DANCING FOXES

No sign of the much talked about global warming here on Mersea Island over the last few days. Another grey morning on Thursday 23rd with a cold northerly wind and fine drizzle threatening at times during the day.
A brief glimpse in the morning at the receding tide revealed a good variety of waders on the mud in front of Cudmore Grove. About 10 sanderling was the most interesting group as this is the first group back onto Mersea this autumn. Most were scurrying around pecking frantically at the mud, in the company of 70+ turnstones and 50 ringed plovers. One knot looked a little bit lost as it stood by itself on the water's edge, showing off its cinnamon belly.

The lack of walkers on the beach meant the waders could feed quite close to the beach. Up to 50 redshank were dotted along the mud with more reinforcements arriving all the time. Not many curlews or oystercatchers in the first 50 metres of uncovered mud but they wouldn't have been long in arriving.
A dozen common gulls were noted later by the beach in the company of black-headed gulls and a common tern.

More dull weather restricted numbers of birds noted although several passage chiffchaffs were heard around the park. House martins, swallows and sand martins hawked together along a path swooping after their insects along the side of trees sheltered from the wind. It was more sheltered on the beach too and here the sand martins could be seen feeding some hungry faces in the holes in the sandy cliff.

At the park pond a gadwall has returned after a summer away as has a teal. Yesterday three little egrets roosted at high tide in the shelter of the copse overlooking the pond.

The attempt at mothing last night on Wednesday was cut short by a downpour of rain. A public demonstration to several families of night-time wildlife at the country park was prematurely abandoned just as the moths were beginning to arrive. Only about ten moths were noted.
One of the very regular visitors to the trap in recent weeks has been the flame shoulder pictured above, with its pale flash along the edge of the dark-reddish wings.


The large yellow underwing is a very common large moth which looks like a very dull brownish uninteresting creature. It is only when it is disturbed or seen in flight that the bright orange hindwings add a splash of colour and make it stand out from the many other brown moths.

The night-time walk on the Wednesday evening rewarded some members of the group with views of up to five badgers at the park as well as a red fox. However the badgers decided not to come out until the light was almost gone, so our views were rather poor as dusk fell.
On Thursday evening one badger was seen as night fell, the animal emerging from one entrance and then disappearing down into another part of the sett. In the gazing fields two well grown fox cubs were out playing and foraging together in the middle of the field well before darkness fell. At one point the playing developed into a stand-up face-to-face bickering, although as they held each other with their outstretched paws, it looked like they were about to do the tango with each other! Or was this an attempt at doing the "fox-trot!"