Steyning Downland Scheme Birdwatch

A rare sight on Sunday morning as we walked around the rifle range on our Steyning Downland Scheme bird survey: frost!  In shaded areas in the bottom of the coombe there were patches of frost on the grass.  It has been such a rare sight on winter mornings this year that it is worth noting.  Not that it seemed to us to be particularly cold and there was plenty of bird activity.  Greenfinches, thrushes, robins, dunnocks, great tits were all heard singing and calling and, in the wooded around the spring a green woodpecker was 'yaffling' very persistently.  In all, we logged 16 species, not a huge number, but there was much activity and our last sighting on site was a house sparrow with what was very likely some nest material in its beak.  A sign of spring?

The rifle range itself was an example of a dry downland valley turning temporarily into a wet one.  A stream was running through the middle of the valley and forming quite a waterfall over the edge of the cutting down into the springhead.  There must be many sights like this around the county after this prolonged period of heavy rain.