This blog compiles personal notes and sightings on wildlife in the Hastings & Rother area of East Sussex, on the south coast of the United Kingdom. My main focus is birding and I watch a rough 10km radius from West Hill in Hastings town. There’s a great range of habitats within that: coastal clifftop scrub at Hastings Country Park; seasonally flooding wetlands in the Combe Haven and River Brede valleys; the grazing marsh and coastal pools of Pett Level; and the extensive woodlands surrounding Battle.

The name of this site comes from the latin omissus, meaning neglected or omitted. This scientific name was applied to Herring Gulls with yellow legs — the species typically has pink legs — historically found in the eastern Baltic. The omissus label is now viewed as taxonomically invalid, leaving these Baltic Herring Gull populations unworthy of taxonomic recognition yet morphologically distinct. For me they are emblematic of the cryptic hinterland of taxonomy and our ever-evolving understanding of biodiversity. My interest is in the obscure, hidden and forgotten within the natural world.

– Tom