Blog Archives: WildEssex

#WildEssexWalks: fungi, fruits and foliage in Wivenhoe Park

Britain's Wildlife, Bug & Botany Walks, WildEssex, WildWivenhoe

Our first #WildEssex walk after an enforced break of more than four months took us up to Wivenhoe Park with a large bunch of friends. This is a semi-regular autumnal walk venue for us, hoping to find fungi, fruits and foliage colours to usher us into winter.

Best laid plans! So much of what we hoped for is dependent upon preceding weather conditions, the sort of thing that is becoming less predictable as we continue in our arrogance to push our world inexorably beyond the agreed +1.5°C safe threshold.

It is always good when nature contradicts our assumptions. A hot, droughty summer followed by autumn rains and no sign yet of frost, I would have thought, seems a perfect recipe for a spectacular emergence of fungi. But it was not to be: even the ‘little brown jobs’ were few and far-between, and larger fungi even more so. There were Common Earthballs, some intact and others rupturing to liberate spores, together with a patch of Honey Fungus, and  Aniseed Funnel  and Deer Shield. But nothing compared with the rich array of some years.

Bracket fungi are usually more reliable, so it was not a surprise to see Birch Brackets, the nemesis of many a Birch tree, and Beefsteak Fungus, the latter growing from the buried roots of a veteran Oak.

But the most common fungus, covering the leaves of almost every sapling Oak was Oak Mildew. This at least seems to have found this summer’s weather to its liking.

For most trees and shrubs, the summer has produced copious fruiting, a so-called ‘mast year’, except bizarrely for Beech, the tree whose seeds are called ‘mast’.

Not that copious fruiting is necessarily a good sign. It way well be a response to stress, for example caused by the past three-drought summer. Although of course those things that eat the fruits are in for a bonanza: winter thrushes arriving in this country will be very happy to find an abundance of berries, here on Hawthorn and Cockspur Thorn.

On Yew as well, although strictly speaking those are not berries as the flesh doesn’t entirely envelop the (very poisonous) seed. Botanically, the Yew ‘berry’ is termed an aril.

Foliage colour is of course the epitome of autumn. But it is variable between years, again dependent on preceding weather. We had been hoping after the heat of summer for an autumn palette of shocking reds, but again ’twas not to be. The lack of any frost yet means that native trees are mostly turning yellow: here English Oak, Hornbeam, Field Maple, Beech and Aspen.

And even planted trees are not firing up as much as they can: Red Oak has just gone brown, although Tulip-tree has a bit more body to it, and Dawn Redwood is the most subtle peach just before the needles fall.

As always at this time of year, galls were numerous. On the leaves of Beech, there was the Hairy Beech Gall caused by the fly Hartigiola annulipes, a gall recorded from only about half a dozen other sites in Essex.

Some of the leaves also bore the signs of leaf-miners. This is the larval mine of Stigmella tityrella, a micromoth: the larva has exuded a chemical that delayed the senescence of its part of the leaf, giving time in the ‘green island’ to complete development.

Galls are caused by many different types of organism. The lumpy upward pouches on the delightfully scented leaves of Walnut are caused by and make a home for vast numbers of microscopic mites, Aceria erinea.

Very familiar under the leaves of English Oak are Common Spangle Galls, caused by the tiny gall-wasp Neuroterus quercusbaccarum. But other oaks are available. And there were similar galls under the giant leaves of the Far Eastern Daimyo Oak Quercus dentata. Similar but not quite the same, being more blobby and rounded rather than a flattened disc. Perhaps this is the shape of galls caused by the interaction with a relatively novel host plant: certainly this is the opinion of Essex Gall Recorder Jerry Bowdrey, who informs us it was first recorded on this host in a survey of Kew Gardens at the end of the 19th century, and that he  has also found it more recently at Marks Hall.

Also living on Daimyo Oak leaves was a Green Shieldbug , while a Hairy Shieldbug was also found.

A Red Admiral was spotted by some of the group, and one of the day’s highlights was expertly spotted by Jude, a Feathered Thorn moth wonderfully camouflaged against a brown Red Oak leaf. Autumnal moths are often shades of brown, yellow or russet for camouflage. But this one has additional darker lines that match the veins of the dying leaf.

It was a lovely walk in lovely weather: it is good to be back!

