Ashdown Forest

A break in the weather gave the opportunity to go further afield and I made an early morning foray into the Ashdown forest. At this time of the year the heathland should be nice and brown and tinder dry, currently it can be described as verdant. Everywhere is lush green, paths are more like streams and the midges are of biblical plague proportions.  I was greeted yet again by the presence of Fallow Deer, this time seven and one fawn which was very inquisitive but these deer were much warier.

It makes a change to see different insect life from that of the chalk downlands. I expected to see many dragonflies, in the end just one Emperor showed around midday even though the sun had been out since dawn. Plenty of Grasshoppers though, very few sounding off but many obligingly sitting after being flushed from the long grass. 

I dropped into Old Lodge to relocate the Bullfinches that I had seen previously, no luck but both the Stonechat and Redstart broods that I had seen are fast reaching  maturity and adult plumage is starting to show.