Williamson's Weekly Nature Notes

I love old rabbit warrens. There is always something interesting to see on the old piles of chalk they have dug out over the centuries. Look at what they achieved in the Kingley Vale gully recently.

Stonecrop was able to spread like a fire across the bare ground with no other plant to impede the explosion.

You could see this bright yellow patch of flowers a mile away when the sun shone and reflected the colour back. This particular warren shows up as a white patch in a 1911 photograph of the gully, and in those days it was much bigger than the rabbits have been able to achieve today.

During the post-myxomatosis era of 1953 the scar healed completely and then the usual botanical covering was elder bushes, which needed the underlying nitrogen from rabbit droppings, and deadly nightshade '“ another early coloniser.

By the 1990s, rabbits were back again and they started to find the deep catacombs of their ancestors a very desirable location for their own lives.

The Sedum acre, also called wall pepper, did not last more than a year in this state, though it is still there and now competing with various grasses. But without the rabbits we would never have seen it in all its glory as shown here.

Another warren nearby revealed the jawbone of an early human, excavated from deep down.

The perfect teeth showed it to be of the pre-dental decay time zone, the molars ground down, however, through the owner having to chew grass seeds as well as meat bones.

Rabbit warrens have often yielded flint implements from Stone Age times, especially on the Wiltshire Downs. From the entrance to one burrow I once found a dozen flakes all with the tell-tale bulb of percussion showing that Man rather than frost had hit the flake.

Near my home at West Dean are the extensive banks of ancient warrens, used when rabbits were farmed. Many were then called conygers, from the Old French coniniere, a rabbitry.

Rabbits were brought over late in the 12th century by the Norman invaders and established often by lords of the manors.

Today in many cases even these mansions have faded off the landscape but the embankments, often called pillow mounds, remain. Some are 300 yards long, and still five feet high.

Rabbits were reserved for the landlord long after they escaped through the banks and gorse, bramble and thorn-topped enclosures.

Tenants had to wait until the Ground Game Act of 1880 before they could legally kill rabbits on their land. Today, lampers often leave their toll of rabbits for the buzzards and kites to clear up. I suppose they are out of fashion as a table delicacy but their mark on the landscape remain.

This was first published in the West Sussex Gazette April 23