Saturday 29th August from 08.30 -11.30 a.m. in the Country Park

A guided walk: Bird migration, and grasshoppers and bush-crickets - what’s in the Country Park? with Ralph Hobbs.

We welcome Ralph Hobbs again to lead this popular activity, with the added bonus of finding grasshoppers! Bird migration will be in full swing by late August with various warblers centre stage. It is also the perfect time for spotting grasshoppers and bush-crickets. With luck and some warm weather, we can hope to find 3 or 4 species of grasshopper and bush-crickets as well as resident birds and the passing migrants. Guidance will be provided on how to identify all the birds and grasshoppers we come across, including how to recognise their distinctive sounds and songs. 

Ralph has been a keen naturalist and birder all his adult life, since first becoming interested in butterflies at junior school! With a degree in Zoology, he has worked as a conservation adviser for the Sussex Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group and then English Nature and Natural England, more recently working as a freelance ecologist. Ralph has enjoyed watching and studying birds and bird migration for over 50 years, not only in Hastings Country Park and Sussex, but around the world. In retirement Ralph is kept busy as a Trustee for the Amateur Entomologists' Society and three nature reserve-owning Trusts and is also the Sussex recorder for Orthoptera (grasshoppers and bush-crickets).