Tuesday 24 May 2016

MAYDAYS MARTINS

The house martins were busy gathering mud in the Maydays farmyard on Monday 23rd. Around 25 birds were flying around, dropping down onto the ground to collect wet mud for their nest-building.

The main house at Maydays farm has become one of the main nesting sites for house martins on the Island in recent years. Not sure what the number of nests will be this year but I believe around 25 nests were present last summer.
In West Mersea a pair of house martins are nesting again this year in the house at Queens Corner opposite the vets.

The seawall at Maydays has a nice covering of cow parsley along the sides at the moment.

Birds noted during the late morning walk included sedge warbler, 4 reed warblers, 4 yellow wagtails, 4 yellowhammers, 3 great crested grebes, pair of gadwall, 10 swifts, 3 marsh harrier, 3 common buzzard and a cuckoo calling on Langenhoe,

Several purple flowers of salsify were opened to the morning sunshine along the seawall.

Four small heaths and a small white were the only butterflies noted. A fleeting glimpse of a dragonfly was probably the hairy dragonfly.

In the Firs Chase garden over the weekend, a handful of orange-tip butterflies were seen including this female checking out a clump of hedge garlic. At least half a dozen holly blues were also fluttering around various bushes especially flowering holly and also clumps of ivy too.

One of the resident song thrushes had a tasty meal of a snail in its bill.

This common marbled carpet was disturbed from some vegetation in the garden. A regular visitor to the garden moth trap.

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