NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

I really haven't got my act together since I returned from Dungeness at the end of May - besides a family holiday to Cornwall at the beginning of July my time in the field has been woeful. A lack of oomph, missing mojo, the relentless heat, you name it and I'll re-christen it as an excuse. Last Friday I decided that enough was enough and I was long overdue some time out 'in the wild'. Surrey Hills? No, no way, parched dry and lacking in birds at the best of times, I needed a bit of an ornithological shot in the arm and my destination was to be a little further afield.  I settled on the Arun Valley in West Sussex. I've searched the river valley either side of Arundel before and have always had a great day out. PLUS... Arundel FC were playing at home to Ringmer AFC in Division One of the Southern Combination at 3pm on Saturday afternoon, so I put one and one together and came up with a big fat two (birding and football!) - what wasn't to like? I arrived at Arundel...

In February 1981 a carload of birders made the journey from Surrey to Anglesey to twitch a rare species of southern heron. We arrived at Aber to watch a Cattle Egret, making its way through a herd of livestock in a roadside field. Many of our fellow observers that day joined us in ticking the said species, a good lifer, one not to be underestimated - after all, they didn't come along all that often... Fast forward 41 years, and I am standing on a footpath that runs alongside the River Arun in West Sussex. From where I am I can see across the Arundel Wildfowl Trust reserve, and, scanning the far tree-line, it is possible to make out a number of white shapes perched within them. I counted 20, maybe 22 - every single one a Cattle Egret. 22! What a number - but I am expecting more. This is a known roost, and the numbers reported joining it each evening are higher still. My reckoning was that if I arrived early enough in the morning I could count them leave and so gain an accurate, simi...

This morning I embarked on a six hour walk along the western bank of the River Arun, starting at the Black Rabbit Pub, Arundel, stopping at the A259 road-bridge, then retracing my steps. Apart from a brief stretch through Arundel, this is a walk in the open, with the billiard-table flat flood-plain open to the big skies and intensively farmed, although there are many reed-fringed dykes, small copses, hedgerows and rank grassy fields dispersed across the agriculture. Whereas the river banks are reed-fringed north of Arundel, the river to the south looks altogether more estuarine, with open muddy slopes contrasting with concrete banking. My birding highlight was a flock of 40 Yellow Wagtails (two of which above), that were found in a field south of the railway bridge. Another five were recorded back towards Arundel. Migrant passerines were thin on the ground, with a handful of commoner warblers being joined by a single Common Redstart and small numbers of Swallow and House Martin...