When I was a child, I was fascinated with raptors. Unfortunately in East Hants at the time I never saw anything other than the ubiquitous hovering kestrel. Never saw a sparrowhawk until well into my thirties. Going to Scotland to the Highlands on holidays was a thrill with loads of buzzards hanging out on fenceposts and even the odd eagle.

When we lived in Bavaria it was thrilling to see so many different raptors when on a walk (even in our small town) or driving. I was surprised how often we would see sparrowhawks either circling overhead or doing surprise attacks in the housing estate. Once I saw a male follow a gutter line of a long terrace with the aim of hunting unexpectedly round the corner. Once we were having dinner on our terrace on a summer evening. We were surpised as a sparrowhawk flew over with a blackbird (or similar sized bird) in its talons.

Since returning to the UK I was delighted to see how raptors have recovered. In our Hampshire town it is not uncommon to see a soaring sparrowhawk or buzzard over the town. Once or twice even a red kite.

Yesterday my youngest son called me to the kitchen very excited. He had been standing at the back door when a raptor crashed into the window then perched (presumably seeing stars) on a garden chair. It had flown off before I arrived. He described its distinctive yellow eyes and identified it in the birdbook as a sparrowhawk. Two years earlier I was talking to a neighbour over the hedge when 10 metres away a sparrowhawk - obviously a young and inexperienced one - landed on the hedge for about half a minute before flying off.

Today I was in my office in Reading. I had a meeting in a colleague's office and there was a view to the Madejski football stadium behind her. I suddenly realised there was a red kit soaring over the stadium. I have occasionally seen red kites over the North Hampshire Downs for some years and in recent years between Basingstoke and Reading. But this was my first sighting over urban Reading.

I spent most of my childhood in a small town in East Hampshire - part of the Western Weald. It was a beautiful area of woodland and healthland that is easily the equal of the New Forest in beauty - though it lacks the ponies. However it has an interesting wildlife including snakes.  I recall walking or jogging through woods and often there were sandy patches that had a little sunlight. Often you would see adders basking there only to race away once they realised a human was nearby. Even more fascinating was the occasional sighting of the rare smooth snake. The Western Weald is one of the few places in this country where this interesting reptile can be seen; it has the interesting characteristic that it can 'hibernate' for up to 2 years!

[source Natural England http://www.countryside.gov.uk/LAR/Landscape/DL/new_designations/SouthDowns/index.asp]

I was shocked when I read in last Saturday's Independent  an article by Bill Bryson (Notes from a small piece of downland, 15 September 2007) saying that the Western Weald would be excluded from the planned South Downs national park. Apparently the Western Weald is not worthy of National Park quality. According to the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) the inspectors have said that the area does not meet natural beauty criteria. This beggars belief for the following reasons:

a) If it is important to make the South Downs a national park, we need to understand that the South Downs are part of the Wealden anticline. The Western Weald is the most interesting area geologically because chalkland, sandstone hills and wealden clay are in close proximity. We should be looking to protect the Wealden geology including the South Downs but not seeing the South Downs in isolation.
b) The Western Weald area that is now to be excluded includes some of the finest sandstone hills in Southern England. If the inspector feels that only the 'lofty' South Downs merit National Park status he should get out his OS map! 'Mighty' Butser Hill famous for being the highest point in the South Downs at an elevation of 270 metres is not as high as the highest point in the Western Weald. Black Down near Haslemere tops Butser with an elevation of 280 metres.
c) Midhurst and Petworth are beautiful small towns that are probably more worthy of being in a National Park than some of those in the shrunk national park.
d) I challenge anybody to find an area of SE England that is less densely populated and less spoilt than the area within the polygon Haslemere, Liphook, Rake, Petersfield, Midhurst and Petworth.
e) If the New Forest is worthy of national park status then the smaller Woomer Forest with equally interesting landscape and wildlife deserves to be part of the South Downs National Park.

I have written to my MP about this. If you agree with me please do the same. There is also an e-petition at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/western-weald/.

With a lot of poor weather from May to August we have done much less walking than usual. With a clear blue sky this morning Mrs Oregano and I decided to go on a downland walk. I duly got out my 1:25 000 OS map and searched for a walk in a new area. We settled on a promising loop (about 8 km) in the Hampshire Downs at Upton near Hurstbourne Tarrant.

The loop is to the south and west of Upton and rises up to an elevation of 230 metres. The walk alternated between going through fields and woods. On the upward leg we disturbed numerous pheasants (actually for the rest of the walk too!). They are bred and fed in order to be shot later. I have nothing against shooting game - actually enjoy eating most game - but the number of pheasants we saw today was obscene and absolutely unnatural.

