Three hundred species of plants grow here

One of my favourite walks is across the meadows from Greatham bridge to Amberley and back, about four and a half miles I suppose.

Wonderful too, how the place has reverted back to its old wild state after the attempts 30 years ago to grow farm crops across the flood plain. But the brooks do need grazing to stop them becoming carr woodland of willows and birch.

Some of the meadows are becoming lush with rushes in which large herds of fallow deer hide. You don't often see them because they lie down in the day and may be hidden. The rushy meadows are good breeding habitat for birds such as reed bunting, moorhen, water rail and mallard.

But what we seem to be missing is a bird that 60 or 70 years ago was so very common. And that is the one I would very much like to see back again: the snipe. There used to be 15 pairs in the wildbrooks 40 years ago, now only two or three.

A hundred years ago about 500 pairs bred in Sussex, today half a dozen pairs. The birds call as they mark their territory by diving with outspread tail feathers through which the wind makes a loud bleating like a lamb. That can be heard half a mile away on a calm night in spring.

The RSPB who own much of the brooks allow the meadows to flood in winter, making a good habitat for wigeon, teal, pintail and shoveller ducks. Even bewick's swans come here from the high arctic to over-winter. But another rare bird missing from Amberley which once bred here in numbers is the yellow wagtail.

This summer visitor from Africa hardly breeds any more, with half a dozen in Sussex compared to 300 pairs 50 years ago.

As you walk across Amberley Wildbrooks you may have to cross part of the quaking bog near the two little carr woods in the middle. A strange experience if you are not used to this. My wife finds this quite alarming. At this place you will see a very curious plant called tussock sedge. En masse they look like a herd of Highland cattle.

Three hundred species of plants grow in these ditches and meadows. With rarities such as true fox-sedge (Carex vulpina) the only Sussex location, and colourful commoner plants such as kingcups. To the Romans this was a vast forbidding swamp where they dumped criminals after crucifixion and where eel catchers lived like serpents among the reeds. Today we can enjoy a great range of unusual birds and insects, flowers and fishes as well as enjoying the incomparable view of the South Downs.