Wood worm

As I was splitting some of the logs from our ash tree the other day I suddenly found myself staring at this monster.

It's about 6cm long by 1cm across, and was living at the end of a long hole it had presumably eaten along the grain of the wood. Many of the logs had a single 1cm hole down them with blackened areas around the bore.

Does anyone know what the creature is?

Dust fills the sky as another tree comes down at Halfie Towers

We had the second large ash tree felled a couple of days ago. It had a lot of dead wood in the canopy, and chunks were frequently coming down. When the tree surgeon got up there he said it had the "die-back" affliction (although the tree looked reasonably healthy last year).

The weather was friendlier than last time; the blue sky made a great backdrop for the sawdust flying around.

Down comes another log.

Below is my favourite photo; the sky seemingly filled with the sawdust from Daniel's chainsaw.

I positioned myself such that the sawdust was drifting directly at me - I said the weather was friendly!

This is the tree before work started. A shame it's gone now, but we do have a huge pile of logs now! Some of which I have chopped up.

I helped on the ground the whole time; Daniel was so impressed with my assistance that he asked if I'd be interested in helping him on future jobs. Could a new career be starting?

A fishy number on a post

Yesterday I posted a close-up of something which looked like a marine creature.

Here is its partner:

Davidss sussed that it was a bent nail, hammered such that the head had folded over.

The two nails fasten a small metal plate, bearing the number 1199, to a post. The post is near Bridge 63 on the Grand Union between Castlethorpe and Yardley Gobion.

My question now is ... why?

What's fishy about this?

On a walk along the Grand Union the other day I photographed this.

Can you identify it?