BUTTERFLIES
 DRAGONFLIES
 HOVERFLIES
 BUMBLEBEES

Valley and Flood Plain from of the River Adur

River Adur tidal reaches 

Sussex downland on both sides of the River Adur,
including Mill Hill Nature Reserve

Extensive urban area including the coastal towns of Shoreham, Southwick and Lancing, and the inland town of Steyning and countryside villages

Rich marine, seashore, shingle beach and lagoon habitats

 
31 December 2004
A large Peregrine Falcon was seen flying around Shoreham Harbour Power Station chimney (where the nest box is) at 10:00 am.

30 December 2004
Thirty Jackdaws were counted roosting in just two of the tallest trees halfway up The Drive (near Buckingham Park), Shoreham. 
Adur Town & Gardens
 

29 December 2004
The house spider on the right is the strongly synanthropic web spinner  Noble False Widow Spider, Steatoda nobilis, from a sink in a house in West Way, Lancing. It is an immigrant species associated with man. 

28 December 2004
21 different birds were spotted in the back garden of 40 The Drive (near Buckingham Park), (TQ  219 063), during the weekly visits in 2004. The most prevalent birds were Starlings with 143 recorded on 18 different occasions, the most often seen was the Blackbird on 26 occasions with 66 recorded birds. Other birds often seen included Greenfinches 115, Chaffinches 46, Blue Tits 44 and Collared Doves 35. Highlights included a Goldcrest and Goldfinches and the greatest surprise was the single appearance of a Rook.
Garden Bird List 2004

25 December 2004 

A clear day with a thin layer of frost on a garden shed (dewpoint: minus 1.4 ºC), a Light Breeze (Force 2), an air temperature up to 12.8 ºC after midday, and no sign of rain (humidity 80%). 

British Isles Rainfall Animation
UK Monthly Weather Summaries 2004
Met Office: Central Southern England (including Sussex)
Met Office: 5 Day Forecast for Shoreham
UK Weather

24 December 2004
The only red in the Holly Tree was the Robin. All the berries had been eaten. This was around midday. As dusk approached a Force 8 Gale blew up with showers.
Garden Birdwatch in Shoreham (Database)

20 December 2004
Two colourful Jays were seen in the Evergreen Holm Oaks near St. Julians Church, Kingston Buci, Shoreham. They appear to be winter visitors and they have been seen feeding on the acorns in December here before.

19 December 2004
In a chill freezing wind (wind chill: minus 0.5° C) I noticed that the Chestnut Trees on the eastern side of Buckingham Park are now being decimated. The tallest tree of the lot has had its two largest trunks completely lopped off. Later, all its trunks were sawn off. 
Chestnut Trees in Buckingham Park
Adur Town & Gardens

13 December 2004
Four Tufted Ducks are seen on Brooklands Boating Lake with twenty Pochards.

12 December 2004
I have now discovered they have hacked away at the other younger Chestnut Tree near the Bowling Green at Buckingham Park, Shoreham, that formed the pair, and made another unsightly job of it. This tree was not damaged in the summer gales.
 

Before (in leaf)	After

The chopping off of the central trunk looks seriously wrong to me. I could, perhaps, understand the lopping off of side branches in older trees. This was a relatively young tree than may only be 60 years old? 

NB: According to Adur District Council, no trees in Buckingham Park have Tree Preservation Orders (TPO) allocated to them. A list of trees with TPOs does not seem to be available for Adur District. 

At least one Chestnut Tree in Buckingham Park is over 320 years old according to two different unconfirmed sources. I have my doubts that the trees are this old. 

9 December 2004
A Grey Wagtail bobbed around the piles of horse dung picking off any fly that appeared around Old Salts Farm, Lancing, which is used as horse grazing paddocks.

7 December 2004
The most attractive of the four two century old large Chestnut Trees in Buckingham Park has now been butchered. It had received damage after the gales in July 2004, but it has now been destroyed as an important landmark and this was the best tree in the whole of the Adur district.
 

Before	After

A Sweet Chestnut tree in Buckingham Park was one of the most notable Chestnut trees in the whole of Sussex. The largest is 18 metres (59 ft) high with a girth of 222 cm (over 7 ft) in the main part of the trunk, about 1.5 metres from the ground. This tree may be over 200 years old and a topographical drawing by Samuel Hieronymous Grimm (in the British Museum) of Buckingham House in 1782 shows the tree as one of several in a row. It might be younger though, but I expect it is at least 90 years old? 
However, to really qualify as a stout tree in Sussex, the truck girth should be over 250 mm. Other large Sweet Chestnuts in Sussex include one at Petworth Park at a height of 35 metres (115 ft) and another at Cowdray Park to 25 metres high. The Sweet Chestnut is not a native tree to Britain and in its European and Asian range the tree often reaches 30 metres high.
Chestnut Trees in Buckingham Park
Management of Veteran Trees
Adur Town & Gardens

The air temperature reached an unseasonal 12.3 ºC.

5 December 2004
Two Goldfinches visited the sunflower feeder in the back garden of 40 The Drive (near Buckingham Park), (TQ  219 063). This is a pleasant surprise as these colourful birds have never been seen in this garden before. It was not a total surprise as small chirms of Goldfinches have been seen in neighbouring gardens at least twice since August 2004. 
Garden Birdwatch in Shoreham (Database)

1 December 2004
A male Ring Ouzel in Nicolson Drive Shoreham was seen pecking at gaps in paving. This is in a central residential area of Shoreham near the large open space of the Hamme allotments. (This thrush has been seen on Mill Hill as a passage migrant, most often in October.)

An unidentified wader was seen in the shallows just to the east of the footbridge over Widewater Lagoon. I really did not get a chance to get a look in the poor light, but it was about the size of a Grey Plover, but it had a slightly longer black (or dark) beak, and it was in water deep enough to obscure its legs, picking up visible mouthfuls of mud in its beak, quite unlike the behaviour of the common wading birds seen around. 
 

On reflection, I think this is more likely to have been a Turnstone than anything else, the deeper water hiding its orange legs, and its beak looking longer than it was. 

On Brooklands Boating Lake there were half a dozen or so Pochards, and at the southern end there was a congregation of about thirty Coots and a dozen or so Moorhens. It was here that I spotted a colourful yellow Grey Wagtail on the sluice gates. 
 

Fungi of Shoreham
Autumn 2004 Fungi of Mill Hill
Fungi Images on the Web (Index)
Adur Fungi: Fruiting Bodies (Monthly Guide)