The celandines have been and gone, the white anemones and the bluebells’ all-too-brief carpet of lapis, daring me to write a poem. They’ve all had their day in the sun and now the trees are flushed with leaves and the woodland floor is once again cool and shady.

Where winter in the woods is a lonely place and spring is sparkling and refreshing, summer becomes a heady and potent cocktail with countless species jostling for space.

The vast majority of these life forms are insects and it is they that are the true owners of the wood. This becomes obvious as soon as you step into the place.

The air is insect soup, so thick with life that one feels like wearing a face mask for fear of inhaling a lungful of invertebrates.

Lime-green caterpillars abseil down from the canopy on gossamer threads. Their mission: to land on your head, hide in your hair until you are driving home on the A12 and then to crawl out on to your neck.

Those caterpillars that make it to the ground are swiftly abducted by the wood ants that carry them, writhing, back to the huge, swarming colony. I have at least three wood ant colonies in my eight-acre woodland at up to half a million per colony.

I own a lot of ants.

This insect harvest is taken full advantage of by the woodland birds whose fat fledgelings are hiding in every bush and bramble. There is no shortage of food; they are limited only by the size of their beaks. Life would be simpler with a ladle.

But, just as they are thriving, so are the apex predators. Patches of scattered feathers on the ground mark where one of these fledgelings met their violent end at the talons of an owl or a sparrow hawk, a badger or a fox. Summer is a time of precious gluttony in an English woodland.

My coppice is present on the oldest maps of the area and so has probably never been anything but natural woodland.

There is, however, a well-worn bridle path running through it and I was interested to research its human history.

To this end I purchased a cheap metal detector and took it up to the woods last month. Sitting in a clearing I unpacked the machine from its box and skimmed through the instructions.

Feeling a little foolish, I began to sweep the woodland floor. Within five minutes I had unearthed an ornate silver buckle. It was as if a rogue detectorist had planted it just to get me hooked on the hobby. I pocketed the buckle and moved on.

Three minutes later the detector beeped again and I found a beautiful Victorian silver sixpence.

The initial excitement was then tempered by four hours of turning up old shotgun cartridges, but I’m not really bothered. Even if I don’t discover the next Sutton Hoo in my woodland, at least I’m rich when it comes to ants.

Times recommends

• Energy-saving ideas from switched-on professor
• Rooks are as clever with tools as chimpanzees
• Burping of the lambs blows roast off menu