WE 'ADDER GOOD DAY

Sunshine on Wednesday 11th provided ideal conditions for bugs, beasties and birdees. The day started with the two corn buntings perched up on their song-posts on the East Mersea road and also the first swallow I've seen, hawking above the Haycocks riding stables.

The picture shows a peacock butterfly as it basked on some logs while I looked for some adders. A comma and two speckled woods were also seen enjoying the warm weather. A common lizard was basking on a dried grass tussock.

A special effort was made to try and locate some adders for Renee Hockley-Byam's Nature Trail programme on BBC Radio Essex. Whether it was the warmth, their hunger or their restlessness with regards to mating but they all seemed very edgy and mobile today. Maybe they were just publicity shy but they didn't like being looked at today.

Of five adders found, only one was still a brown colour as opposed to the fresh pale grey of the others such as this female pictured above crossing the track. These well marked individuals appear to have recently shed their skins which the've discarded under nearby bushes. All of them had moved away by late morning from their various spots and who knows where they headed off to.

Andy Field was back at the park and located two willow warblers singing, as was the first blackcap near the pond. There was no sign of the wheatear.

Over the park flew a female sparrowhawk in the morning and a pair of Mediterranean gulls in the afternoon, the latter two calling loudly to each other as they headed towards the beach.

An evening walk past the saltmarsh near the Firs Chase caravan site revealed one or two tiny splashes of colour in the form of the common scurvy grass flowers. April is the month to see them and I had noticed quite a few flowers at the weekend as I drove over the Strood causeway. This plant was well known by Capt Cook for preventing scurvy amongst his sailors as it is rich in vitamin C.

The sun is now at an angle in the evenings where the setting sun shines along the old houses in The Lane in West Mersea