IDEAL FOR INSECTS

Another warm and sunny day on Friday 25th was ideal weather for many of the insects to be on the wing. This eye-catching dragonfly pictured above with the bright red body is the male ruddy darter. It's quite a common dragonfly along the seawalls - this one was seen resting on top of the Strood seawall.

Some of the ragwort plants have several cinnabar moth caterpillars with the distinctive yellow and black markings, stripping the plants of their leaves. Also on some of the ragwort flowers were half a dozen six-spot burnet moths, with their colourful red and black wings. The other day-flying moth seen was a single silver Y, amongst the long grass.

The late afternoon breeze kept many of the butterflies down but meadow brown, hedge brown, small and Essex skipper, small white, large white and peacock were all seen.

There are lots of clumps of the golden samphire in flower along the seaward slope of the seawalls. The flowers are often popular with some of the regular seawall butterflies.

Not many birds seen along the Strood walk as it was high tide but a little egret, reed bunting, linnet, skylark and meadow pipit were some of the usual birds seen in the area.
A weasel scuttled across the path on the top of the seawall, quickly disappearing into the long grass.

Called into the East Mersea Pick Your Own field where there were several peacock butterflies feeding on some of the flowers.