This was the way of it... One of the footpaths had developed a very muddy patch in wet weather. We overcame this by felling two handy, straight, chestnuts to sink into the mud, plus one or two more poles cut into lengths and split. With care and some judicious work with a billhook the short poles were fitted and nailed to the poles to make a pathway through the mud which we call a "causeway".

Bored? It wasn't boring when Roger and I dropped a large chestnut in the sloppy mud close to Victoria. "Oh, blow it!", I think she said, wiping her face with her hankie!

From time to time I quote from my Sussex Wildlife Trust colleague and expert Mike Russell, who tells me that the British Trust for Ornithology has detected a trend by swallows, martins and swifts to move the north and west of the country. And many people in Sussex have noticed that there are fewer of these about today.

Although there is much still to be studied, he says that two possibilities may be climate and food supply. Six of the ten warmest years in the 20th century have been in the 1990s and particularly in the south-east. This may have impacted on swallows and martins which need mud for their nests and, with swifts, perhaps fewer insects.

So also, insects could be fewer because there are fewer cattle in the south-east, while some of the cattle that remain have been treated with insecticide which also means fewer insects. However, an increase in these birds in the north and west is matched by their decline here, which is encouraging in that they are not declining overall - albeit that no pleasure is gained by us.

Personally, I think the question of lack of mud is the main culprit, but I must check the flies around cattle this summer - I don't think flies have decreased much around the free-range chickens next door, for instance.

John Hall © 2002