Chapter 5
A Flash of Gold

We lived about a mile from Hollingbury Camp, a stone-age hill fort, whose long-decayed tree trunk walls had been replaced in part by stout concrete pillars to show twentieth century man how it was done. Now dug into the ramparts were the concrete pill boxes that had so recently held ack-ack or other guns. It was into these that we children would hide to smoke their woodbine stems, only to resurface from below coughing and with eyes streaming from the acrid smoke.

The centre of the ring, like so many along the crest of the South Downs was populated by gorse bushes and trees stunted by the constant south-westerly winds that blow the length of the south coast. Andrew and I would go there to play at soldiers, especially of the Roman era, or I would go with Roger Redman to spot the wide variety of birds; for in those days before the wide-spread use of pesticides and herbicides there were many. It seemed inconceivable then that much harm would come when we took the occasional egg for our collections and we became expert at locating the nests from which parent birds would try to distract us, but in 1954 Her Majesty's Government saw fit to make that activity illegal.

One summer's day we spied a bird, so bright, so yellow, that we had never seen before and we made notes and drawings of its features, determined to identify it when we returned home to our reference books. As we read them we became aware that this was indeed a rare view and more especially this late in the year; it must have been nesting. We returned on two or three successive days to fill our eyes with the glad sight, to hear his flutey call and perhaps to see his nest. We spied his mate near one of the stunted trees in the depth of the gorse thickets, but of the nest we saw nothing. Next day we walked to the Booth Museum of British Birds, located on the Dyke Road where Brighton and Hove meet.

The museum was a legacy of William Booth at the end of the nineteenth century and my recollections are that like other museums in the area it had changed not one jot since its inception. With brown-painted, glass fronted cabinets reaching from floor to ceiling it provided a fascinating, if somewhat dowdy introduction to the wonders of the natural world. And unashamedly in those days before conservation became the vogue it displayed the tools and techniques that had caught its now permanently immobile occupants. Here was the punt complete with nets and duck guns used to ensnare and shoot the aquatic birds that featured in one section. Here the pins and pipes for blowing eggs - removing the living contents so that putrefaction should not set in and their colouration could be preserved.

In the confusion of the museum, tiny, overfilled with cases of stuffed birds and tray-like drawers of eggs we sought an example of the bird we had so recently viewed in flesh and feather. Our primary headmaster had trained us well in the ways of science, for we were to rely on more than just one picture in a book to confirm our suspicions of the creature's identity. Then, tucked away in a corner, was the cabinet we sought with its two occupants, male and female GOLDEN ORIOLES. The confirmation of our impression took our breath away. When we told the curator his delight was obvious. They were two elated young boys who traipsed their return journey across Brighton that afternoon.

Years later the brief sight of a kingfisher, iridescent over a farm stream, provided the same thrill: a single sight that gladdens the heart for years to come.