The Wild Side of Beth Chatto Gardens: wildlife among a visual feast of foliage, fruits and flowers

Beth Chatto Gardens, Britain's Wildlife, WildEssex, WildWivenhoe

During late October, I made two visits to the Gardens, both in great weather, but very different. For the first I was alone with my camera and thoughts, basking in the fiery glow of autumn, but the second, a few days later, was with a throng of up to 30 excited kids and parents on a bug hunt. It was absolutely delightful to be among such an array of sharp eyes, able to spot the teeniest morsel, and to see them enthralled by ladybirds, spiders and bugs. Such infectious enthusiasm for exploring their world boosts my motivation to want to protect it for their futures. And the joy on the face of one little girl when a dragonfly landed on her jumper will last a lifetime, mine and hopefully hers!

Late season butterflies, especially Red Admirals and Commas feeding up before hibernation, were still on the wing with a surprisingly late, newly emerged Small Copper, nectaring especially on Verbena bonariensis.

Likewise the late dragonflies and damselflies, basking, hawking and mating in a last gasp of summer before the cooler weather brings this generation to a close. Most numerous were Common Darters, some looking rather battered by the month end…

…along with Willow Emeralds. Which of these species will take the honours of being the last one of the year?

And sharing the aquatic immature stage of dragons and damsels, although as larvae instead of nymphs, a caddis-fly found camouflage among the browning poolside vegetation. These are tricky to identify, but this is one of the many, quite similar, Limnephilus species.

A few bumblebees, especially Common Carders, were still active, along with plenty of Common Wasps and a few Hornets, all of which apart from the queens are destined to perish shortly:

The most numerous insect group around the garden was the flies, whether groups of midgey minutiae dancing in the fading sunlight, or larger ones basking on sunlit leaves and wooden benches, or feeding at the fading flowers.

Hoverflies included Drone-flies and Grey-spotted Sedgesitter….

… but the specific identity of tachinid parasite-flies is more difficult to be sure of. The large ones with orange sides ‘used to be’ Tachina fera, but another pretty much identical species T. magnicornis has arrived recently in the UK, so we cannot now be so certain.

And the two below can only be assigned to genus, Linnaemya sp. and Siphona sp.

A final fly, strikingly orange with smoky wings, was Thricops diaphanus, from the housefly family. The Essex Field Club map shows only eleven previous records for the county, all in the western half.

Ladybirds, the kids’ favourites were to be found everywhere, mostly Seven-spots with a few Harlequins, but they are now starting to congeal into what will become their overwintering aggregations:

But perhaps the most remarkable insect feature of these walks were the true bugs, more than I have seen all summer. Most numerous were Hairy Shieldbugs along with Green Shieldbugs, some still sporting summer green but others browning into winter camouflage:

Gorse Shieldbugs too, also changing colour but always with the distinctive pale rim: remarkably, these are only the second and third garden records, and neither was on their traditional foodplant of Gorse…

Cinnamon Bugs were especially obvious during the first walk, while a single Bishop’s-mitre (again with only a couple of previous records here) was expertly spotted by one of the kids:

Moving to ‘other invertebrates’ Zebra Jumping-spiders and the harvestman Opilio canestrinii are both found regularly in the garden…

… but a Nigma walckenaeri, nestling under its horizontal web, and a Wrinkled Snail Xeroplexa intersecta were both new.

Amid all this invertebrate enthusiasm and abundance, it was easy to overlook the remaining flowers lighting up and providing a much-needed insect resource in the gardens, beauty made even more dramatic when bejewelled with droplets from the previous nights’ rains:

While the fruits and fungi speak of autumn, the Snowdrops (probably Galanthus regina-olgae, which typically flowers in late autumn) at least provide a hint of assurance that the dark days will pass!

Together with the birds – Redpolls and a Kingfisher during the first walk, and overhead Skylarks and a noticeable increase in presumably immigrant Blackbirds, Song Thrushes and Robins on the second – such was the bounty of this autumn, that I almost forgot to enjoy the kaleidoscope of colours. Almost, but not quite… so here is a final flourish of the gardens at their seasonal peak!

 

Another half-term break in London

Britain's Wildlife, Eleanor's photos, Travel by Rail, WildEssex

In what now seems to be becoming a bit of an autumn half-term tradition (see last year’s trip here) we headed to London for a couple of days with Eleanor. The weather was fine, if somewhat breezy, so we all had fun, as well as helping provide her with material for her school project about Rivers.

