KITCHEN BAT

Back to Mersea after a short break and straight into the wildlife watching at all hours of the day and night. There was a wonderfully bright moonlight casting its beam across the seas onto the beach beside the park at 1am on Wednesday 1st. The full moon really brightened up the place and the only sound at that time of the night - other than a passing common sandpiper, was the sound of the waves gently breaking onto the beach.

I wasn't alone that night as the park has several small pipistrelle bats hunting along hedges and bushes.
However I was a bit surprised to find this little pip. hunting up and down my kitchen at dusk! I know I have occasional problems with flies and mosqitoes in the house but I didn't think that the problem was so bad that even the local bats were drawn to the inside of the house to look for food! I don't know how the bat got in and it flew several times up and down the kitchen trying to find a way out. After getting its breath back on my carpet(photo below), I opened a French door and the bat headed calmly outside and into the night.

The moth trap was run in the park again and only about 25 species trapped of which the delicate maidens blush moth was the most interesting. This fairly common moth has a smudge of pink on its wings, as in the photo below, which liken it to the colour of someone's blushing cheeks.

Other moths of note included a poplar hawk, drinker, magpie, lesser swallow prominent, coxcomb prominent, latticed heath, common rustic and mouse moth.

The moth trap was run through the night and I noticed in the morning that the regular long eared bat was out hunting last night as he spat out the wings of dusky sallow (one pictured above) and poplar grey moths, leaving them scattered on the park's ladies toilet floor.
There was no bright sunshine at dawn but at 5am there was a cool blanket of mist hanging over many parts of the park and neighbouring fields. There has been no dawn chorus now for almost a month as most families have finished raising families. However the young sparrowhawks could be heard calling out to their parents at dawn and the sand martins were out hunting over the park early. The now resident yellowhammer sang briefly to an empty park and the quiet calls and croaks of the nightingale could be heard in the car park.


In the evening a walk along the north side of the Island near Reeveshall was a quiet way to end the day. The area was nearly deserted except for a tractor cutting one of the grass fields for hay as in the picture above. Enjoying the recently cut grass were a few curlews and a black-tailed godwit probing for worms.
On the Reeveshall pool a little egret stalked the shallows and three green sandpipers stayed almost hidden along one edge.

The still conditions made it easy to hear all the sounds the birds were making even some distance away. Two spotted redshank, greenshank, common sandpiper, two avocet, two red knot, twenty grey plover, ten dunlin, twenty lapwing were some of the interesting waders noted on the opposite side of the Pyefleet Channel.
Only two marsh harriers were seen hunting over the Langenhoe ranges, while in the Channel, three great crested grebes and a brood of three young shelducklings were noted.


Bright evening clouds reflected off a saltmarsh pool along the Pyefleet. As the sun set, the regular roost of swallows and sand martins seemed to number about 500 birds this evening. The birds swooped back and forwards along the Pyefleet, some passing just a few metres from me on the seawall at times.

As I drove along Shop Lane a tawny owl flew away from the top of a telegraph post and headed into the old Manwood Grove.