NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

Well, how was Storm Ciara for you? The scores on the doors here at Banstead was of two wrecked fence panels, two loosened fence posts and water incursion along a side-alcove. It could have been worse - have you seen the footage of a side of an hotel collapsing into a river in Yorkshire? Or the many homes and businesses that have been flooded for the second, third, even fourth time in the past few years? Who's idea was it to build on flood plains? Anyway, when weather events such as these come along, us birders think not of dislodged roof tiles and smashed fence panels but of storm driven rarities, mass seabird spectaculars and exhausted auks sheltering on inland duck ponds. And, of course, such avian hopes hardly ever materialise. Those that did seawatch yesterday report of nothing happening and us inland birders got excited if we saw a bird - any bird - out and about braving the winds. The time of year doesn't help either, had it been September or October then we could hav...

Five thousand years ago, in an area of sea that is today Rye Bay, we would have found offshore barrier beaches that were constantly shifting with the insistence of the sea. Over several thousand years this shingle was moved and deposited in stages eastwards and started to accumulate on tidal sands. Each mini era of activity formed shingle ridges, mimicking the waves they had been sculpted by, and within each peak and swell was laid bare the genesis of the place that would later be called Dungeness. As much as this process was a gradual one, at times, during the dark ages, great storms quickened proceedings, not only reconstructing the shoreline with brutal immediacy but also altering the flow of the nearby rivers. The area inland from all of this activity was a volatile place as well, what with the rising of the landmass, formation of marshland and periodic inundation of the sea. Man also played his part in altering the landscape to serve his needs, draining to create fertile farmland...

The St. Judes storm gave us Southern Softies a bit of a shake-up earlier in the week. North of Watford they most probably wondered what all the fuss was about, but we mustn't lose sight of those whose lives were affected, and for a few it was truly tragic. In all honesty there was little to show for it in my neighbourhood - a few fence panels down, the odd branch splayed across the pavement and one fallen beech tree that closed a side road for an hour or two. In the copses and woods signs of the violent weather were more apparent, as the images above show. At least in these places the trees will be left alone, opening the canopy and giving home to dead-wood loving invertebrates. As I sit here typing this, the wind is up again. No doubt a few trees were weakened last Monday and will take only a little persuasion to fall...