Williamson's Weekly Nature Notes March 4 2009

Not many in Sussex but enough to keep our binoculars at the ready. March 22 is the average first date for this migrant to appear from Spain and North Africa.

It rests for a day or two, sometimes only an hour. Then off it hurries to the Brecon Beacons or the Cairngorms.

If you walk any of the Pennines or the Lakeland hills you will often see them at their nest sites in old dry-stone walls or even stone barns.

Otherwise, they like a heathery clump with bracken, bilberry and fern growing around a rocky bank. Often an old pair will return to exactly the same place for several years.

The song is like that of a backward blackbird. "Cherroo, chivvy, chichoo" is about as far as he gets, repeats this plainsong four times, then chuckles and trills. Just like a little moorland stream trickling in the hot summer days when the streams are down to their last.

It is one of the most evocative sounds of Dartmoor for me, or the southern Uplands and the Yorkshire Dales. But did the ring ouzel ever nest in Sussex? Controversy raged among ornithologists more than a century ago.

For example, there was a report in an Eastbourne newspaper in 1877 that a nest had been found at Litlington by a Mr Costick. "This gentleman was a good authority, but I venture to suggest that he was not always to be relied upon," reported an observer later '“ an Irish double-meaning which could be taken as a negative.

The only report that Walpole-Bond would countenance was from "a very intelligent old shepherd who, from his conversation, evidently knew the bird well at the migrations. He assured that some years previously he well remembered a pair of these ouzels building in a juniper-brake on the east slope of Cissbury Hill.

"This was the only instance of its kind he was aware of, and he a Downsman all his life. I am inclined to believe this incident because of its singleness." One further nest was considered 'safe' and that was one discovered by Major Buckwell in June 1904 between The Dyke and Pyecombe, near Brighton.

In those days the ring ouzel was not expected until mid-April into Sussex. Today, most arrivals will be in that month, but with only a dozen sightings you will have to be sharp if you want to see this strange bird. In October up to 100 may pass through our county on their way home to Spain.