The Valley in February

It was cold, wet and miserable on the valley this morning, every tree and bush had raindrops clinging to it.

I thought that I would make it a quick walk for exercise purposes only, no hope of seeing anything unusual, but then as usual I began to find things to interest me.
First it was the trees:

I don't know enough about trees, I can recognise a few,oak, beech, willow,hawthorn but most are just trees. I decided this morning that I am going to have a Tree of the Week where I look closely at one and then go home and try and identify it. The above tree is my first, it was a nice shape, clearly deciduous, and had little pine cone like things (I think I will have to learn the language as well).

It also had long greeny red shoots on it:

Now, I've been on the web and I think it is an alder although if anyone has any better ideas please set me right. The greeny red things will develop into catkins and hang down I think. Alders grow well on wet or marshy ground and are frequently planted on reclamation land as they fix nitrogen into the soil in a similar way to legumes. The wood was popular as it didn't rot very easily and was used to make the soles of clogs and also the pilings on which Venice stands are made from alder. According to Wikipedia so is the body of the Fender Stratocaster although I can't see that that is anything to do with water resistance.
Moving on down the valley I was interested to look out for any traces of a house which is marked on my 1906 map next to where it says Primrose Valley:

Judging by the size of the shape on the map, it must have been quite a reasonable size yet there is no trace at all today. I think this is the area where it would have been:

It is difficult to imagine that there was ever a house there, The woods look as if they have been there forever but as I learnt this morning that the alder tree is capable of growing almost a metre a year I suppose it is quite possible that they are only fifty or thirty years old. I was also thinking how lonely the house would have been with just a track to it and half a mile or so from any other building but then I realised that this is how lots of houses in the country would have been before the advent of cars meant that all houses needed a good metalled road up to them,
It was at this point that I would have liked to have gone home, I was quite cold and the sleet was sending little icy darts into my face, but then I heard a woodpecker from the other side of the railway line. I'd caught a quick glimpse of the woodpecker last week (greater spotted) but it had flown off across the railway line. I couldn't resist trying to track it down.
By the time I had reached the footbridge and crossed into the grassy area on the other side, I couldn't hear it any more, but this tree (blighted as they say in books) seemed promising:

I went up to investigate , there were no birds in it apart from a blue tit, but on the other side of the tree there were distinctive round holes so I am pretty sure this is the woodpeckers haunt.

So now I have another place to check on as well as the jays' trees and the kingfisher's pond, I will have the woodpecker's tree to keep an eye on. I will also be checking on the alder tree to see if those inflorescences (see I have looked up the correct word since starting this post) develop into catkins like the pictures in the books.