🐦 From London to Eastbourne: A Birder’s View of the Unexpected

When I moved from London to Eastbourne seven years ago, I didn’t expect to stay. I thought of it as a pause, a coastal breather before the next chapter. But Eastbourne has a way of quietly convincing you. It doesn’t shout. It hums.

As a birder, I quickly learned that this town is more than its postcard pier and pensioner clichés. The lakes here are alive. Grey Herons stalk the shallows like old men in trench coats, while Goldcrests flit through hedgerows with the urgency of caffeine-fueled poets. If you know where to look, and I do, you’ll find almost every species that calls this corner of Sussex home.

Beachy Head, with its white chalk cliffs, often gets mistaken for Dover. But it’s ours. And it’s wilder. The wind up there doesn’t just blow, it sculpts. And the birds ride it like they’ve read the manual. Then there’s the Cuckmere Valley, iconic in its own right, where the river meanders like a lazy signature and the birdlife is so abundant it feels curated.

History here isn’t just in books. It’s in the soil. Hastings sits on the horizon, a reminder that the Norman conquest of 1066 happened just inland from where I walk most mornings. You can feel it if you listen long enough. The past doesn’t whisper here, it lingers.

And yet, London is less than two hours away. Brighton, just thirty minutes. We’re close to the noise, but far enough to hear the birds.

So here’s my invitation: tell us what makes your place sing. What do you see that others miss? What’s ordinary to you but might be exotic to someone else?

Let’s celebrate the overlooked, the under-described, the real. The person behind the place.

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