The Enchanted Wood

Ebernoe Common

Heavy snow-laden clouds seem to be propped up by the tall  birch trees around the small Victorian red-brick church, and the occasional flurry of snow litters the car park with flecks of white.

To the east of the church a path runs south and then south east, made up in that ancient way of compacted rubble, slippery with mud, ice and beech mast. To the left is Furnace Field, in warmer times a favourite haunt of adders. Now, nervous fieldfares bolt out of hedges to snatch morsels from the iced-fingers of grass.

Further on, across a stream-bottomed valley there stands a restored brick kiln, a reminder that this which nature has reclaimed was once a centre of industry, where the sounds of hammers echoed for miles around, while ther forests flickered with fire.

More evidence of this industrial past lies south-west of the church where a frozen furnace pond supports a small flock of mournful looking mallards. The pond sparkles like glitter has been strewn across it surface, and each clumsy mallard footstep echoes from bank to bank.

Great clouds of blue, coal and great tits engage in what appears to be a competition to throw over the largest leaf as they forage among the beach mast. Suddenly an old English sheepdog appears and sits obediently at my side. For a while we stand together in silence watching the birds before the voice of an unseen mistress calls him away, and with a glance over his shoulder he is gone.

Bemused I turn back to find the tits have left, and a solitary grey squirrel sits where they foraged, clasping a beech nut. I hear what I initially take to be a jay mimicking a buzzard, as they are known to do, when the call rises in volume, incessant and repetitive.

I scan the skies, the squirrel scampers up the nearest tree, and above two common buzzards appear. One is noticeably smaller than the other, who calls constantly. They glide only for short periods and at a low altitude, the cold air probably lacking the thermals they need for their familiar soaring displays.

It is easy to see why in Scotland they are known as the 'tourist's Eagle' with their long fingery wings and gliding flight. After fifteen minutes or more of calling and circling they fly west into the weak sun and are lost over the beech trees.

Across the forest the repetitive beat of a drumming great spotted woodpecker sounds out, loud but unseen, pausing occasionally, waiting for an answer that never seems to come.

Paths criss-cross this ancient forest, tempting the explorer. They are the remnants of trackways that lead to the industrial sites that were once common here, some are hollow-ways, hundreds of years old. It is easy to get lost here, happy care-free lost of a child in an enchanted forest. Following any of the paths north leads to the church, or if not the road that leads to the church, where a welcome flask of soup waits in the car.

29/12/2011

 Waltham Brooks

Clouds so heavy with rain they look as if they could fall from the sky crash past on a bitter winter wind. The kestrel battles to hold his position against the gusting easterly as a solitary short eared owl wheels low over the wind-bent grass.

A mile further along the Arun a second short eared quarters the field by the old canal lock, both fly lower than I had seen before, making their acrobatics all the more spectacular as they twist and turn just above ground height. Does the wind carry the sound of the voles away, so the owl hunts closer to the ground?

The wildfowl pay no attention to hawk and owl, but scold as feet splashing in the grass disturb winter slumbers.

Wet feet force a retreat to waiting warmth.

14.12.2011

Wiggonholt Common

Fingers of smoke and mist creeps between the trees on Wiggonholt Common, which smells of bonfires from where clearance works are taking place in Northpark Wood, just over the road to Greatham.

A trio of great spotted woodpeckers swarm over the rotting corpse of an alder, the slightest noise driving them onto the opposite side of the trunk. A bounding Labrador finally flushes them into the canopy and away. 

Crossbills, brick red against the grey mist, chatter nosily as they acrobatically feed from the cones in the evergreen clump. Here and there a robin announces his presence with his whistling song, a melodic warning to others that this was most definitely his territory. It's struggling to rain, and by the first hour of the afternoon it already felt like dusk was coming. 

Waltham Brooks  is drenched in grey, the rain pools on already soaking watermeadow. This is be no day to see the short eared owls that have recently arrived here, and that I watched just a few days ago. The wind and rain a hinderance to creatures that hunt by sound. This is a grey day, a day to be indoors with a log fire, and a glass of something Scottish.

I edge along the riverbank, dropping down to walk at about halfway up the steep slope, the better to disguise my silhouette. A peregrine watches me from a power line across on the other bank. I glass him, and his head tilts inquisitively as we watch each other; the watcher watched.

Falcons never fly when you're watching them.

I look down momentarily and he's gone, slipping effortlessly away into the steel grey sky, his departure belied by the cloud of starlings he sends up to the south.

A grey heron rises with slow, languid, almost thoughtful flight and puts down again in the reeds on the far bank, only his head peering curiously back at me. His expression one of annoyance as if I had disturbed some long awaited table at Michelin starred restaurant.

I try to use the cover of some autumn-stripped branches to approach, but a crack of a branch and a splosh of a boot in a puddle and he's away again, another 300 yards south, and into deeper reeds. He croaks his sore-throated anger at me, and disappears from view.

I climb back up to the flood bank, where the old canal lock used to allow the barques onto the river, and pick up a kestrel, low behind the leafless shrubs that form the shore of the flooded part of the meadows, he rises, hovers, shifts east then west slightly, drops, hovers then plummets from the sky and I lose sight.

Beneath my feet, a pile of neatly plucked moorhen  feathers and a few bones glisten in the rain. A falcon has fed here recently.

I start to retrace my footsteps, tiring of the rain, and he's there again. I see the peregrine glide into the tree, and turn to watch me. He hops along sideways, then stiffens. I seek a tree to break up my shape and watch, and wait.

He rises, and heads straight for the flood waters, climbing slowly, sending up great clouds of waders and ducks, before circling higher into the slate-grey sky and disappearing. After I while I turn back to glass his tree and he's there; as if he'd run the ducks just for fun. I left him sat there, fluffed up against the rainy..