November 2006

Thanks to all of you who have been in contact to say you enjoy my 'born again' Watching Wildlife column which, I gather, is making me some new friends as well as regulars from the old Essex County Standard days.

Autumn chills are being promised by the forecasters after those really phenomenally high day and night temperatures in October and September. These had the effect on many flowering wild and garden plants of inducing second bloomings and it certainly seemed weird to see red admiral butterflies nectaring on the second burst of bramble blossoms on bushes which still bore over-ripe blackberries.

Our winter visitor birds are arriving with redwings, fieldfares and bramblings seen in NE Essex with some brent geese back along the coast and in the estuaries together with plenty of golden plovers and black-tailed godwits. One of the best places to see these packs of waders and wildfowl is Mistley and Manningtree. You can watch them at close range at the right state of the tides from the comfort of your car along the Mistley waterfront.

I was reminded of the amazing build-up of little egrets in Essex when my wife Linda and I had a walk along the river wall on October 27, entered from the Co-op car park at Manningtree and walked towards Cattawade just as the tide was beginning to make. We counted no fewer than 23 of these dashing little white members of the heron family busily fishing in the central channel, stalking forward and stabbing into the shallows for small fish. We reckoned the total number of egrets in that part of the river was at least 35. Little egrets are nesting in at least three sites in Essex. The original colony in south Essex continues to flourish and 51 pairs produced 130 young in 2004 and the count at Foulness Island on September 4 of that year was a record 206. Roosts in north Essex can total more than 100 with 98 being counted in November at St Osyth and 120 at Abberton Reservoir in September.

On the day of the little egrets at Manningtree we saw two green sandpipers on a flooded field on the left after passing under a little bridge underneath the rail line and a greenshank was with several black-tailed godwits on the river mud.

There have been an unusually high number of red admiral butterflies on the wing into November, nectaring on the last of the ivy bloom and on late garden flowers. These are mainly “offspring” of earlier migrants from the Continent and there is no doubt that the same global warming with milder winters which benefits the egrets is allowing at least some of the red admirals to hibernate and emerge in the spring. We are pretty sure that some hummingbird hawk moths are also over-wintering in southern counties. I was at the RSPB flagship reserve at Minsmere, Suffolk on October 29 when I saw a steady stream, probably totalling scores, of red admirals flying south along the shore. We know that there is a return migration of red admirals to the continent as is the case with some of the painted ladies. On that day I saw a “paint-fresh” female clouded yellow butterfly. I suspect a “home-bred” specimen rather than a late migrant from Europe.

A chat with my old friend Reg Arthur, warden of the Essex Wildlife Trust reserve at Howlands Marsh, St Osyth and a stalwart member of Essex Moth Group, reveals that he, like so many other operators of mercury vapour lamps and garden traps, has had some rare migrants. These include specimens of the Ni-moth and scarce silver-Y as well as the Delicate. Reg is also “host” to Cetti's warblers at Howlands Marsh where breeding is suspected. This is another colonist from southern Europe which has benefited from the series of mild winters. Singing male Cetti's warblers are being reported from up to a dozen Essex sites and at the end of October I heard the explosive song burst of a male in the reeds on the Layer Bretton side of Abberton Reservoir.

The warm conditions up to the end of October meant that there was a late showing of some dragonflies with common and ruddy darters and migrant hawkers being seen in many parts of the Colchester area and NE Essex.

Finally a butterfly story. In my last column (October) I mentioned a sizeable immigration of Camberwell beauty butterflies in July and August and into September. Jim Hood of White Notley rang me to report that a Camberwell beauty was being roughly handled by some youths at the Braintree Leisure Centre early in October when Jim intervened and rescued the unfortunate butterfly which had already lost an antennae and parts of wings. How it got into the dressing room remains a mystery and regrettably it had a sad ending as the butterfly died despite Jim's efforts at revival. But it goes into the record book for what has been a remarkable year for migrant insects.

Big numbers of little egrets are regularly seen in local estuaries and along rivers

Black-tailed godwit, a common wintering wader

Red admiral butterfly: large numbers still flying up to November (photo © David Barnard).

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