The first day of February is bright sunshine and the Nature Reserve and its visitor centre draws a crowd after a permanently miserable January. The rapid flow of incoming seawater in one of the main channels from the Rother attracts a patient little egret surrounded by a handful of less patient herring gulls that are…
Tag: Sussex
Summers up
A few images from a long hot summer that has now drifted into a damp and mellow autumn. Our local chalk grasslands are always rich in wildflowers and the diversity seems to be improving especially with a profusion of bee ochids in July. The green wheat fields turned yellow in the long summer drought; today…
A pearly day
Park Corner Heath in East Sussex is a postage stamp of acid grassland, heath and coppiced birch within a mixed woodland of planted pines and ancient beeches. The small reserve is managed for its butterflies and moths by Butterfly Conservation. The winter management by teams of volunteers maintains the clearings; this supports a range of…
Ditchling Beacon
In the early morning light of a cloudless day, the mist holds the valley and almost overtakes the high chalk downs, dense and dew-soaked. Only at the beacon, does the sun break up the flow into puffy white plumes with landmarks edged, partially exposed and then covered up again in a slow moving burlesque of elegant curves and rounded…