DAY TO REMEMBER

It's not often you see poppies still in flower in November but this was one small clump seen in a strip of set-aside near the Firs Chase caravan site a few days ago. Today being November 11th the poppy has become synonymous with this date and it seems very apt to admire it today.

Sunday 11th provided one or two memorable birds at Cudmore Grove, on a day with a chilly northerly wind. Just starting a walk along the park beach in the morning, I scanned the sea for possible divers or grebes. Amazingly a chubby little dark bird with a rapid wing-beat flew into my field of view, which I was able to quickly identify as a little auk.
This small starling-sized seabird with black upper-body and wings with white underparts, flew rapidly westwards along the Mersea shore. It probably came out of the Colne and I followed it as it headed towards West Mersea.

The little auk is a scarce winter visitor from the Arctic and with recent northerly winds, it's not surprising to see one here. There have been several recent reports from other coastal sites in Essex including a couple seen inland at Abberton reservoir.
Little auks are probably seen from Mersea every other winter and one poor bird last winter was unfortunately gobbled up by a great black-backed gull at the Hard at West Mersea!

The immature male snow bunting was still feeding on the same short section of seawall for its fifth day, except now it had been joined by an immature female bird. Andy Field came to admire the birds and with the use of his telescope, we managed to photograph (otherwise known as digiscope) the male bird.

Both birds were very tame and allowed walkers to get quite close before flying around for a few moments, then dropping back down again. They appeared to find lots to eat, presumably seeds washed up by recent waves or blown by the wind, onto the rough tarmac surface.

The real reason why I had joined Andy on the seawall was because he had phoned me to say he had just located a purple sandpiper next to the snow buntings. He was lucky enough to pick the bird out as it flew over the sea towards him, although it was only when it landed right in front of him, was he able to confirm that it was a purple sandpiper.
We watched this dumpy, sooty-coloured wader feed along the beach with about 20 turnstones, pecking amongst the seaweed on the strandline. It flew off east with the turnstones but then continued over to Brightlingsea by itself, having only been on Mersea for about 30 minutes.

Purple sandpipers are rare winter visitors to Mersea probably because they prefer rocky coastlines more. The last one that I saw on the Island was over fifteen years ago although there have been one or two individuals seen by others since.

The male stonechat perched up on bushes near the seawall, occasionally flying up into the air to catch passing insects. A rock pipit was noted along the seawall with some meadow pipits while in the grazing fields, a group of 12 noisy Canada geese were watched taking off.
Andy saw four redwings fly across the grazing fields to land in an oak tree.

The fresh northerly wind brought some short squalls with it and during the day there were several rainbows to admire. This picture taken beside the park pond shows another imminent shower cloud to the north of East Mersea.

Plenty of duck activity on the pond with up to 50 teal, 12 gadwall, 10 shoveler, 30 mallard and three newly arrived tufted ducks. In the willow trees above were two little egrets roosting during the high tide.

Martin Cock saw two common scoters in the Pyefleet Channel today, while one was also by the Hard at West Mersea yesterday along with one shag.