BEACH SURVIVORS

It was a bit risky going out for a walk with such big rain clouds around on Saturday 16th. One tall bramble bush provided some shelter but after ten minutes of standing around, Monty and I felt very soaked and bedraggled. We visited the section of beach on the south side of the Island between the caravan sites of Coopers Beach and Fen Farm. The high tide was being whipped up onto the beach and the blustery conditions had lured a couple of hardy windsurfers onto the nearby sea.

One of my favourite beach flowers is the sea bindweed with its small kidney-shaped leaves and large trumpet-shaped pink flowers. The flowers looked in a rather sorry state today with lots of petals bashed and flattened by the recent rains, whilst other bindweed flowers stayed tightly shut in the dull inclement weather.
Each summer I look out for this sprawling carpet wondering whether the previous winter's spring tides have washed it away, as it flourishes precariously along the high tide-line and also just above it. This is the only clump that I have been able to find left growing on the Island. There used to be a patch near the East Mersea Point but that got washed away by tides in the late 1980's.

Other interesting plants here typical of sandy beaches included two or three sea hollies, good numbers of sea spurge and plenty of the low sea sandwort plants.

There was an interesting mix of aromas along the beach with the most pleasant coming from this Japanese rose. It always comes as a surprise how powerful the fragrance is even when your nose is getting ready to breathe it in. This is such a contrast to the normal salty seashore smell of wet sand and rotting seaweed. The last smell to hit the old olfactories whilst walking along the beach was the very distinctive smell of fry up breakfasts wafting in the air from the caravan site!

Three tiny caterpillars of the cinnabar moth clung tightly to this little ragwort plant, shortly after one of the downpours. This is the first sighting this year of this widespread and quite toxic caterpillar. It picks up its alkaloid poison compounds from the foodplant, which in itself is poisonous to livestock. The bright yellow and black stripes serve as a warning to any potential predator.

Despite the weather a red admiral and painted lady butterflies were also seen along the beach.

Birds of note included three ringed plovers that were behaving as if they had a nest on the shingle - as they often do along this section. A pair of rival skylarks tussled with each other on the beach with brief flurries of song delivered between showers. A reed warbler and common whitethroat brought some life to a small reedbed with their songs.
In the Coopers caravan site, a pair of mistle thrush were feeding their young at the nest in a tree, just above van height over one of the roads. Pied wagtails, greenfinches, linnets, house sparrows, blackbirds, kestrel and wood-pigeons were also seen in the area. Feeding along the borrowdyke near the seawall was a mallard with seven ducklings.