Emerging from Liverpool Station into a forest of high-rise is always a bit of a culture shock …

… but the shock is tempered with interesting sculpture and art.

First stop was Finsbury Circus for a picnic lunch among the pigeons and squirrels. Some interesting planting among the magnificent London Plane trees gave us all chance to indulge in a bit of photography, and Fatsia japonica in full flower was, just like its relative Ivy, drawing in all manner of insects from Honeybees to hoverflies and social wasps.

Thence to the SkyGarden, seen peeping round other buildings long before we reached it.

This is one of the amazing free attractions of London (although online booking is required). Our first visit there a few years ago was in very different circumstances with no queuing, but the half-term crowds this time meant we didn’t get in until about 45 minutes after our booked slot. Still, not as bad as Disneyland in February! And once up the lift to floor 35, the view was of course remarkable, for Eleanor especially looking down on the Thames, the famous sights and the tiny people.

The garden itself was certainly lush, although there wasn’t all that much in flower, as might be expected in an essentially non-seasonal garden: plants flower as and when rather than all coming out during particular times of the year.

The clocks had changed the day previously so twilight came quickly and it was well under way by the time we reached our Ibis hotel by Barking Creek, the last rays of sunset just lighting up the tide-mill at more-or-less full tide. Why Barking? It is an interesting area, well connected to central London but far enough out to be affordable. And she loved the bunk bed!

Another sunny morning on our second day, so it was a lovely opportunity to walk down Barking Creek, and across the complex barrier that marks the start of the transition from tidal creek to the freshwater River Roding.

This time it was low tide, and the gulls, Coots and Mallards gathered argumentatively (as always!), while Cormorants rested on the wrecks and piers. A Kingfisher flew out of a patch of bankside reeds, and both Pied and Grey Wagtails trotted around the margins.

Through Barking Abbey grounds, the Ivy was covered in pollinators including a Red Admiral and a brief Hornet Hoverfly. And the Grey Squirrels, dozens of them, were busy provisioning for winter and making a little girl very happy. Where would London be without its squirrels, pigeons and parakeets?

Our route to the Young V&A involved a quarter of an hour walk from Stepney Green, as Mile End station was closed by an incident. But even the walk was interesting, the damp, dripping, seeping rail underpass providing a home for ferns, specifically the non-native Cyrtomium falcatum, now starting to colonise such niches by spore dispersal from cultivation but not reported from anywhere in east London on the NBN Atlas. And then right next to the railway bridge there was a Buddleja showing leaf-mines. We have never seen these before in this host, and despite their very different appearance, both galleries and blotches, it appears they are from the same mining fly Amauromyza verbasci. Again there are no records of this species from east London, or indeed from most of the south-east of England. Under-reporting surely but always interesting. The other fascinating thing is the fact that ‘verbasci‘ relates to its other main host Verbascum – and DNA sequencing has only just recently made us realise that mulleins and buddleia should be placed in the same plant family.

Then it was an hour at the museum, before all heading home tired but happy.

Eleanor, as she often does, took many photos, and some of our favourites are included below. It always surprises and thrills me to see the world as she sees it, a world witnessed through protective bars and fences, a world of giant trees and a world where leaf patterns are just as important as showy flowers. We can all learn a lot from that!

 

Autumnal tranquility in Cockaynes Reserve

Britain's Wildlife, Cockaynes Reserve, WildEssex, WildWivenhoe

It was unremittingly dull but unnaturally mild and almost eerily still for my walk at Cockaynes Reserve last week. Barely a sound to break the calm, except when a wisp of breeze dared breathe and every dry-leaf-crackle gently fractured the silence.

That is apart from the bird life: mournful autumnal Robin songs washed through the trees, while half-a-dozen Redpolls trilled over, a band of forty Siskins bounced through the Alder tops, and two Kingfishers flashed over the heath, their calls of an intensity matched only by the declamatory Cetti’s Warbler.

Despite widespread forecasts of a fiery autumn, here it was subtle, the shades of  English pastoral pastel…

… but fruits aplenty, haws waiting for the northern thrushes, Stinking Iris at ground level and Sweet Chestnut husks splitting on the tree.

