Ray Hale took Ferring Conservation Group members on a tour of British wildlife at its 31 July meeting, with a selection of the photographs he had taken in a lifetime of study and observation in Britain and south-east Asia,

His main interest was insects – he said there were 21,000 species in the UK – and especially spiders, of which there were 650 species in the UK. There were tens of thousands of species worldwide, including the tarantulas. Like our own Wolf Spider, these were hunters that did not spin webs, but their prey was other insects, earthworms and small amphibians – not animals or humans. Even the so-called ‘Bird-eating’ tarantulas did not, in fact, eat birds.

Britain had its share of exotic spiders, he said, including the Crab Spider, which, like a chameleon, was able to change colour to merge with its background, and the Jumping Spider, which could jump 10cm (4 inches). He was once called out by a local newspaper and television reporter to find the ‘giant spiders’ that had draped an entire hedgerow with its web. This turned out to be not spiders but a cluster of Ermine Moth caterpillars who create very large webs, each containing hundreds of caterpillars, to shelter and protect them as they move into their chrysalis stage.

He had also been asked many times about ‘very small snakes’ which are, in fact, the long caterpillars of the Elephant Hawk Moth. They have prominent spots at their rear end, which look very much like eyes on a head, to the confusion of predators.

He also highlighted the variety of Dragonflies and Damselflies that can be seen in Sussex, and the fact that the former can be identified by their habit of spreading their wings out at rest at right angles to their body, whilst Damselflies fold them in.

After this interesting and lively talk, Graham Tuppen reported on the recent ‘field day’ with St Oscar Romero School and on various local sightings, including a Pine Marten photographed in a Worthing garden, and the arrival of a large number of Jersey Tiger moths, an unusual appearance in Sussex. There have also been at least a couple of recent sightings of pods of Dolphins in the Channel off Ferring.

The March meeting heard a fascinating account of the life and writings of Richard Jefferies, a Victorian author and country-lover who spent the last years of his short life in Goring and is buried in Broadwater Cemetery. Chris Hare told the story of his upbringing on a small farm in Wiltshire, his work as a journalist in London and his move to Sussex in 1883 for the sake of his health., first to Crowborough, then to Hove, and finally to Goring. His house is still there, in Jefferies Lane, off Sea Lane, with the blue plaque set up in 1939.

Jefferies wrote many articles and a few novels about the countryside, but he was not a scientific naturalist. His writing is more an evocation of country life as it was lived by the shepherds, farm labourers and woodsmen, their dignity and simplicity. He refused to patronise or romanticise them but showed how they experienced the natural world in a direct and transcendental way that townsmen and city dwellers could only feel when they were in intimate contact with the fields, woods and streams and opened their minds to the beauty around them.

He loved the South Downs, as an almost primeval landscape still haunted by the ancient peoples that lived and worked there .He hated Brighton for its vulgarity, and Hove even more so for its mean streets and grandiose town hall. Jefferies died in 1887, at home in his cottage, of the tuberculosis that had plagued him for many years. He was just 38. In 1899 the naturalist and writer WH Hudson stayed in the house where Jefferies died, and here he started writing his book Nature in Downland, which he believed Jefferies would have written had he lived longer.

The well-attended meeting had a review of local wildlife from Graham Tuppen, including sightings of Peregrine Falcons, the Kingfisher on the Rife, early Bluebells and anemones in Patching Woods, and butterflies appearing everywhere. Stephen Abbott gave an update on local planning decisions appeals and applications – the most alarming of which was for a large housing estate on the fields opposite Sainsbury’s in Rustington.