SPLASHES OF COLOUR

Tuesday 8th was a breezy day with grey clouds keeping the sun at bay. At least it was mild enough and a brief walk around the Cudmore Grove Country Park revealed several items of interest.
The first bright yellow flowers of goatsbeard, or Jack-go-to bed-at noon, were opened wide to the skies. These are the cousins of the purple salsify seen a few days earlier.

Keeping very low to the ground and out of the breeze were a couple of tiny small heath butterflies. Only when they fluttered across the grassy path with the little orange wings flickering rapidly, could you spot this diminutive butterfly. Upon landing it would face its wings towards the occasional bursts of sunshine, so that they would receive maximum warmth. Other butterflies seen were red admiral, speckled wood, small white, holly blue and orange tip.

The park seems to do wild yellow flowers in a big way and everywhere you look, no matter the season, there are splashes of yellow at every turn. On the beach there was this eyecatching clump of the very widespread and quite common beaked hawksbeard.

More substantial masses of yellow line the cliff-top with all the broom bushes in full colour. This follows last months showing of the yellow gorse bushes. The broom bushes seem to have pulled all the stops out this spring in giving us such a colourful display.

Another widespread plant around the Island is the cow parsley. Many roadside verges that are usually green throughout the year, are proudly displaying great swathes of white. The approach to the country park in East Mersea is along Bromans Lane pictured above - and this is the prettiest time of year when it looks like a typical rural country lane.

Even corners of fields do not escape the cow parsley and it just so happens that the newly released cows into this field, will soon be making straight for these plants Providing them with easy pickings at a convenient height.

No visitor to the park at the moment can fail to see one of the great grass-munching machines - the rabbits. The mild winter and warm spring appears to have resulted in a huge bunny explosion with masses of the little furry animals everywhere. At dusk about 70 of them scuttled from one small area for cover as Monty did his last tour of duty.

Amazingly four domesticated rabbits that were abandoned in mid March have survived and this one pictured above, has built up enough confidence chasing away the other baby ones off his patch.

Bringing the whole scene to life were the rich and varied songs of birds like the cuckoo in the car park, the nightingale by the entrance, couple of skylarks high in the sky and a meadow pipit performing his parachute display song-flight and several whitethroats from the hedgerows.