Wild Britain: S02E03: Sussex

Tonight Ray is looking at the Chalk habitat of Sussex, from the cliffs to the downs.

The Adonis butterfly has an intense electric blue colouring. The caterpillar of the Adonis is apparently very fussy, only feeding on Horseshoe Vetch. The Adonis also don’t disperse very well, preferring to stay close to the colony, making it thrive in some places and be in decline in others.

Peregrine falcons live on the cliff faces of Sussex, but this can make it difficult to understand Peregrine numbers. Specialist chalk climbers make their way to borrow chicks for tagging and measurements – including if the chick is male or female. This is important as the Peregrines died out in Sussex due to poisoning, the first nest was found in the 1990’s, so it’s really great to see them back – if you can; as they fly at speeds of up to 200 mph.

Thriving on the dry chalk soil, the Yew tree is called the tree of life and the tree of death. With the toxic parts of the tree now being used for soft tissue cancer treatment. The chick of the woods fungi is a happy camper on the bark of this tree.

We can see that the clematis climber can grow to such a thickness that look like rainforest vines. Ray shows us a block of clematis that he uses for making friction fire – along with King Alfred’s cake, a fungus that burns like coal and used to be used for foot treatments.

Finally, Ray hides out in wait of a badger. When we see the badger, it’s in the daytime and hunting for worms. I was going to post an Autumnwatch link for their Badger Webcam but unfortunately there’s a message saying that they’ll be back on 18 November – so if it’s Badgers again I’ll post the link here!