A Nature Lover’s Dream – Staying in Cottages Sussex and Getting Back to a Simpler Way of Life
I love the Sussex Weald. I love the Downs and the coast. It’s probably one of the most abundantly stocked counties I know of for wildlife – plenty of bird watching and butterfly hunting and a ton of plants you don’t find anywhere else in the UK.
Seven Sisters Country Park, East Sussex, England / Photo by DAVID ILIFF License: CC-BY-SA 3.0
So I tend to book Sussex cottages for a week or two at different times of year. Get down there and check out the fields and hedgerows. I keep a journal showing what’s growing and what’s not, what insects and birds I see and which are conspicuously absent.
It’s a fascinating record of a changing countryside. Some years you get gluts of one species, other years you see others in more particular abundance. This year I’ve seen an astonishing number of Five Spot Burnet moths, the red dots on the black wings almost glowing in the sun.
Actually it’s been a pretty good summer for Sussex cottages so far. I know we’ve had a lot of wind and rain but when you think about it there’s been quite an amount of sunshine too. I distinctly remember spending two consecutive weekends on the Downs, shirtsleeves rolled up and my socks off, taking a breather with a bottle of beer and feeling very hot indeed.
I’ve seen quite a number of Gold Swift moths this year, which is surprising given their general decline. Though the hotter weekends in June may have prompted them to breed properly, which they haven’t been doing for a couple of years. When I go back to my Sussex cottages in August I’ll have to compare notes again against last year. Normally the Gold Swift flies in numbers in June and August, conceding with a pair of broods over the year – but as I say in recent years this has been a pattern much interrupted by the vagaries of wind and weather.
There have been a number of sightings of woodcock on Black down this year, with several being spotted during the month of June. It’s interesting to note as well that with some major council clearance of rhododendron, we should start seeing redstarts back in the area again in a couple of years.
I find it fascinating to watch the changing aspect of the county and the concomitant changes in the distribution of the birds and plants it supports. I wonder what will have changed next time I come back to my Sussex cottages.
Category: Nature Reserves, Nature Reserves
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I heartily agree with the writer. Sussex still contains come of the finest countryside going. Although the coastal strip is over developed now, the South Downs and the Weald are a great place to visit.
I was born here in Sussex and count myself lucky.