A highlight was coming across a slow worm basking on stones on our path. I have never seen such a big one (not seen many anyway!) but it was at least 25 cm maybe 30 cm long. It was aware of us and moved its head but was obviously content soaking up the sun. In East Hants in my childhood sandy glades in the woods were always at risk of being places where adders would sunbathe too. If the slow worm was snoozing it was living dangerously. I know buzzards are partial to a slow worm (or even an adder) and there were plenty out soaring today. Sadly my digital camera developed a fault a week or so ago so I can offer no photo

Our walk took 2 hours and the amazing thing was that after 45 minutes we did not see any house or sign of civilisation for a further hour. OK, we walked on about 300 metres of single track metalled road. It was unbelievably peaceful apart from panicking pheasants. There was frequently the cry of buzzards and we saw up to three at a time.

I always used to think that mid September was the beginning of the blackberry season. In our lane at home blackberries have been ripening since the second week of August. There were a lot of blackberries to be seen today but many were past their best.

Now we are reminding ourselves of our holiday in Portugal with a glass of vinho verde!

There is a group of islands about 10 km off Peniche called the Berlengas. The largest and closest to Peniche is Berlenga Grande which is about 3 km long and roughly 1 km wide (though very narrow at one point) the area is 79 hectares. The island is a nature reserve and is famous for its colonies of seabirds. Having visited bird islands in the UK we were curious to see what this was like. It was a 30 minute ride in a fast boat from Peniche harbour. On the way we saw some shearwaters - I do not know which ones but according to my birdbook we were in the range of the Sooty Shearwater.

A path rises steeply from the harbour and splits to go to the NE or SW ends of the islands. Near the path there was a lot of marsh samphire, however higher up the south side the rocks were covered with a larger succulent with purple and yellow flowers. I remember seeing a similar succulent at the Lizard where they said it had been introduced from South Africa.

We turned to the NE part of the island which was a gull colony. The island is supposed to be famous for guillemots but we were too late for the nesting season (I assume May-July) and saw none. Early on we saw an adult gull viciously attacking a fledgling that looked sickly. We got a brief glimpse of a kestrel (too brief to know if it was the common one or lesser one). The rocks had a pinkish colour and were I assume granite. There were plenty of gulls on the rocks and I thought they were herring gulls. When my son checked our bird book he pointed out that herring gulls have a more northerly range and that we were in the range of the similar-looking yellow-legged gull.

The yellow-legged gull has a longer neck than the herring gull and the legs are a distinct yellow. The whole NE end of the island seemed to be covered with gulls - almost all yellow-legged with the odd lesser black-backed. Having seen great black-backed gulls take guillemot eggs I found it hard to image how guillemots could thrive with so many gulls around. Maybe their behaviour is different - the gulls are not living on a diet of ice cream, pasties and chips! There was also a surprising lack of gulls in Peniche harbour despite a huge fishing fleet.

The NE end of the island included some splendid cliffs and views to nearby islets and the next biggest island in the group.

We returned to the narrow neck of land near the harbour passing yet more gulls. Everywhere there were lots of lizards in evidence. I presume that gulls do not eat them otherwise they would not be so plentiful.

The other end of the island included some nice coves and a stone fort - Fortaleza de S. João Baptista. The fort is famous because its 20 person crew was attacked by a group of Spanish warships and they managed to inflict a massive amount of damage on the ships before running out of ammunition.

We had a pleasant trip back to Peniche and finished the day with a great meal at Restaurante Popular.

We went to Portugal for the first time in August. Our boys wanted to go to the Peniche area because of the excellent surf there. With peninsulars at Peniche and Baleal there are beaches pointing in different directions within a few kilometres of each other. This means that there is a good chance that one beach will have great surfing regardless of wind direction.

The hinterland consists of sand dunes and quite a bit of pine woodland with some cultivation. At Cascais do Baleal there are low cliffs ~10 metres high in a very soft sandstone. There is obviously quite a bit of erosion from both high seas and heavy rain.

The Isla do Baleal is now a peninsular. It was once a rocky island but is now joined to the mainland by a strip of sand and a road.

At the tip of Isla do Baleal there are two further islands the first of which is shown above. In this area the sandstone is much harder and there is an oblique strata.

The cliffs on Isla do Baleal are also about 10 metres high and can take a fair battering from the waves. This was not a stormy day!

The rock of the Peniche peninsular is also hard but has a somewhat darker colour. I estimate that the cliffs are about 20 metres high. In comparison to Cornwall or especially the Inner Hebrides there was not a lot of bird life. There were a few shags on an offshore stack and amazingly few gulls around the fishing port of Peniche.

This picture shows the coast leading north towards Nazare. There the cliffs are much higher - more than 100 metres was indicated at the top of the funicular railway.