Eastbourne Group Walk Report - Ashdown Forest on 1st September 2015

We were very lucky with the weather for our trip to Ashdown Forest with the rain showers holding off for the duration of the walk.

21 of us met up in the car park and were soon following a path which gave us panoramic views of the Forest and in the distance the South Downs were clearly visible. There were plenty of very active small moths and other insects flying around in the gorse and heather but none of these settled long enough to give us any chance to identify them.

Our first positive wildlife sighting was a Roe Deer which was clearly seen although some distance away and then we noted a few Gatekeeper and Meadow Brown butterflies flitting around. As the walk progressed a few Small Heath butterflies were added to the list together with one Speckled Wood, one Holly Blue and one Brown Hawker dragonfly.

We were continually looking for birds and scanning the tops of the gorse for them but it very soon became apparent that we were not going to see many species and ended up with a very short bird list comprising just Chiffchaff, Robin, Wren, Kestrel and Carrion Crow.

The heathland plants were there in abundance and those recorded included Gorse, Dwarf Gorse, Bell, Ling and Cross-leaved Heathers, Tormentil and Golden Rod.

The target species for this walk was the nationally scarce Marsh Gentian which can be very difficult to find but fortunately for the Group Sue and Geoff knew exactly where to search for these and to the delight of everyone managed to find a few specimens of this stunning plant.

My thanks to Geoff and Sue for leading the walk and for making sure we all had an enjoyable morning.