arunwild

It isn’t yet eight a.m. and the target for the trip has been secured. Three or more Dupont’s Larks have been singing since first light when I arrived with Stephen Christopher from Catalan Bird Tours, and finally one of them perches, offering definitive views of this elusive species. Getting a target bird so early can leave the rest of the day flat, but not today. The Lleida Steppes yield Pin-tailed Sandgrouse, Little Bustard, Great-spotted Cuckoo, Stone Curlew, and more as the morning unfolds in this place of thyme and stone. On its margins we watch an Eagle Owl crouch cat-like by one of its chicks under a crumbling rock overhang. The area's special birds are concentrated in remnant patches of steppe in a vast plain from which earth-grey settlements and isolated hills jut. Roads criss-cross the landscape while the runway of an abandoned airfield seems straight out of the apocalyptic imaginings of JG Ballard. At one place dozens of recently-arrived Black Kites perch on a ro...

Sherwood Rough is quiet, apart from the noise of a distant road and the persistent fluting of a Mistle Thrush. The flock of up to 60 Hawfinches present in this area of wooded downland since mid-October appears to have gone. That said, this area of seemingly haphazard trees and clearings often appears more birdless than today, especially when a cutting wind makes it seem much higher than its elevation of 400 feet. Buzzards are displaying, their numbers hard to pin down as they cruise the treelines or soar dizzily against the massing clouds. A small party of Redwings is equally hard to count as the birds forage warily, but a Stonechat perched by the path isn’t shy at all. Not surprising maybe, it is the devil’s companion. Beyond the cleared ground where the Stonechat sits is Yewtree Gate, one of the entrances to the long-gone Great Park of Arundel. A gate still straddles the path, though bypassing it is hardly difficult since the bank that bore the park paling has almost disappe...

Reading the Victoria County History of Sussex recently I came across a sentence that piqued my interest. Referring to the Great Park in Arundel, it said “an eyrie of sparrowhawks in the park was destroyed by bustards before 1272.” It’s rare enough to find historical references to birds, let alone a reference to such a specific event some 750 years ago. But something seemed odd about it. The interest in Sparrowhawks I could understand. The period was one of the high watermarks of falconry in Europe, with suitable species in great demand and as a result expensive. Falcons were the preserve of the nobility, meaning sparrowhawks were one of the main species used by others in the population. The Boke of St Albans noted two centuries later that hunting with sparrowhawks was specifically associated with priests. Nor was there anything incongruous in the reference to Great Bustards, which were well established in Sussex at that time. The county’s population was only extirpated at...