Singing No-owl, No-owl

Well it is the season for it.

Today our birding expedition took us to part of the South Downs Way and the banks of the Ouse but the main focus in the afternoon was the Short-Eared Owls which had been seen in the area.

Perhaps we were too early or too late, perhaps the concentrated group there had wiped out the local vole population so they had to move on to larders new... at any rate they were not to be seen.

The day was far from a failure though: In fact the weather was so glorious that the spirits could not be lowered from where they floated in the cloudless blue...which was shared by a hunting Kestrel.

We climbed up from Rodmell, and the home of Virginia Woolf, onto the ridge of the Downs and part of the 90 mile South Downs Way. Before long we descended again by a farm where the cows were advancing on some poor defenseless brassicas in a long front like a relentless army pushing their line forward. Sharing part of the field with the cows were some Red-legged Partridges.

Eventually we arrived at the little round-towered 12th century church of St Peter at Southease, which had kindly been left open, unlike so many these days, and I was able to polish up memories of my youth when I frequently visited little country churches while cycling round the Sussex countryside.

Unfortunately there were no little guides to add to my collection but there was a useful visitor's aid explaining the main points of interest of this fascinating little church. It has a distinctive look, being one of only three round-towered churches in Sussex, another being Piddinghoe further down the valley and which I certainly did explore in the long ago on my faithful Rudge.

Sadly there hadn't been an awful lot of birdlife to hold our interest on the way (Jackdaws, a pair of Cormorant flying over, the Kestrel and some common smaller birds) so we arrived rather early for lunch.

The benches outside the church were such an inviting place to stop that we moved lunch forward however, and sat looking over a curious row of very red trees which my bird-guide believed to be a species of Willow. The weather was very bright and sunny and at that stage of the day quite mild which made sitting outside the church chatting amiably over a fairly large picnic quite idyllic.

It did get colder later though and as we strolled down to the river and along the bank at the place where the Virginia Woolf eventually took her own life the wind was more noticeable and decidedly chilling.

There we saw a Little Egret (we had seen another earlier), a Grey Heron, his odd-looking colouring perhaps marking him out as a juvenile, in the background we also saw a Pheasant and some Guinea Fowl just as we had when we saw a Purple Heron on that same spot earlier in the year. As we walked back towards the car, we saw a number of smaller birds: Fieldfares, Skylarks, a Stonechat and others.

Finally we arrived in the area where we should have seen our Owls but there was little to be seen but a lot of horses and corvids. Never mind, it had been a glorious and uplifting walk.