NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

I arrived at the Washington 'South Downs Way' car park at 06.30hrs, immediately heading up the hill towards Chanctonbury Ring. This section of the Sussex hills are well served with footpaths which criss-cross the open farmland. This is big sky country, blessed of set-aside fields, hedgerows, copses and, most importantly, birds. Chiffchaffs and Blackcaps were already calling and an early Common Redstart and Spotted Flycatcher boded well for the day ahead. Chanctonbury Ring the site of a prehistoric hill-fort (the grove of trees is an 18th-century folly). Both times that I've birded here there has been little on offer within the 'ring', all the action taking place along the fence-line and northern slope between the dew-pond and 400m east of the grove, (this eastern end characterised by a graveyard of ash die-back victims). The morning visit was bright enough, with Whinchat, Wheatear and plenty of commoner warblers, but my return visit (at about 15.30hrs) was ...

I do like my chalk downland, and today, for a change, swapped my North Downs for the South Downs and spent a long day wandering across some of West Sussex's finest. I parked at the base of Chanctonbury Ring at 06.30hrs and spent a largely unfruitful hour-and-a-half in the area - maybe it was still too early, but a Whinchat and a handful of commoner warblers was not all that inspiring. I decided to return later in the day. My plan had always been to walk across to Cissbury Ring (above) via the network of bridlepaths, and no sooner had I started to do so than the birds started to appear, with Willow Warbler (3), Garden Warbler and Common Redstart (below) added to the day list. As well as being intensively farmed, the land between the two hilltops is also used to raise Pheasants, the tell-tale grain bins a common feature. This has resulted in there being plenty of game cover strips, lovely weedy areas that our wild birds also find to their liking. One particular area, that bor...