The fungal season is just starting, but the portents are good, with Fly Agarics nestling at the base of Silver Birches, clumps of Sulphur Tuft, and small orange caps (Rickenella fibula) and discs (Neottiella rutilans) exuding from the heathy carpets of mosses and lichens, the latter including the dog-lichen Peltigera didactyla.

And just a few flowering plants: the last few Common Centaury and Stork’s-bill, Trailing St John’s Wort and superficially similar but much more numerous Least Yellow-sorrel.

Insects and other invertebrates were few, but included a Parent Bug, Velvet Mites and a few crane-flies and hoverflies:

And then of course the galls, on the Oaks in particular, such as these Marble Galls:

Over the years I have examined innumerable Oak leaves at this time of year. There are three common Neuroterus gall-wasp spangle galls: Common Spangle, Silk Button and Smooth Spangle, listed in order of their typical frequency. But this year, here as elsewhere, Smooth Spangles have been as easy to find as Silk Buttons.

And while I have often found two of the three species, in all combinations, on a single leaf, apart from one at the Ingrebourne Marshes in 2021, I have never found all three species together side-by-side. But at Cockaynes last week in just a few minutes on two separate trees I scored hat-tricks. Two leaves showed spatial separation within the leaf, while on the others there was more intermingling.

Endlessly engaging, I have long had a fascination for these galls. Indeed I first wrote about them for the Colchester Natural History Society as long ago as 1986 during my first spell of living in Wivenhoe. Back then I found no hat-trick leaves at all, and my annual observations since then have done no more than reinforced my perception of this pattern. No answers to the question ‘why?’. But what would life be without a little mystery?!

The Wild Side of Beth Chatto Gardens: a lull before the first storm of autumn…

Beth Chatto Gardens, Britain's Wildlife, WildEssex, WildWivenhoe

Early October can be such a wonderful time. Still warm enough for shorts, still nature going about its preparations for the coming cold, seemingly with increasing urgency. And the first few days of the month this year were just that in the Beth Chatto Gardens, although with the first named storm of the season, Amy, due in a day or two, things could change rapidly… Thankfully I had the opportunity to make a couple of visits, both unfortunately rather short.

For now, the gardens are looking fruitful, showing some of the stresses of a multi-drought summer, but still in fine fettle. And for the insects there are still all manner of nectar and pollen resources out there to be exploited:

The most obvious visitors are still the butterflies, albeit in reduced numbers and diversity. Red Admirals, Commas and Large Whites were the commonest, with a very few Small Coppers, Small Heaths, Common Blues and Holly Blues, the latter by now probably on its third generation of the year.

Likewise, especially around the ponds, dragonflies and damselflies were still noticeable, basking, hunting and mating: Migrant Hawkers over the water, Common Darters everywhere including egg-laying couples in tandem, and Willow Emeralds, again some in mating formation, in the trees and marginal planting.

In the woodland garden, the leaves are colouring rapidly, especially that harbinger of autumnal glory Amelanchier. 

The Oak leaves bear their customary array of galls, here Spangle Galls although the smaller, darker ones may well indicate they have been hyper-parasitized. ‘Big fleas have little fleas, little fleas have lesser...’ etc comes to mind!

Spangle galls are caused by tiny wasps, but the pustular galls on Alder leaves are caused by even tinier mites, Eriophyes laevis.  And this leaf also has a leaf-mine, the manifestation of someone feeding inside the leaf (but not triggering abnormal growth, hence it is not a gall). Leaf-mines can be caused by a variety of insects, from moths to beetles, but this is made by the larva of a leaf-mining fly Agromyza alnivora. One leaf and two identifications without ever seeing the organism, just their symptoms.

A few Ivy plants around the shady areas were, as always, buzzing with life attracted to the vital late-season nectar and pollen source of their flowers.

Hornets were particularly active on the flowers, drinking the nectar for themselves, then flying menacingly through the greenery like  sharks hoping to pounce on an unfortunate insect to kill and take to their nest.

But it is thirsty work being a Hornet! Only males seemed to be visiting this watering-hole.

We don’t have much Ivy in the main part of the gardens, which probably explains why I was able to watch an Ivy Bee feeding on Astrantia. The bees are supposed to feed almost exclusively at Ivy, though in extremis may turn to members of the Daisy and Heather families. Perhaps Astrantia is a good alternative too: after all the Ivy family and Carrot family are closely related, and Hedera and Astrantia share a similar contracted umbel flower form.

