MERSEA MERGS

At the beginning of the week, Glyn Evans photographed this male red-breasted merganser while carrying out the monthly wildfowl count on Mersea during Monday 12th. Offshore from the park that afternoon were 54 red-breasted mergansers, 4 red-throated divers and 2 Slavonian grebes.
Also seen during his walk along the north side of the Island were a stonechat, ruff, spotted redshank, 2 pintail, ringtail hen harrier and a common buzzard.


This little egret was also photographed by Glyn on Monday during the walk. Their numbers still a lot less than before the frozen spell at the start of February.

On the park pond on Monday 21 tufted duck and 8 pochard was probably the highest combined total for these two species here at this pond. Several of the ducks stayed throughout the week.They outnumbered all the other ducks with 8 shoveler, 3 wigeon, 2 teal, 6 gadwall and 6 mallard being the other ducks present.

The grazing fields held 50+ common snipe along with 50 redshank and 20 black-tailed godwits along with a handful of displaying lapwing.

On Tuesday 500 brent geese were feeding in the fields - it won't be long before they start to leave our shores for breeding grounds in Siberia. Other wildlfowl numbers are slowly decreasing with 150 wigeon and 50 teal, although 50 shelduck were starting to gather for the spring here.

On Wednesday a goldcrest was in trees on the park's clifftop while earlier in the morning a marsh harrier passed over the car whilst driving along the East Mersea road near Weir Farm. On Thursday just as darkness fell, a little owl was seen from the car calling loudly from an oak tree near the park entrance.



After some fog and a sub-zero overnight temperatures in the last few days, it was nice to have plenty of sunshine about the place on Thursday 15th. A few flowering cherry-plum bushes like this one in the car park have enjoyed the sunshine.

Martin Cock noted a Mediterranean gull, little owl and goldcrest during a visit on Monday to the Rewsalls marshes. Martin Dence reported that a pair of long-tailed tits had built a neatly woven nest in their garden at Bromans Farm.