Walking nowadays in Oldhouse Warren, the overall impression is of peace. A bird sings, a squirrel chatters, the wind rustles the tall conifers. Of course the unremitting grind of the M23 sounds in the distance, but even that merely emphasises the tranquillity of the woodland idyll.
From about 1600 - 1800 (after the demise of the Worth Forest blast furnace and iron industry - but that's another working tree story!), Oldhouse Warren was a big commercial rabbit warren. The “coneys” were raised, molly-coddled and finally slaughtered for their meat and fur. Large numbers were involved in this major economic enterprise - perhaps as many as 5,000 rabbits on Oldhouse Warren alone and there were many warrens in mid-Sussex. Beech was planted in substantial numbers, often on internal boundary banks, creating compartments within the huge area, or on the more ancient boundaries of the warren itself. The rest of the area could have been almost denuded of vegetation. But just one woodbank still visible today in Oldhouse Warren may have had more than 50 trees on it, almost all of them gone now. The new stems resulting from the pollarding became a crop. They were harvested - "lopped" - regularly, most often at a short interval of a couple of years or so, to provide leafy winter fodder for the rabbits or other animals, or allowed to grow for a longer period to provide timber for a range of uses. Regular pollarding paradoxically extends the life of a tree, which for a beech might be 250 years in most situations, but 350, even 400 or more, if managed as a pollard. The great beech and oak pollards in Oldhouse Warren very likely date from the heart of the rabbit warren era; some oaks may go back even further. The practice was eventually abandoned for most trees as the warrening economy died away around 1800 (killed by foreign competition), meaning the stems we see on them now are completely out of their pollard cycle and are like large trees in themselves, sitting on the enormous stump, the “boll” or “bolling”. These giants’ working lives may be over, but they are impressively massive... and massively vulnerable to splitting or tipping up in a big storm. For their survival they desperately need to be expertly managed, not just for their aesthetic and historical value, but as homes for the countless rare and specialised birds, lichens and fungi dependent on trees of this age. It is just this "conservation management" which they are not receiving at present. It is this that Protect Oldhouse Warren is urgently calling for. Steve Duke
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Unquestionably the bird find of the year was posted on the Sussex Ornithological Society website on 2nd June. A male Red-backed Shrike was seen feeding on insects near Burnt Place. Formerly a summer visitor this species is now a very scarce passage migrant. The bird, which was seen by few observers, seems to have stayed for only a day. Most visitors will start at the High Street Car Park. Here it is always worth looking out in the nearby mixed woodland for the smaller song birds. Marsh Tits are regularly to be found close-by (particularly worth looking for if the feeders are in use), and the Coal Tit is common, though it is more difficult to pin down being constantly on the move and having a wide vocabulary. Other common noisy birds which are easy to find here throughout the year are Nuthatch and Greater Spotted Woodpecker. These, and the adjacent Worth Forest, woodlands are a particularly important for their population of breeding Firecrests (amongst the best sites in Sussex). As the name suggests they sport an orangey crown though they are most easily distinguished from Goldcrests (which are also present) by a very noticeable white eye-stripe. Both species are approachable and with patience it is possible to get some excellent views, summer is best but these birds can be seen throughout the year. For the summer of 2023, as with the previous year, the most notable species present included Redstart, Spotted Flycatcher and Willow Warbler. The latter two species have declined markedly across southern England, the Spotted Flycatcher by nearly 50% in Sussex over the last 30 years. Sitting upright on open perches it sallies out to catch insects mid air. Burnt Place is a good location to look for it. In Oldhouse Warren the Willow Warbler seems to favour a few areas of birch woodland. In past years I have also regularly sighted Grey Wagtails (if you see yellow on a wagtail it is likely to be this species) near the streams. This year I have seen none, and I am concerned that the recent increase in visitors and dogs walking along the relatively new paths that have developed alongside the Stanford Brook East and North are disturbing this and other species. The autumn and winter is a good time to look for finches. In addition to the common breeding species (Chaffinch, Bullfinch) large flocks of Siskin can be found, usually at the top of tall trees. Over 40 were present on 27th September. If you are lucky you may also see flocks of Lesser Redpoll and Crossbill. On a fine day in winter and early spring is always worth scanning the sky for raptors, both Buzzard and Red Kite pass over, but it is particularly worth looking out for Goshawks which are now regularly seen in the wider area. Visitors in the late autumn into the New Year should listen out for the very distinctive ‘cronk’ of a Raven. These large Corvids are also a common, if still a surprising sight, and seem to be particularly active and noisy at this time of year when they pair up before breeding, which can be as early as January. What you are unlikely to see are large flocks of the winter thrushes, Redwings and Fieldfare. Unfortunately, Oldhouse Warren is deficient in the plants (Hawthorn/Blackthorn) that produce the berries that these birds travel so far to feed on. The lack of such flowering shrubs also has an impact on the number of pollinators, a situation we would like to see identified and rectified as part of any conservation management plan. For those interested in knowing what is about, the ‘Recent Sightings’ section of the Sussex Ornithological Society website is a good place to look, with several of the local birders regularly posting. Its also worth signing up for ‘BirdTrack’ run by the BTO/RSPB which, in to addition being able to view sightings, allows you to easily record them.