By October  the power is draining from the sun’s rays so there are insects to be found basking to warm up. Crane-flies, here Tipula paludosa, seem now to be coming out in reasonable numbers, ungainly fliers and fair game for any insectivorous bird (or dragonfly).

Perhaps this Hairy Shieldbug had selected a sun-warmed bed among the insulating fur of a Cardoon seed-head as its cosy winter refuge?

Otherwise my eyes turned repeatedly to the late-flowering nectar and pollen sources. Honeybees were on a wide range of flowers, especially from the Daisy and Scabious families; bumblebees too, especially Common Carder-bees at the moment, and they can continue flying as it cools, given they have their own fur coats.

And where there’s prey, there are predators, although the success rate of this Flower Crab-spider may well be limited by its choice of backdrop…

It was good to see one of our larger hoverflies, the wasp-mimic Wasp Plumehorn Volucella inanis, an Essex Red Data species that has only infrequently been seen before in the gardens. Until we compile the Beth Chatto biolist I remain at the mercy of my memory, but Google shows me at least one previous example, from August 2023…

Wasp Plumehorn lives as a parasite in the nests of wasps and Hornets. And there are many other parasites that also contribute to keeping natural balance in the garden. One group is the tachinid parasite-flies, such as Tachina fera, whose larvae feed inside lepidopteran  caterpillars.

Then there was another Locust Blowfly Stomorhina lunata. These are scarce immigrants to UK from southerly climes where they breed, their larvae being parasites of locusts. We had one here about eight years ago, and then a small influx in early August this year, so maybe our native grasshoppers and bush-crickets should watch out…

And finally, the real prize of these visits, this gorgeous fly Ectophasia crassipennis, also a parasite, but of shieldbugs. Related to the equally beautiful Phasia hemiptera which was first seen in the garden in late July, when I was otherwise occupied, Ectophasia is even rarer, with only one previous Essex record I know of, and it is the first I’ve seen in this country.

As usual, the Beth Chatto Gardens came up with the wildlife goods. But what was especially remarkable was that my second visit lasted just 15 minutes. And in that short space of time I saw all three of the last-mentioned specialities, AND heard a Cetti’s Warbler singing, another garden first!

 

 

 

The Snails of Jaywick Beach

Britain's Wildlife, WildEssex

In my four decades in Essex, I have avoided Jaywick on all but a very few occasions. Regularly cited as one of the most left-behind spots of the country, it does little to dispel that image with low-rise housing, much of it wooden, cowering behind the sea wall and now clad in forlornly tattered flags of St George…

And indeed, why would it ever pick itself up? Deep in the flood risk zone (it was very badly affected by the 1953 Great Flood, with 35 villagers dead out of the English total of 305), all it would take is a substantial surge for it all to be washed away. Again. Not a recipe for investing in real estate, the fate of edgelands the world over.

But there have been attempts to address this, with Norwegian stone and dredged sand enhancements to the sea defences repeatedly over the past 20 years, hence most of my previous trips there, advising on the environmental implications thereof. The defences may have been improved, the risk reduced, but without a sign of it coming up in the world to my eye. It seems entrenched by its own self-image and lack of ambition, and arguably the judgemental views of infrequent incomers like me…

So why was I there last week? The sea defences have created some remarkable beach and dune habits, rivalling any such coastal sands in the county. The sand has been colonized by Marram, Sea-holly and Sea Spurge, while the more stable areas are now a thicket of Sea-buckthorn, all the vegetation playing its part in sustaining the defences. Lose the roots, lose the sand and lose the protection: this shouldn’t need saying, but apparently there are those who would strip the beach back to bare, mobile sand because ‘the beach looks scruffy’….

Earlier this year, parts of the beach were found to be supporting vast numbers of snails, in the summer cladding the stems of Sea-holly and Sea-buckthorn: this discovery will be reported in detail by Simon Taylor and David Bain in the next edition of the Essex Naturalist, due in December. Such aestivating aggregations are believed to raise the snails away from the severe heat stress conditions of the sand surface, a phenomenon I am very familiar with from my travels round the Mediterranean, but never here.

So I thought I would go and see for myself. Sadly it was not to be: the previous few days had been wet and cool, and I was met not by the sight of the branches clad in snails but of thousands of snails on the move in the respite from ferocious drought.

