Over time, cultivated fields everywhere have been 'improved' to enable larger and larger farm vehicles to plough, sow and reap crops to obtain maximum yields. Fields became more uniform and the irregularities, the dips and hillocks were ironed out. All this was bad news for wildlife which took advantage of a range of features in the natural landscape, marshy areas, dips where water collected to form ponds, ditches with reeds, dry sandy patches and bogs. The diversity disappeared and so did the wildlife.
The necessary creation of a string of drainage basins on the development site here means that we regain diversity of habitat which had been lost and hopefully this will mean, with care, we regain and sustain a greater diversity of wildlife.
This is a drainage basin which has been created by excavating a shallow basin along a stretch of the river Arun which runs parallel to the basin, in the foreground and to the right.
We call it a Scrape - for the benefit of wildlife.
It will hold water most of the year and being clay soil, will remain damp throughout the year. It was only created this year and is already attracting birds which arrive to forage on the shallow slopes and bathe. Flocks of winter meadow pipits and pied wagtails have this week been seen, foraging and splashing in the water.
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