TQ 81 M (Guestling Hall)
24th December 2007, MondaySaturday 22nd December: 38 species
Soft solstitial sunshine made counting easier as singing birds made their presence known from woods and mature gardens.
The many steep wooded ghylls running down from the tall Ridge were full of Blue and Great Tits, so much so that, when I entered up my count for the former on the Winter Atlas website, “Unusually High Count†flashed up in cautionary red. There were plenty of Coal Tits and Nuthatches too (one fluting so fearlessly it sounded like a Mistle Thrush) but I crossed paths with no Long-tailed or Marsh Tits.
Rising temperatures had not yet thawed the ponds at Birchen Knoll Farm, making Moorhens easy to count as they were forced to forage in the open, and Redwings were feeding in hedges rather than on frozen grass, though Blackbirds were finding food among leaf litter on the woodland floor. Also at Birchen Knoll were a few Meadow Pipits, a Yellowhammer, and I could hear at least one Siskin calling from the Alders in the valley bottom.
The early-19th century tithe map in Fairlight Church shows a disposition of woods and hedgerows almost the same as today’s. In form at least, the ancient countryside remains intact. Although a couple of hedges have been thinned out, the main change has been an addition: the insertion of gloomy Victorian woodland, made up of Holm Oak, Scots Pine and Wellingtonia, planted as a Gothic backdrop to the baronial sandstone castellations of Fairlight Hall. An early Great Spotted Woodpecker was drumming from tall parkland trees and Goldcrests were calling from the Ivy.
At the other end of the architectural spectrum are the squalid horsicultural shanties, tucked into muddy Wealden meadows and characterized by shabby stables, semi-derelict fencing, chewed bark and heaps of refuse. They are frequented by Magpies, Collared Doves and Song Thrushes, and Jackdaws inhabit the stag-headed Oaks.
This tetrad is crossed by the 1066 Country Walk, www.1066country.com which is well waymarked for most of its route and served by brand new footbridges near Humphrey’s Farm.