But what is most significant is that the commonest snail by far was Theba pisana, the White Snail or Sandhill Snail, often striped brown, and usually with a delicate rose-pink flush around its aperture. There were a few examples of the rather similar Striped Snail Cernuella virgata, smaller and generally lacking the pink, together with the larger, browner Garden Snail Cornu aspersa.

While Cornu is ubiquitous, and Cernuella is common enough in calcareous and coastal regions of England, Theba seems not to have been recorded hitherto in the wild anywhere between Dorset and Northumberland. But with such huge numbers, including juveniles, it seems to be successfully established for the moment, although perhaps at the mercy of severe frosts.

The finders’ theory is that it was inadvertently introduced with Marram plants imported from Normandy by the Environment Agency: this country is notoriously poor at biosecurity measures, despite the natural advantages of being an island. That being the case, Theba has likely been present for at least 15 years. As good as reason as any to venture out to Jaywick!

A day out in Sudbury…

Britain's Wildlife, Travel by Rail, WildEssex

The next in our series of explorations using public transport of the towns that are so near to home that they get overlooked in search of more distant delights, following our day in Needham Market a couple of weeks ago, was to Sudbury. Suffolk but almost Essex, in that part of our walk was south of the River Stour which everywhere but here where Suffolk invades Essex would have placed us firmly in the land of the Saxons.

One of the great things about Sudbury is arrival along the Gainsborough Line, from Marks Tey, up the Colne valley, crossing the Chappel Viaduct. Then over the watershed to the Stour valley, through Bures, then arriving into Sudbury. Stepping out of the station, and in just a few paces we were out onto the water meadows, a gentle and pastoral landscape with willow copses and reed-fringed dykes, and just occasional glimpses of the river at its heart.

Thence onto the old railway line, the vital cross link from Sudbury up to Bury, the closure of which must have helped split East Anglia in half, and of course contributed to the dominance of the motor vehicle, one of the least pleasant aspects of the town. Whatever, the old track which continues apparently at least as far as Long Melford provides a very pleasant, tree-lined walking route, with the metalwork of the bridges  providing a direct link to its previous incarnation.

In the dappled shade when the sun came out, the air was thick with the alluring musk of Ivy, and Ivy Bees were still active. Other invertebrates included scavenging Velvet Mites, sun-basking flies like Phaonia valida, an autumnal species with red-brown legs and scutellum, and a Kidney-spot Ladybird.

Galls were everywhere on the tree leaves, from spangles (caused by the gall-wasp Neuroterus quercus-baccarum) on the Oaks, to hairy Eriophyes similis mite galls along the edges of Blackthorn leaves and those of the gall-midge Hartigiola annulipes especially adjacent to the midrib of Beech leaves.

Lots of other symptoms of other organisms in the leaves as well: Beech had leaf-mines caused by the caterpillars of the micromoth Stigmella hemargyrella, Field Maple hosted the related Stigmella aceris (until recently very rare in East Anglia), and Sycamore leaves were blotched with the fungal Tar-spot Rhytisma acerinum.

While galls, mines and blotches are especially a feature of tree leaves, they are elsewhere too: there were mines of the fly Agromyza reptans (or pseudoreptans, as the mines cannot conclusively be separated) and midge galls of Dasyneura urticae on Stinging Nettles. It was only when I looked at the photo later that I realised there was a photobomber, a tiny parasitic wasp, presumably seeking to parasitize the gall-causer: a food chain in a photo!

Crossing and recrossing the river, on one side were the fringes of Sudbury, on the other the open valley…

Thence to King’s Marsh and the Common Lands, much more open, save for the sloe-laden Blackthorn-lined river.

Glaucous Bulrush and Arrowhead indicated at least reasonable water quality, and the open water was teeming with fish. A Little Egret, its plumes whipped up by the stiff breeze, stalked and stabbed, but its only success was a half-aerial lunge when it grabbed and ate a passing Common Darter dragonfly. The neighbouring Grey Wagtail was, quite sensibly, keeping a respectful distance…

Time for lunch: as we were beside the Mill Hotel, what better? And it was a very fine plate of fish and chips for us on this occasion: not even the ‘feature’ of a mummified cat could put us off!

