POLICE scrambled their helicopter and followed a family for “stealing” twigs from an Oxfordshire woodland.

Gareth Pope was enjoying a stroll through Chinnor Hill Nature Reserve, near Thame, with his five-year-old twin daughters Kali and Asten and wife Kirsty on Bank Holiday Monday and picked up some twigs from the ground to use as firewood.

But when he returned to his car in Hill Top Lane, a nature reserve warden demanded he leave the twigs at the woodland and threatened to call the police. Mr Pope ignored him but spotted the police helicopter hovering above his home as he pulled into his drive in Stratton Road, Princes Risborough, about 15 minutes later.

The sales director, who works in Thame, said: “I’ve never experienced anything so ridiculous in my life.”

Police confirmed it cost £350 to send the helicopter to the incident.

Doug Mackay, Chiltern Air Support Unit executive officer, said: “Information available to police suggested that a crime was in progress with a suspect still at the scene in a rural area.”

Police spokesman Craig Evry said four officers in two cars were also sent and found no offences had been committed.

Matt Jackson, of the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust, which owns the land, said: “There is an issue with people starting to take large quantities because the dead wood from twigs is an integral part of the way a nature reserve works.”

The Forestry Commission said it was technically illegal to take anything from land without permission of the landowner.