Site-specificity

I've been thinking, at the margins of my days, about the sites that interest me. And on those posted and written about in James' post from Monday 'Text from images and Landscapes'.
Here are three sites where I might have gone with my placards if:
(a) I had made them yet
(b) it wasn't miserably wet outside

Greenham Common (above) - here we see the missile solos where US Cruise Missiles were sited during the later days of the Cold War. Site of protest by the Women's Peace Camp, some of whom stayed put for 19 years until the whole site was decommissioned and returned to public access land. The two mile long runway and surrounding land is now all returned to heathland habitat. Dartford Warblers and Woodlarks nest here. Ring Ouzels stop-by on passage. An improvement on Cruise Missiles, in my estimation. The descendants of the dinosaurs, just waiting for us to move over and give them space.

Below, a drawing I made of Burnthouse Lane, behind the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Burghfield. A site I visit regularly to watch the birds who carry on regardless of the monstrous technologies being developed across the road. Here I have watched Little Ringed Plover, Greenshank, Ruff, Winchat and Yellow Wagtail to name but few of the avian delights awaiting the patient observer.

Below that, a wintery image of a male Stonechat on what remains of Twyford Down. The downland through which humans drove a massive slice of destruction in order to extend the M3 motorway.  It was a site of protest and demonstration, dissent and agitation until the destruction was completed. The separated sides, joined by a footbridge, still support the remnants of wildlife that cling to existence there. I admit I regularly drive through this gouged landscape on the way to Southampton, or the coast. I always reflect on it as a violation of a rare and finely-balanced habitat. 

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