Returning through the town, it was a wander through history. Starting at St Gregory’s Church, it was closed, but the immense flints in the walls provided the backdrop for several bunches of Firebugs. This is a species that is going places, having first colonized mainland Britain only five or so years ago, then found mainly in warmer, coastal fringes, but now spreading further inland. While the NBN map shows no sites around Sudbury, there seem to be few limits on its East Anglian distribution now. And churchyards are a des. res., often containing both of its foodplants, Mallow and Lime.

Flints also featured in a much more modern building, Gainsborough’s House, along with some artistically laid brickwork, bricks fired from clay being the other local building material, after timber and flint. But neither of us being fans of his art, we didn’t venture inside….

Looking down Market Hill, the hipped roofs show the Flemish influence in its development, the persecuted Huguenots settling here and bringing with them the silk-weaving industry for which the town then became famous.

We passed numerous half-timbered houses, then towards the town centre, historic municipal buildings …

… reaching the centrepiece, the former church/now arts centre. And there we learned of the not always glorious history of the town, including its anonymous caricaturing as a rotten borough by Charles Dickens, and its role in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1391. Simon de Sudbury, then Lord Chancellor of England, pushed the peasants too far by introducing a further poll tax, effectively triggering the revolt, and lost his head in the process, now to be found preserved in St Gregory’s Church, apparently, while the rest of him lies in Canterbury Cathedral with a cannonball in place of the head!.

All that was left then was to settle in the sun by the water outside the Quay Theatre, watching Willow Emeralds in the marginal vegetation, while waiting for the train. A fascinating day out, and only 20 miles from home!

 

The Wild Side of Beth Chatto Gardens: autumn plenty

Beth Chatto Gardens, Britain's Wildlife, WildEssex, WildWivenhoe

I expected the final set of Wildside Walks for the year were going to focus upon nature preparing itself for the season to come. And yes, we looked at that although it all felt a bit superfluous as we were experiencing a short-lived, day-long heatwave, with temperatures around 26º Celsius, full sun and a light breeze, truly a (presumably) last blast of summer.

Chiffchaffs were in good song, a fleeting remembrance of spring, but soon quelled by the mournful, minor-key autumnal song of Robins, the twittering overflight of Swallows and the reedy wheezing of Siskins in the Alders. Down at the Reservoir, the Moorhen broods are growing fast, and the Mallards were joined by a pair of Gadwalls in the Duckweed soup…

Also around the ponds, there were still plenty of dragonflies and damselflies, with Common and Ruddy Darters, Migrant and Southern Hawkers, and most numerously Willow Emeralds, with lots of mating pairs fluttering about.

In the borders and beds, Rudbeckia, Verbena and Bistorta were pulling in the butterflies, especially Commas, Red Admirals and Peacocks, along with the ‘cabbage’ whites, and single Brimstone, Painted Lady, Small Heath and Common Blue. Sadly however, the Hummingbird Hawkmoth I had seen a few days previously was nowhere to be seen…

Bees and ladybirds were visiting the ice-plants in particular, always reliable at this time of year…

… and of course Ivy, the autumn pollen and nectar source par excellence. Hornets were everywhere, trawling noisily through insect-attracting flowers and leaping on anything too slow to get out of the way: the wasp in the photo below was despatched in seconds.

As the Sun’s intensity declines, so the importance of sun-basking increases so the insects can go about their business of feeding and breeding without becoming prey themselves. There were tachinid parasite-flies like Tachina fera, various other flies (just look at the covering of pollen!) and parasitic wasps, together with an array of true bugs: Cinnamon Bug, Dock Bug, Hairy and Green Shield-bugs. Plus a long-anticipated new species for the garden: Rhododendron Leafhoppers have been spreading since their arrival in Britain almost a century ago and are found on most local Rhododendron leaves, but not until now within our garden. Rhododendrophiles may hate them as they may help to spread diseases between host plants, but they are undeniably spectacular, while rhododendrons have very limited positive wildlife values. I love the bugs!

At this stage of autumn, our thoughts turn to Oak trees, especially in mast years like this with an abundance of large acorns.

The leaves are starting to look their age, many coated in mildew, nibbled or hosting the internal workings of leaf-mining insects, such as the sinuous galleries of the micromoth Stigmella ruficapitella (or similar).

And then there are the galls, distinctively shaped structures that signify the fact thattiny gall wasps are infecting the tree: Spangle Galls, Smooth Spangles, Oyster Galls, Knopper Galls, Cola Nut Galls and Ramshorn Galls are shown here, the latter also a new record for the garden.

