Deception Decoy Paratrooper Dummy, these dummies were produced for the decoy operation, known as Operation Titanic part of the larger operation for the deception of the D-Day landings. The Allied forces dropped hundreds of these sacking dummies across parts of France on the 5th / 6th of June 1944 to deceive the Germans to move their forces away from the actual invasion force on the Normandy drop zones. Although these dummies are much smaller than a person when at a height they did fool the German forces, they were packed with an incendiary which would ignite them when they hit the ground, in the hope of destroying the evidence of the decoy from the Germans. These dummies were given the nickname ‘Rupert’s’.