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Palimpsest


The break in the weather has been spectacular but brief, the sere grass barely acknowledging the hours of wind and rain. But the temporary end of weeks of hot, dry weather has had one lasting effect -- the abrupt disappearance of Mediterranean Gulls from the loaf by the Arun.

 During the three-week period to late July the rings of 20 colour-banded Mediterranean Gulls were read; the records summarised elsewhere. But now the influx has ended and only one or two of the gulls remain. With return wader passage by the river also weak this year -- the usual Common Sandpipers, Lapwings and Oystercatchers only rarely joined by other shorebirds – another visit to the riverside falls victim to the lure of the high spaces of Arundel Park.
Enclosed in the late eighteenth century, the downs forming the 454 hectares of the New or Great Park were moulded into a patchwork of pasture and woodland. Plantations dot the high points of the land, while hangers cling to the flanks of the dry valleys that run north from Swanbourne Lake.
Up the flank west of the lake is Hiorne Tower from which a track heads northwards, the sea behind becoming increasingly visible as you climb higher. The sea is lost to view as the track passes through woodland on its approach to Duchess Lodge, but once the lodge is past the lands to the north, then the downs to the east, the gap cut through them by the Arun, and the valley itself are revealed in all their glory.
This horseshoe route around the crest of the Park can be quiet for birds, with this walk a case in point. The trees and hedgerow by an area of set-aside are alive with Willow Warblers in their bright autumnal plumage as well as a few Chiffchaffs and Whitethroats, while a single Sedge Warbler seems out of place here. But that is it for passage birds. On the raptor front a family of Kestrels hovers effortlessly in the breeze, while two distant Peregrines mob one of the five Buzzards soaring over the valley. Otherwise it is quiet.
But still there are the views, especially across the valley towards the Burgh, that curiously anonymous space in the landscape. Everywhere the fields are the same exhausted yellow, although at least the weekend rain has sharpened their appearance, ridding the air of haze. And from the air the dry conditions must have sharpened the record of the land, revealing forgotten earthworks and habitations, barrows and field systems. Not visible to the earthbound eye, but there to be seen by planes and drones, or the incurious eyes of migrating birds.

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