by Jenny Seale | Sep 22, 2025 | WCIJ
HERSTMONCEUX MEN’S SHED is part of the Vitality Villages group of activities in the village. The Men’s Shed meets in the science block at Herstmonceux Castle (and is open to everyone). Members can work on their own woodworking or craft project, join others on group projects or simply enjoy a cup of tea. In the past the Men’s Shed has made ladder stiles, benches, bird or dormouse boxes, and even repaired the church gates and Parish Council flagpoles. Mondays 10am to 1pm. Wednesdays from 10.15am to 4.30pm. Please ring Alan on 07946 604201 to check for all sessions.
by Jenny Seale | Jul 7, 2025 | WCIJ
MANKIND
Free support group every Friday night from 6 to 8.30pm at Hailsham East Community Centre, Vega Close, Hailsham BN27 2JZ. This is a free support and listening group for men. It is a hard fact of life that 1 in 4 men will suffer ill mental health challenges in their lifetime. 94 men per week, 2 per day in the building industry, are taking their own lives. Men account for 75% of all suicides. Take one small step to mankind and one giant step for yourself. It is a big step to say, “I need help.” The World is changing. It is not weak to speak. Go along and chat or just listen.
by Jenny Seale | Jan 6, 2025 | WCIJ
Union Corner Hall 7.30. Since 2023 this group has run on the 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month, providing a space to meet other gamers and arrange to play all types of table top games, board games, wargames and RPGs. Club Fees are £3 a session (first time is free). Come and join the Facebook Page (Hailsham Gaming Club) and see what has been going on.
by Jenny Seale | Nov 20, 2024 | Spotted
Spotted!
Wildlife in (and around) Hailsham
by Tim Fox
Bird song, abundant from Spring into early summer, has died down as it usually does at this time of year. With the exception of Robins, who continue singing to warn off other robins from poaching food on their patch, most other species have given up singing, save for the odd mild sunny winter’s day which tricks some birds into thinking Spring has arrived. Starlings, though, are another bird that bucks the trend for remaining silent in Winter: often on winter days, high places around town (including the tall trees in Station Road and around the pond, St Mary’s church tower, and the fire station training tower in Deer Paddock) host upward of twenty to several hundred of this oft-overlooked bird, many of those gathered merrily chattering a varied and whistling song.
Sturnus vulgaris (derived from Latin for common, not vulgar!) is slightly bigger than a cricket ball and many nest in the eaves and roofs of the older houses in my part of town, the adults foraging in local gardens first for nesting material (grass/leaves small twigs/ animal fur/litter) and then for food for the offspring (anything and everything from seeds to invertebrates). Adult plumage is dark, almost black, with white flacks during the breeding season and is iridescent i.e. it appears to change colour depending upon the angle from which you view it, with purple, green and brown featuring in the range of colours. Once breeding is finished, both brown-feathered juvenile and adult starlings form large congregations and can be seen, usually in many hundreds out on the Levels scouting around en-masse for the next meal. So many birds together in one place makes them a mobile larder for other bird species, including our local sparrowhawk and peregrine falcons. If you are lucky, and chance upon one of these raptors attempting to catch a starling for lunch, prepare to be mesmerised by the starling flock because, rather than flying to cover to escape from the predator, they stay together, and evade capture by swooping, diving and soaring as a flock. This synchronised mass movement (termed a murmuration) helps confuse the predator as it makes it much more difficult for a bird to be singled out (and then captured and devoured). Murmurations also occur late afternoon early evening in autumn and winter as the birds flock to their overnight roost sites and is something to watch out for if you are out and about on the Levels nearing sunset.
Tim can be found most Saturday mornings gracing the airwaves with Pat Bradley on 95.9 Hailsham FM, discussing local happenings between 8 and 10am.
by Jenny Seale | Nov 20, 2024 | Spotted
SPOTTED!
Wildlife in (and around) Hailsham
by Tim Fox
I’d not been on a wild goose chase before the first Saturday of 2021 but reports of White-fronted geese on nearby Pevensey Levels piqued my interest and so, with wellies attached, I set out alone for a “short”, Tier-4 permissible, recreational walk. Two miles and several hundred metres of muddy, motorbike churned-up, bridleway later, and the flock came into view. Watched by nearby Canada geese (dark brown body and black necks & heads), the similar sized but lighter coloured, White-fronted geese were walking slowly across a field, grazing the grass as they moved (geese do prefer eating grass to bread!). Their name suggests that they have a white front but this refers only to the small white patch on their forehead (borne out by their scientific name anser albifrons, with albi meaning white and frons meaning forehead. This white patch aside, they could quite easily be mistaken for another of our regular geese species, Greylag, which can sometimes be seen associating with the Canada geese around the Common Pond. What makes white-fronts a special species is that most years, only one or two arrive on the Levels, if any at all – this year there are a couple of hundred, with the flock I saw numbering about 130. They have flown quite a distance to get here having spent the summer breeding in the Arctic tundra in Russia and flying south normally to Belgium, Netherlands and Germany to escape the 24-hour night and freezing conditions. Usually, we only see such high numbers in Sussex when weather is bad on continental Europe but, at time of writing, both Europe and UK are relatively mild, so the reason for their presence in such high number remains a mystery. They do tend to travel around in a flock and so, if you are out-and-about in town and see a large V-shaped flock of cackling / honking birds overhead, they could very well be our rare visitors. Alas, they are quite timid and thus extremely unlikely to turn up on the Common Pond.
Tim can be found most Saturday mornings gracing the airwaves with Pat Bradley on 95.9 Hailsham FM, discussing local happenings between 8 and 10am.
Image: European White-fronted goose
