PLANET ESSEX

Word has got out. BBC Essex Radio came to Mersea Island on Thursday 21st to find out for themselves what makes Cudmore Grove such a unique and special place. As part of BBC Essex's Planet Earth day looking at environmental issues, most of the main breakfast show was broadcast live from the country park.

After a cloudy dawn, the sun soon broke through and spurred all the birds to sing and the butterflies to perform making it a memorable morning for those special few who had come along.
There aren't many places in a busy county like Essex, where you could gaze across a meadow in full flower, where the only sounds you hear is the birdsong and in the distance the sea sparkles with the bright morning sunshine.

The BBC Essex presenter Sadie Nine along with your local blogger at her side, trying to convey to the listeners all the different kinds of wildlife that we had just seen on our short walk. Birds such as two great spotted woodpeckers, skylarks, meadow pipits, sand martins nesting in the sandy cliff, oystercatchers, curlews, meadow brown butterflies and a selection of moths kept over from the nights moth-trapping.

Local Mersea schoolchildren were invited to ask two of the main local politicians live on radio a variety of environmental questions such as what they personally were doing to help the planet.

Finally managed to catch our little furry friend, a brown long-eared bat having his midnight snack inside the ladies toilet. His long rams-horn shaped ears are very striking and pronounced. Underneath him was the tell-tale evidence of his recent snack with the discarded wings of a large yellow underwing moth scattered on the floor. Most recent nights he appears to fly around at night to catch a moth, retreating to the cool interior of the toilet building where he can tuck into his moth-meal in peace. This bat has been doing this here for at least the last six or seven years and is probably the same moth involved.
If any ladies are squeamish about bats, then they need have no fear about sharing their moment of need with this furry friend as he only visits at night.

The moth trapping was a great success with two traps run for the very short period of darkness. Well over 200 moths of 45 species were identified of which the main stars as ever were the hawk-moths such as this lime hawk above, dressed in its special army combat markings. Also on show were a privet hawk, poplar hawk and the pretty pink elephant hawk.
The moth trap wasn't just full of dull brown moths but a good variety of colours made it very interesting. The red and black of the cinnabar, the yellow of the brimstone, the green of the common emerald, the white of the brown-tail, the speckled of the peppered, the bronze of the burnished brass and the black and white combination of the magpie moth.

This rather uninspiring looking moth the bordered straw, probably deserves the medal for travelling the furthest to get to the trap having originated from mainland Europe. His long journey across the sea probably explains the buckled antennae, as it battled its way head-first here. The bordered straw is a scarce immigrant to the Essex coast with a few managing to reach inland.

A couple of other interesting moths was the first Archers dart, a mainly coastal moth but first record for the Island and the bird's wing moth with its strange pale markings on its black wings.