BEE - WITCHING

Received a phone call on Thursday 14th from an excited neighbour who lives near the park, telling me they had discovered a bee orchid growing on a corner of land recently cleared. Torrential rain prevented me from going that evening but when I visited on Friday, these two photos show the orchid in flower.
There was just the one plant with its distinctive orchid flowers sprouting near the top of a very fragile looking tall stalk. The flower is supposed to mimic a bee to help in its pollination but actually this one looks more like the face of Coco the Clown with a yellow nose! The little yellow object in the centre of the flower is cleverly designed to brush the back of a visiting bee with pollen.
There have never been any previous records of bee orchids occurring naturally on the Island before, although there has been one that flourished recently near the East Mersea church that originated from the mainland. The nearest bee orchid colony is at Fingringhoe nature reserve about three miles to the north. Bee orchids are well known for springing up on waste ground and disturbed land as well as on old established meadows. This East Mersea site had just had some trees cleared from it early last year and apparently the large oval leaves of this orchid were first seen last summer.

The sunny Friday morning was a good opportunity for watching butterflies such as this large skipper pictured above. It did a bit more than skip from flower to flower and it took several attempts to find one that settled long enough for a photo. Just as the camera was ready to click, the skipper tore off at great speed to ward off rival large skippers who were intruding into their airspace. The first of the even smaller skippers either the Essex skipper or the Small skipper were also seen today, flitting low over the ground.

Other butterflies seen during a sunny hour in the morning included small tortoiseshell, red admiral, painted lady, common blue, holly blue, speckled wood, meadow brown and small heath - all along one side of the park. The day flying yellow shell moth and the Mother Shipton moth were also enjoying the sunshine. In a yellow clump of birds foot trefoil, a couple of green and black coloured six-spot burnet caterpillars were seen munching away.

Also busily munching away but on several clumps of stinging nettles were masses of the black caterpillars of the peacock butterfly. Not shy about being out in the open, these little spiky fellows were crawling all over each other in their search for more tasty leaves.

One or two black-tailed skimmer dragonflies were out on the wing including over the pond which they were sharing with an emperor dragonfly and lots of azure and common blue damselflies.
The pond has lots of green algae on it but that doesn't seem to bother the six swan cygnets, young coots or young moorhens. The ruddy duck pair and five tufted ducks enjoyed some underwater feeding.

In recent days it has been great seeing a dozen or so sand martins flying around the sandy cliff by the beach prospecting it for nesting holes. The large colony of over a hundred dwindled over the last two or three years to none here last year. Now there is the welcome chattering sound again above the park as the sand martins fly back and forth.

The damp and slightly muggy feel to Thursday night was just too tempting for the moth trap. It was doing great guns in pulling in a good selection of moths before the rain unfortunately started again at two o'clock in the morning. Had to hurriedly get out of bed, throw on a few clothes which confused Monty the dog as it was still pitch dark! There was a very quick inspection of the moths in the trap, before the light was switched off and the trap moved to shelter.

In the four hours of operation about 150 moths of 30 species were noted of which the biggest stars are pictured above. The poplar hawk, eyed hawk and the elephant hawk shown above were also joined by 2 other eyed hawks and another elephant hawk, making it an impressive sight in the trap.
Other moths included peppered, willow beauty, riband wave, bordered white, barred straw, marbled brown, barred yellow, shark, pale prominent and good numbers of large yellow underwings, marbled minors and heart and darts.

The only new moth species for the season were a couple of common emeralds, one shown above. Perfectly camouflaged amongst the green leaves but a little more noticeable when it rests on the side of a tree.

Other sightings of note on the Island in recent days included a hobby and brown hare seen at Bromans Farm while Martin Cock saw sandwich tern, 15 pochard, 9 knot, two avocets, first shelduck brood with 10 young and two marsh harriers at Reeveshall.