Both Hard and Soft Shield Fern were also added to the species list for the Oldhouse Warren area, both are ancient woodland indicators and occur near Parish Lane in the vicinity of Pond Bay. The total number of ancient woodland indicator species known to be present now stands at 53. Martyn WallerSince our victory against Center Parcs in February I’ve been looking closely at the wider Worth Forest matrix around our Oldhouse Warren. The various sub-forests of Worth Forest stand together to make a whole which is greater than its parts - from Worthlodge Forest in the east, to Paddockhurst Park and The Warren in the south east, to Monks, Balcombe and Birchangar Forests in the south, and to Brantridge and High Beeches Forests in the west. Without this wider forest the Goshawk and the Honey Buzzard would not have a large enough home to live. The humble old forest mosses, liverworts, lichen, fungi, freshwater algae, arthropods, molluscs and flowering plants which depend on humid, oceanic (temperate rainforest) conditions would lose their safe redoubt and survival space. And us humans would not have a large enough space to feel safely embraced and immersed in the peace of the trees, the gills, the rides and the glades, as though they too are our own personal matrix. The east-west High Street (B2110) is the backbone of our Forest. It forms a watershed between the Forest headstreams draining south into the River Ouse, and the headstreams draining north into the River Mole and the Thames. The ancient stone using peoples before the Age of Iron walked this ridgeway route so’s to keep their feet dry and their eyes peeled for the movements of game and other people across the landscape. Lawrence’s gorgeous white polished Neolithic hand axe was found close to their High Street trackway. It is white, and flint only turns white in the presence of chalk or limestone, so that hand axe must have lain for a long time on the Downs (perhaps by the flint mine from which it was dug) before it was brought to our Weald. It has a small twinkling crystal geode on one side, which its maker must have felt added to its ornamental appeal. The summers of drought in 2021 and 2022 dried up many of the forest headstreams. Stanford Brook’s eastern headstream dried, despite it being within the Worth Forest SSSI (Site of Scientific Interest). So did several of the headstreams in High Beeches, Brantridge and Worth Lodge Forests, as well as the Half Smock headstream...and headstreams in Monks, Brantridge and Birchangar Forests, The Warren and Paddockhurst. Streamlets which had wobbled with tadpoles, frog and toadlets and in which beefy Bullhead father fishlings guarded their white egg clutches under the shelter of stones, were reduced to baked mud and puddles...make brown-turbid by thoughtless walkers’ dogs. The caddis and the mayflies didn’t stand a chance. And those other water bodies that made our Forest so welcomingly damp dried up too – the root plate mini-ponds and flooded tractor ruts where myriad newts sunbathed, tadpoles, pond skaters and black water beetles sculled, and Water Purslane, Water Starwort, duckweed and bog mosses sprawled. There was a puzzle, though, for several of these forest headstreams didn’t fail, but kept on running, gin-clear and cool...and the life in them survived all through those horrible droughts. It provided a whisp of hope in all that awfulness. And in those streams we found new delights. Peering close-up into the tiny streams you could see little waving, waving, waving tufts of thick olive green and brown ‘hair’, like Medusa’s locks. When you peered close up with an eyeglass you could see that each thick ‘hair’ was threaded with a necklace of blobs, like toadspawn. When you looked again under a microscope you could see that each ‘blob’ was made up of tiny lacework frills - like an old fashioned lace ruff. They were Frogspawn Algae, Batrachospermum spp., Four of the unfailing headstreams (two north of the High Street and two to the south) had populations of those lovely freshwater red algae...cousins of those seaweeds that you get in rock pools under the cliffs. We found three species altogether, all very scarce and one vanishingly rare. With them was a population of Eight Eyed Blood Hedgehogs, a large leech species that feeds on tiny creatures and dead things. One was trying hard to swallow a dead tadpole it had found. They were so big that at first sight I thought they were Brook Lamprey...bless ‘em! And the caddis flies love those safe streams. You can watch them heaving their tiny ‘sleeping bags’ across the sunny gravel and clay bottom of the streams….’sleeping bags’ made up of tiny sand grains (to look like miniscule cow horns)...or made up of leaf fragments sewn like a tubular patchwork quilt...or made of large irregular leaf plant fragments all higgledy piggledy, like a kid’s homework assignment that they’ve skimped!! I don’t know if these unfailing headstreams survived this season’s very late third drought. I hope they did. These watery forest habitats are so rich in life...in wildlife communities which go back many thousands of years. They can’t survive pollution events, sewage spills, new ponds and lakes, water extraction to serve expanding populations or even expanding need in existing populations. Most of all they can’t survive the steep rise in climate warming - we need to act radically together to save this heritage. David BangsField naturalist, social historian, public artist, author and conservationist. He has written extensively on the countryside management both historically and present day in Sussex. |
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