Adur Valley

We took our usual short walk along the bank of the River Adur above the White Bridge this afternoon.  This was the first time since November that we have not seen Fieldfares or Redwings. They long ago exhausted berries in the hedgerows and had been feeding in the meadows, but today there were none to be seen anywhere.  But there were plenty of other birds to see.  We had good views of a Barn Owl, mainly working the fields below Stretham Manor. There were two Ravens on the top of a pylon which made a very peculiar noise, presumably some sort of an alarm call, when a lady with a Great Dane walked past on the footpath below.  Also high up on the pylons were 29 Cormorants with more arriving as we walked home. There are nothing like the numbers that I have seen in colder winters, but that is quite a respectable number.

In the river a male Mute Swan vigorously saw off some rivals and Songthrushes, Wrens Great tits and Robins were all heard singing.  A pair of  Herons seemed to be on friendly terms and it was almost possible to imagine that spring was just around the corner.

Cowslips...and an aggressive crow

The cowslips on Beeding Hill are still looking really good. They favour the north facing slopes of the Downs, but they do need the grass to be kept reasonably short by grazing, which it is here. On the nearby south facing slopes of Anchor Bottom there are hardly any. In fact, at this time of the year Anchor Bottom has few flowers except for some patches of bird's foot trefoil and some milkwort and the like. All that will change in a few month's time when this hillside is covered in downland flowers - at least I hope it will be. I am really looking forward to getting up there again in the summer months and seeing the profusion of flowers and insects that usually cover these slopes.

We were entertained on our walk by a crow mobbing a buzzard. These encounters are usually fun to watch as they often involve some spectacular aerobatics, especially if the buzzard flips upside down to show its talons to the crow as this one was doing. They can go on for quite a long time, but on this occasion the crow broke off attacking the buzzard to have a go at a passing raven. The raven did not seem interested and just croaked rather irritably and flew on. A pity, because ravens' aerobatics can be spectacular.