Tag: Pulborough Brooks RSPB

White-tailed eagles at Pulborough

Daniel Greenwood6 Comments

Pulborough Brooks, West Sussex, February 2024

Looking out over the Brooks, two dark bird-shapes soar against the faint outline of the South Downs. Below them are green conifers and leafless oaks.

Buzzards, I think.

A woman approaches me from behind and stands to the side of me. ‘Dude,’ she says. ‘There’re eagles out there!’.

I look through my binoculars again but can’t see any sign of white-tailed eagles (it’s not going to be golden eagle). They’re known to hang around the wetlands of Amberley and Pulborough, having been reintroduced to the Isle of Wight in recent years. This is an ideal place for them.

The images I’m looking for are brown and white Muppet-like characters, as I remember seeing them in Hungary and Czechia. Never before in Britain, though.

The eagle messenger tells me to head down to some of the hides where ‘someone will have a scope’.

I march down there and drop into the first hide, benches packed out. But people are only looking down at the bank right outside where a snipe stands still against the grass. There is no eagle energy here.

A man with a telescope and tripod on his shoulder and a camera around his neck walks down the path towards me. I ask about the eagles. They’ve gone off somewhere, he says, wishing he could be more help.

Heading to the next hide, which I recognise as the one the eagle messenger told me to stop off at, there’s palpable excitement among the benches. I find a spare seat and ask the woman next to me – is everyone looking for eagles?

She smiles, pointing out where they had just been seen. I listen as others describe their apparent return to view. Against the South Downs two dark shapes soar. Then I realise it – I’d already seen them, before I even knew what they were.

They weren’t buzzards, they were white-tailed eagles.

Sussex Weald

The deep blue sea comes inland 🌊

Daniel Greenwood1 Comment

Pulborough Brooks, West Sussex, January 2023

A lot of rain has fallen in Britain in January. One way I like to gauge just how much, is to visit the wetlands around Pulborough and Amberley in West Sussex.

In the winter months, roads are routinely closed as the Arun breaks its banks, doing what it used to without much issue. On the morning of Friday 13th January, the green fields of the Arun valley were a deep, oceanic blue.

It’s rare in England that you get to see nature’s raw, awesome power. When you do, it’s not always a good thing. Seeing water flooding the landscape as it should, where it won’t destroy homes, is easier to enjoy.

Towards Pulborough, the flooded fields were speckled with hundreds of ducks: mallard, shoveler, widgeon. The buildings of Pulborough town looked ready to slip down into the deep blue sea.

On the human-made islands lapwings contended with ducks for a spot on the bank. Elsewhere I overheard a man point out a snipe tucked away between rushes – ‘you can see it with the naked eye,’ he said.

Sure enough, there it was but 25ft away inside the fenced wetland. I wonder what it must have made of its small, safe spot, out there among the winter floodwaters.

Thanks for reading.

Sussex Weald

Five pines at Pulborough 🌲

Daniel Greenwood1 Comment

Pulborough Brooks, West Sussex, Friday 16th December 2022

I arrived at Pulborough Brooks as the sun began to rise over Wiggonholt, the heath on the hill.

There are five pine trees that stand together in the open heath, I always seek them out in this light.

Frost encrusted everything where the sun was yet to reach. Young birches were thick with hoar frost, the yellow leaves of oaks held an edge of ice flakes.

There was little to hear, so much so that even a goldcrest moving through brambles made a sound.

Further round the hill the Highland Cattle were grazing among the frozen bracken. They looked so at home in their Viking get-up, heavy coats whitened by the temperatures. At 8am it was -5.

Out onto the reserve a winter landscape opened out: rock-hard fields with a herd of deer making a break for it; frozen ponds and lakes without ducks and wading birds; and in the distance the South Downs almost hidden by a rising mist.

Thanks for reading.

Sussex Weald | Photography

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The Sussex Weald: Pulborrrough Brooks 🥶

Daniel Greenwood1 Comment

I spent a frosty olde morning at the foot of the South Downs where the Sussex Weald dissolves into the wetlands of the Arun Valley. I’m no early riser, so these experiences of frosty landscapes are to be treasured.

Everything was iced over.

Last year’s daisy heads were encrusted with ice, lit by the sun as it broke over the tree line.

Wiggonholt Common resides next to Pulborough Brooks the RSPB reserve. It’s a heathland nature reserve home to nightjar, woodlark and other uncommon birds. The views you can get of the heathland and its smattering of pines give it a look of real vulnerability. That’s about right though, as heathland in England is a rare habitat now.

The sun just began to break through the trees and light the trunks of these five pines.

Over on the other side of the common, the sun hadn’t arrived yet. The muddy paths were frozen still and the hoar frost decorated the birch trees growing at the heathland edge.

In the reserve proper, a single oak can be seen at the edge of the farmland where the Arun’s wetlands begin.

Pulborough is a good place to see communities of lichens like cladonia where they splash out across the green timber fencing. No chemicals are in the timber which means the lichens and other fungi proliferate.

The upturned chandeliers of hogweed flowerheads.

Spider silk hung from the twigs of the trees like silly string.

Yellow brain or witches butter, a fungus, looked like a proper tree-bogey.

The spiders webs that remained were laced with frost, as this L-shaped twig displayed so well.

Bracken looking somewhat birdlike, like the back of a golden eagle as it surveys the landscape. Or just some bracken.

The lagoons were glassily calm, marked by the winter calls of waders like redshank. I’m not very good with wading birds, I’m better in the woods. In the distance you will see the South Downs on a clearer day. The mist still sat there to hide them from lowland eyes, with temperatures as low as at least -3.

On my way in a couple had stood for minutes staring through binoculars at a song thrush on the path. I was waiting for them to look away so I could nip by, but it went on for so long I started to wonder if they were statues paid for by Swarovski. Their song thrush was enjoying a moment in the sun as I made my way back up to the exit. A worthy perch for this mighty songster.

Thanks for reading

The Sussex Weald

Photography: Winter holds on at Pulborough

Daniel Greenwood2 Comments

Pulborough - 2-3-2019 djg-2

A winter walk around Pulborough in West Sussex, just inside the South Downs National Park. Despite last week’s record high winter temperatures, spring was still absent, bar the odd queen bumblebee and flowering primrose.

Pulborough - 2-3-2019 djg-18

For someone who can’t afford a massive telephoto lens (both in terms of relative biceps and cash), March is the best month to photograph birds. There are no leaves to block them and birds are busy as spring builds. This robin barely moved. The photo has been cropped.

Pulborough - 2-3-2019 djg-20

Let’s see him or her again… I tried to frame the robin against a silvery water body and the green moss of a tree behind. As in, I moved a bit to one side and crouched down a bit.

Pulborough - 2-3-2019 djg-1

The South Downs ridge hangs over Pulborough and gives an extra layer of interest to photographs that might, in counties like Essex and Norfolk, be a little more flat.

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The river Arun runs through Pulborough, a key wetland area in southern England. The sun came out in the afternoon to lift the atmosphere. The South Downs add their irrepressible magic even in shade.

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The silvery wetland areas of the Arun valley. This area was once marshland and has strong evidence of Roman activity and settlement, including a bath house.

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Pulborough Brooks is managed by the RSPB and has a large area of heathland at Wiggonholt Common in addition to the wetlands.  The South Downs veer into distance beyond the pines.

Pulborough - 2-3-2019 djg-46

I love the soft palette of a winter heath.

Pulborough, South Downs National Park, West Sussex, March 2019