BROWN ARGUS IN THE BREEZE

A morning stroll on Friday 6th along the footpath to the east of Meeting Lane in East Mersea, provided an unexpected view of this brown argus butterfly. Only the second one I've seen this summer on the Island and one that I've not seen in this location before. This individual fluttered briefly over some bramble flowers, the very small brown size catching the eye. It posed for a few photos and then disappeared away.

The warm breeze appeared to subdue a lot of butterfly activity and there were just small numbers of meadow brown, hedge brown, comma, peacock, large white and small white noted.

Enjoying the sunshine out of the breeze were lots of ruddy darters, such as this male pictured above. There seemed to be 50+ of them resting on the foliage, hawking around the bushes or resting on the ground, like the one in the photo. One or two migrant hawkers were also seen in the area.


The birdlife was very quiet although there was a nice fly-over by a marsh harrier, checking out some of the nearby fields. Two green woodpeckers and great spotted woodpecker were noted as were a common whitethroat.

At the country park there were 30 curlew, 15 lapwing, 3 snipe, common sandpiper and 5 black-tailed godwits around the muddy pools in the fields.
The regular female adder was curled up and well hidden amongst the long grass near the car park at the park.


The red underwing moth made its annual appearance on Thursday next to the buildings, or to be more precise, resting on an inside wall in the toilet building - as has happened in previous years.
This one has a corner missing from it's forewing and also it's hindwing too. This large moth has a striking colour combination of the vivid red, white and black markings which flash rapidly when it flies.

I gather that a common seal came in close to the jetty at the West Mersea Hard, no doubt attracted by the bacon scraps used by some of the 85 folk that were counted on the jetty crabbing.