Sunday 16 July 2017

SEASIDE PLANTS

A few plants caught the eye during a walk along the West Mersea beach to St Peters where the saltmarsh was a nice purple colour with the patches of sea lavender.

Several clumps of sea holly were in bloom with this big plant on the beach near the bottom of Kingsland Avenue.

Sea spurge used to be quite a scarce plant on the Mersea beaches 15 or so years ago but in the last dozen years has sprung up on many of the beaches in West and East Mersea.

Flitting along the back of the Kingsland beach was this freshly marked painted lady on Friday 14th.

Birds noted from the beach included 4 common terns, 25 house sparrows feeding on the strandline and lots of noisy herring gulls with their big brown chicks on Cobmarsh Island.

A tatty small copper dropped into the Firs Chase garden on Friday 14th.

During a walk along seawall at Maydays farm on Saturday 15th, a pair of corn buntings flew onto a bush and this male started to sing. Once a widespread bird at Maydays, this is the last pair on the farm now.

Also in bushes and along the dyke were 3 singing yellowhammers, 4 reed warblers, one reed bunting and ten linnets. Flying low over the fields was a passage of 12 sand martins, 20 swallows and 2 swifts while 25 resident house martins were flying around the farmhouse.

Along the Pyefleet were 2 greenshank, common sandpiper, whimbrel, 16 avocet, 50+ grey plover, 100+ redshank, 10 dunlin, 8 little egret, 3 great crested grebes, 4 common terns and a brood of 8 shelducklings with two nanny shelducks. Two marsh harriers flew over Langenhoe and another over Maydays marsh.

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