IndiaAIFounders — Country diary 1951: A lonely walk on the Berkshire Downs

31 October 1951: One can wander all day without seeing more than a single shepherd and his flock, while there are fewer birds up here than in the valleys

BERKSHIRE: There can be few places in the south of England more lonely in October than the Berkshire Downs. Sheep, it is true, are slowly coming back, but there are still very few of them, and one can wander all day on the sheep-walks without seeing more than a single shepherd and his flock. In areas where much of the ground has been turned over to arable, one comes across an occasional ploughman, as much at home with his tractor as his predecessor was with his horses when I first began to walk these downs 20 years ago.

Birds are far fewer than in the valleys. A survey held on these downs in 1940 showed that in the breeding season there were roughly as many birds to the acre there as on heath or moorland, and I should say that that was true of the rest of the year. The changeover to arable during and since the war has not, so far as my observation goes, materially altered that situation. Recently, on the downs between Wantage and Lambourn, I saw only a flock of rooks, a few skylarks and meadow-pipits, a flight of linnets, and a couple of wood-pigeons during a walk of three miles over ground divided fairly evenly between arable, sheep-walks, and racing gallops.

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