Introduction

2021 saw life gradually moving back to a certain level of normality although coronavirus still affected many aspects of our lives. We managed to re-institute walks and visits around the parish and beyond albeit with limited numbers at first and in September we held our Big Bird Bash weekend again. By September, we felt the time was right to have a belated face-toface AGM and were rewarded with a good turn-out of members who appeared to really enjoy not only meeting together again but of course Nigel Colgate and Will Green’s esoteric quiz! Also, by the end of the year, we were able to reinstate the annual talk and a good audience enjoyed Mark Mallalieu’s presentation on Honey Buzzards and Goshawks in Sussex. Our breeding and winter area surveys continued and the Perching Manor Farm survey team of Nigel and Debbie Colgate, Lesley Milward and Will Green resumed their farmland bird surveys and a report of the results appears later on in the book. Nightingale territories were estimated from casual records again this year, while Debbie Colgate continued to monitor and promote the parish Swift population. Membership of Henfield Birdwatch continued to grow as did the number of people joining our Facebook group. It was great to see the interaction that now takes place amongst members, and the increasing number of posts. Once again, a huge thanks goes to Paul Cole who undertook collating all the records accrued through the various surveys, email and Facebook sightings and by combing through local records held by the Sussex Ornithological Society. He has then written and produced this book, under the editorial eye of Val Bentley, which is a huge task. I hope you agree that this is an excellent publication which continues to provide an ongoing record of birds in the parish, keeping Henfield at the forefront of community involvement in wildlife conservation in the UK.