STROOD-SIDE STROLL

Hazy sunshine for most of Saturday 3rd, so nice and warm. The breeze freshened during the afternoon and as a result there weren't the various insects clustered around the clumps of flowering Alexanders. The photo above shows part of the seawall by the Strood with a dense stand of the Alexanders. The plant has spread rapidly in recent years along grassy verges, hedgerows, seawalls and into gardens too. The run of recent frost-free winters may have encouraged the spread of the plant.

Plenty of mud on show along the Strood Channel but all those hundreds of waders present during the winter have all headed north. A thorough scan of the area could only reveal five whimbrel, curlew, two bar-tailed godwits, one summer plumaged black-tailed godwit, four oystercatchers, ten dunlin, redshank and the elegant sight of an avocet feeding along the channel bottom.
Two common terns were busy diving into the water after fish and then calling out loudly.

Three swifts raced overhead as they headed off the Island while a handful of swallows hawked low over the fields, although rather surprisingly only one house martin was seen. There don't appear to be as many corn buntings to be heard so far this spring here with just one singing this afternoon, although three others arrived onto the Island from the west.

Singing from the depths of the reedbeds and nearby bushes were 2 sedge warblers and 3 reed warblers and a common whitethroat. A roving flock of 50 starlings fed in the fields with birds continually flying back and forwards from the nearby houses, where they'll have nests.

The cuckoo was again calling loudly in West Mersea this morning, perched high in an ash tree near Victory Road.