Williamson's Weekly Nature Notes

ROOKS cawing in the treetops, church bells ringing in the steeples, nightingales singing in the coppice and wavelets murmuring on the pebbles are all Sussex sounds I couldn't do without.

By The Newsroom

Published 23rd May 2008, 18:03 BST

Updated 8th Jun 2018, 03:24 BST

Norfolk and Devon have them too, but I'm here in Sussex now. Some years ago, I was sweating it out in Iraq and Afghanistan, and if you have not been to those places you would be surprised how much these sounds of home bubble through the grit and heat of the desert lands.

But there are country people who don't give a fig for the rook or the nightingale.

As for church bells, they would repeat A E Housman's lines from Bredon Hill: 'Oh, noisy bells, be dumb; I hear you, I will come' when the story-teller spoke of the tolling funeral bell.

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette May 28