West Hythe is one of the best sites locally for seeing wildlife, it is at the far eastern end of Romney Marsh and has the Royal Military Canal running through which extends to Winchelsea to the west.
There is a car park by the bridge were the road drops down from Lympe and you can walk along the canal in either directions on both sides. If you walk to the west you have Lympe woods to your right and there by the car park there is a thriving rookery and just past that is the heronrey. The heronrey can only bee seen before the leaves come out and the nest are barley viable unless the herons are there.
There are plenty of trees and undergrowth each side of the canal along this stretch giving an ideal habitat for wild life. There is an abundance of insect life and of course lots of damselflys and dragonflys ranging from the magnificent Emperor Dragonfly and Brown Hawker to the more humble Common Darter.
Fish abound in the canal, you can quite often see shoals of medium sized and young Chub and if you are lucky you my catch site of a pike lying in wait.
Bird life is plenty full here, apart from herons and rooks together with there friends the jackdaws I have seen chaffinch, goldfinch, greenfinch, bull finch, blue tit, great tit, long tailed tit, blackbird, song thrush, mistle thrush and in the winter fieldfair, robin, woodpiegeon, collard dove, mallard, coot, morehen, little grebe, kingfisher, black headed gull, cormorant and in the autumn of 2008 a green heron turned up and a night heron in the winter of 2009!
There are grass snakes, marsh frogs and common lizards and on the mammal side you can quite often see a fox or two in the field below Lympe wood scaring the rabbits and I once saw a fox sunbathing on the canal bank. Water voles inhabit the area in the ditches and drains [ straight water ways for draining the marsh] by the canal. You could catch site of a mink, I caught sight of one that dived under a waste bin and managed to get a photo of it looking out from underneath and one was photographed scurrying across the frozen canal this winter [2009].
So all in all a worth while place to visit.
