Forestry contractor Richard Kinsey is spending his lunch breaks using his chainsaw to carve wooden sculptures which he leaves lying around in Savernake Forest.

Walkers in the woods have been delighted in recent weeks to find some of the tracks in the vicinity of the Postern Hill picnic site decorated with carved wooden mushrooms and acorns.

In the past few days Mr Kinsey, who lives in Shrewton near Salisbury, has carved a family of life-sized bears that have been proving a attraction with youngsters walking in the woods.

There has been a huge amount of thinning carried out by Mr Kinsey and other contractors in the area between the picnic and camp site and White Road which is part of a rolling programme that the woods undergoes every decade.

The thinning operation has left huge stacks of logs piled along the public tracks waiting to be taken away for a variety of uses.

Mr Kinsey, 52, has worked as a forestry contractor since leaving school.

It is during his lunch breaks that he turns some of the logs he has felled into ornaments and wood carvings.

He said: “It started several years ago when I had a bloke working with me and he would cut mushrooms into the stumps and I thought I would have a go.”

From mushrooms he moved on to acorns, all carved with a chainsaw, and then he progressed to the bears which he sells at fetes all around south Wiltshire including the annual Cuckoo Fair in Downton.

His website is at www.rkcarvings.com