The management of Rye Harbour Farm now has the help of the Sussex Wildlife Trust’s Herdwick Sheep. This hardy breed from Cumbria has been chosen to help maintain the grassland for wildlife and we expect them to eat bramble, elder and creeping thistles.
Read the rest of this entry »
Thanks to the exceptional rainfall, much of the upper Brede Valley is flooded, but often it seems only Black-headed Gulls are attracted to the giant puddles.
At Doleham however, where management work has provided a mosaic of open water and concealing reeds, hundreds of ducks have taken up residence.
As always, it’s difficult to get an accurate count (thanks to those same usefully concealing reeds) but on Thursday I reckoned there were 300 Teal, 100 Mallard, 80 Gadwall, 50 each of Shoveler & Wigeon and 4 Tufted Ducks.
Read the rest of this entry »
All through the countryside of the RX hinterland are strange forms like the one above, where a once carefully tended hedgerow has been abandoned to its true destination of treehood.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Woodland Trust has this autumn undertaken an ambitious programme of habitat creation, aimed at opening up areas for the development of nationally-rare lowland heath. This has been achieved by the clearance of secondary woodland, felling post-war conifer plantations and removing birch scrub both situated on land which had been agricultural until the construction of Powdermill Reservoir in 1930.
Read the rest of this entry »
Last Friday Larry Cooke held an open day at his Farm at East Guldeford to help launch the initiative to reintroduce the short haired bumblebee Bombus subterraneus to Britain. Although extinct in this country British bees were taken out to New Zealand 120 years ago to help pollinate red clover, where they still persist. As well as restoring this lost element of our fauna it is hoped that the project will stimulate the management of more of this habitat for these insects and benefit other rare bumblebee species that have threatened populations on the Marsh.
One of the revelations of the day Read the rest of this entry »
The exmoor ponies were moved yesterday to the field between Brakey Bank and Warren Wood (just west of Warren Cottage), so if you are visiting Hastings Country Park Nature Reserve to see the ponies that is where to look. Also up to eight raven have been seen in recent days, but very few passerine migrants.