ON THE MOVE

It turned quite muggy when the sun finally came out on Wednesday 5th at Cudmore Grove. Taking to the air were lots of these leaf beetles, off in search of a new life. They were easy to spot as they climbed to the top of any tall object and like flying ants, they could then launch themselves into the air.

When they opened their shiny dark olive wing-cases, out popped the bright red wings, exposing the colourful orange body. As you looked around the area of grassland just behind the beach, the air was filled with lots of beetles buzzing around.

On one of the wooden benches in the park there must have been about a hundred of these beetles pacing around, getting ready for take-off, or hiding-up inside crevices. Close-up the red-legs show up very clearly. This mass emergence has often been seen in previous Septembers on warm days but this year seems much more noticeable.

One creature that was on the move but came to rest on the park beach is this striking compass jellyfish. It has been seen here before but it is not as common as the moon jellyfish, which comes ashore in large numbers in June and July. The compass jellyfish is named after the pattern of rays like a compass. It apparently can deliver quite a painful sting to humans and the children that were with me when we found this specimen, luckily treated it with respect.

I was fortunate to be glancing out to the mouth of the river Colne and saw the brief glimpse of a creature rapidly break the surface of the water before it dived under again. Although I was over half a mile away, I kept watching the same area of water because the more regular and familiar cormorants and seals usually come up for air for longer and this "thing" didn't behave like either of them. Patience paid off and I could see it was a harbour porpoise swimming out of the river. The short and blunt dorsal fin quickly appeared above water as the porpoise surfaced for air, before diving back down again. I sat down and tried to follow its movements for about ten minutes, trying to guess where it would come up next, sometimes waiting for over a minute to re-locate it. There could have been a pair of them but I wasn't able to see two together surfacing at the same time as definite proof.
I had good views last year of a pair of porpoises swimming past the East Mersea Point and there have been a few corpses washed up on the East Mersea beaches in recent years.

Birdwise the outgoing tide in the morning meant lots of waders around - unfortunately they were becoming distant specks on the mud. Two groups of golden plover rested on the mud totalling 300 birds. Three avocets from the local breeding family had returned to the saltmarsh pools near the Point.

At the Point it was great to see a linnet flock of over 100 birds feeding on the sea-blite bushes and on the saltmarsh. Autumn linnet flocks used to be regular and long-staying but numbers have dropped fast in recent years and sizeable flocks rarely stay for long anywhere on the Island now.
A group of 18 common terns concentrated their fishing in the river where there appeared to be a small shoal of fish swimming close to the surface. Gulls and terns repeatedly circled round to swoop or dive into the water after the small fry.

For most of the day there has been a big flock of about 250 house martins and swallows flying over the fields and the park. It's difficult to tell if any were actually on the move during the day as the numbers seemed to be constant for the whole day but they did fly around a great deal.
A few sand martins were mixed in with them and some still have hungry mouths to feed in the nearby cliff. One hole had four young heads lined up in a row at the entrance waiting for a parent to come back with food.

On the warbler front there were still one or two whitethroats, lesser whitethroats, chiffchaffs and blackcaps in some of the hedgerows. In the reeds along the dyke a couple of reed warblers were seen but no whinchats or wheatears to be seen today.

Martin Cock reported seeing 3 turtle doves, sedge warbler and reed warbler in the park on Tuesday while Richard Brown saw whinchat and a couple of wheatears near the seawall the day before. The tawny owl was seen just inside the park entrance late on Monday night - the first sighting for two or three weeks.

The warm weather brought out a few butterflies such as speckled wood, small heath, holly blue, green-veined white, small white and large white. Dragonflies included southern hawker, migrant hawker, ruddy darter and lots of common darters.


Moths were checked at both ends of Wednesday with a reasonable haul in the morning to check. This frosted orange was one of 25 species caught and is one of the regular early autumn moths here. Of the 130 moths trapped, nearly half were setaceous hebrew characters. Others noted were oak hook-tip, white-point, latticed heath and treble-bar.


The evening ended with a failed attempt by members of the Essex Moth Group to survey moths on the army firing ranges of the nearby Langenhoe Marsh. Unfortunately our army contact failed to show up with the key as planned, so the four traps were set up outside and just inside the main entrance.

Apart from the expected moths attracted to the bright lights, we also managed to draw in the police who came to investigate this strange night-time activity at the end of a remote country lane. Like some of the moths in the area, they only paid a fleeting visit before allowing us to soldier-on.
Moths noted during the first two hours of darkness included lots of feathered gothics, tawny barred angle, bulrush wainscot, green carpet, marbled beauty and brindled green.