We undertook a new venture in 2011. We visited a single site once a month from March to August to observe and note the changes taking place over the seasons.
For this venture we chose High & Over and Cradle Valley as this site is well known to many of our members.
We had a number of objectives in mind. First, to enable members of the Society to participate in (and become more familiar with) formal recording - something we haven’t done in the recent past. Second, to become familiar with a specific area and thereby see changes over time. Third, by familiarity, improve identification skills, for example by seeing plants initially at a stage where identification is not easy (or even possible) and then confirming tentative identification on repeat visits. Fourth, to produce records which may be of wider value, for example to the local landowner – in this case The National Trust.
We concentrated on flowering plants, birds and butterflies and moths as this is where we had sufficient expertise to be confident of identfying what we saw.
Inevitably, visiting only once per month meant that we missed some plants and birds that were not there on the day we visited. So we also recorded notable species seen by members on other visits to the site in the month in question.
Over the six visits we found 189 species of flowering plants, 64 species of birds and 30 species of butterflies and moths
We compared the plants we found with those recorded for the two tetrads (squares with sides of 2km) by the Sussex Botanical Recording Society (SBRS) - www.sussexflora.org.uk . We were delighted to find one or two plants not found by SBRS including a mature pear tree close to the High & Over car park.
We were fortunate to have Bob Self (a local bird expert) to lead the bird surveying. Without him the bird count would have been a lot lower. Included in the more interesting birds seen were a Honey Buzzard an uncommon sight.
Among the butterflies a White Admiral was seen in Cradle Valley. Although they are known in Friston Forest this is apparently the first time one has been seen at this location.
A record of the species we found is available here Survey Results (as a pdf file).
