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Suffolk Natural History, Vol. 55
Notes from Claude Morley’s Suffolk As 2019 marks 75 years since Claude Morley invited me to apply for membership of Suffolk Naturalist’s Society, I thought perhaps some younger members of the current Society might be interested in what the wildlife of the county was like toward the end of and just after the Second World War. I cannot detail everything that has changed or may have disappeared from the countryside but will mention a few notable species. My first 20 years were spent on and around the family farm at Hitcham, just up the Bury road from the White Horse during the latter part of which period I spent quite a lot of time cycling round the local area looking for all that was to be found on the roadside verges and in the hedges and ditches. 1944 was the year of the Nightingale (Luscinia megarhvnchos). Just beyond Bildeston on April 16th I stopped beside a smallish partly bush grown former chalk pit from which came a marvellous birdsong such as I had never heard previously. A brief session of careful stalking and there was my first Nightingale. When I got home my parents would not believe me as Nightingales did not occur in Suffolk. Two nights later they had to change their ideas as one was singing ‘down the Falls’ the stream at the bottom of our meadows, a bush grown tributary of the River Brett. Sometime between 1941 and 1944 the searchlight battery that had been on a meadow at the top of the hill was moved to the meadow at the bottom, opposite our farmyard but still belonging to the widow who farmed at the top of the hill with the aid of a foreman. This meadow also had a small stream flanked by thickets of Blackthorn and the Nightingales soon took over. When the three generators started up (there were 3 searchlights) the Nightingales were not deterred. They just sang louder! Meanwhile the meadow at the top of the hill, in addition to various concrete hard standings, had become very bush grown which appealed to a pair of Red-backed Shrikes (Lanius collurio). They set up home using the roadside telephone wires as a hunting post and proceeded to successfully rear a family, young being seen on the wires before they left in late August. My first year birdwatching was the last time that I saw a Corncrake (Crex crex). We were cutting wheat with the converted three horse McCormick binder that grandfather had bought in 1914 but now pulled by a tractor. It was August 7th and while father drove the tractor I was on the binder when this mottled brown bird with a weak flight and trailing legs left the corn a few feet in front of the tractor and made for the hedge across the stubble. Years before that, in the late 30s and early 40s, one had been seen almost every year in an 8 acre field part of the farm separated from the main holding. That field also had about two acres that came up every year thick with Charlock (Sinapis arvensis) which had to be pulled by hand and carted off before it seeded usually resulting in sore arms. We had 7 years back in Hitcham between 1953 and 60 before moving permanently back to Norfolk, and it was in 1954 that what had always been one of the first butterflies to come out of hibernation, was seen for the last time. The Large Tortoiseshell. (Nymphalis polychloros) Trans. Suffolk Nat. Soc. 55 (2019)