FROSTY MORNING

Alan Reynolds took these two great close-up photographs of sanderling on the Cudmore Grove foreshore recently.

Sanderling can sometimes be quite confiding and the East Mersea Point is a good place to see them during the winter.

There are often two or three little egrets that feed in the saltmarsh pools near the Point, this photo of one egret also by Alan.

It has stayed cold and frozen over recent days with a particularly sharp frost everywhere at dawn on Wednesday 12th.

All the plants and trees across the park had a good coat of rime frost, as this prickly gorse bush shows. There was no wind today and the moning sunshine soon thawed out much of the frost.

The sea off the the park was flat calm during the noon high tide. Six Slavonian grebes were enjoying feeding offshore slightly south-west off the park, along with sixty great crested grebes. Also seen were 3 red-breasted mergansers, male pintail as well as a few teal and wigeon displaced off the frozen fields.

Some blackbird alarm calls from one of the small tree plantations near the car park in the middle of the day drew attention to a little owl perched low down, trying to mind its own business. Towards the end of the afternoon a flock of 40+ greenfinches sat up in a tree in the car park along with one or two goldfinches, ready for the evening roost. 

David Smith reported seeing 35 barnacle geese, peregrine, sparrowhawk 20 snipe and 5 sanderling during a visit to the park on Monday 17th.

Martin Cock saw the 7 scaup in the Pyefleet again on Monday and had also seen two common buzzards over Maydays over the weekend.