There are of course many other types of gall-causers and leaf-miners, and plant species that exhibit them. The Holly Leaf-miner is a type of fly and the rough, raised galls on Alder leaves are caused by the mite Acalitus brevitarsus.

And searching leaves for galls and mines can also turn up other delights, such as the sputnik-shaped white egg-sacs of a small spider, Paidiscura pallens, again possibly the first time it has been recorded here. Indeed spiders and their webs are always a constant feature of autumn, none more impressive than the common Garden Cross Spider.

And so we come to the end of my Wildside Walks for the year. Thanks to all who joined them, or enjoyed reading about them. I hope they will return next spring: keep an eye on the events page of the Beth Chatto website Courses & Workshops – Beth Chatto’s Plants & Gardens or the page on my own website dedicated to the Beth Chatto Gardens Beth Chatto Gardens – activities and events | Chris Gibson Wildlife.

Autumn in Wivenhoe’s Lower Lodge reserve

Britain's Wildlife, WildEssex, WildWivenhoe

Long gone are the insect-rich days of high summer as Lower Lodge settles into the bounty of autumn. Just a few butterflies were hanging on today in their tatters, including what are likely to be some of our last Common Blues and Meadow Browns of the year (especially after the ferocious squally storm that swept through later in the afternoon).

Common Darters were on duty, as they are likely to be until November, mopping up the last few flying insects. There was also a single Platycheirus albimanus hoverfly, and an Ivy Bee at rest on an oak tree – quite a surprise as there is very little Ivy around the reserve.

With flowering almost done, it was over to the autumnal fruits to provide colour. Hawthorn in particular was radiant with its masses of berries, drawing me in to look more closely at the leaves, with the tent-mines of the micromoth Phyllonorycter corylifoliella, and a harvestman Opilio canestrinii nestling among the ultra-spiny terminal shoots that have been galled by the gall-midge Dasineura crataegi. Although presumably under-recorded, the latter has only one Essex locality (near Dedham) shown on the NBN Atlas.

And so to the Oaks, which occupied most of my walk, demonstrating their prowess as a powerhouse of biodiversity, some sprouting Hen-of-the-woods and most of the saplings at least liberally coated in Oak Powdery Mildew.

So late in the season, the leaves have done their photosynthetic job, so leaf coatings, munchings, mines and galls are probably no problem to the trees. And galls in particular were everywhere, each caused by a near-identical tiny gall-wasp. Now is the time to search under the leaves for spangle-galls, and as usual Common Spangles were easy to find.

Most years, Silk-button Spangles come a close second in abundance, but as we have found elsewhere this year, they seem few and far between. In fact among the hundreds of leaves I examined, I found only four with Silk-buttons, and Smooth Spangles, often quite hard to find, outnumbered them manyfold. The vagaries of the life of a gall-wasp and its interactions with the weather and the tree!

Another species we are seeing much more of this year is the Oyster Gall, erupting from the leaf-veins, whereas Cherry Galls seem fewer than usual:

And then there were the bud-galls: Marble Galls and Artichoke Galls, both rather less frequent than we expect, and Cola-nut Galls, if anything more abundant this year. And only when looking at the galls did I notice the Opilio canestrinii staring back at me…

Spiders were another group I found by searching leaves for galls. There was a Flower Crab-spider, more usually seen sitting on flowers waiting to grab visiting pollinators, a Cucumber Spider and a Bleeding-heart Spider …

… plus the signs of other species, here the web of a Xysticus crab-spider and the Sputnik egg-sac of Paidiscura pallens.

And leaving best until last, I turned over one leaf and found this wonderful creature, my first ever caterpillar of the scarce woodland moth, the Festoon, sitting among presumably its feeding scrapes. Looking like an alien life-form, it was a real thrill to find, and while the adult turns up in many moth traps in the area, to have proof of breeding is always exciting.

 

The Colne Estuary as autumn approaches…

Britain's Wildlife, WildEssex, WildWivenhoe

Meteorological autumn may have started with the advent of September, but in today’s lovely sunshine it felt like a welcome return to summer after the unsettled spell of the past week.

Along the seawall past Barrier Marsh, the scrub is again getting a foothold among the anthills, home to Goldfinches and Linnets, while Hornets, Migrant Hawkers and both Common and Ruddy Darters hunted for their increasingly scarce insect prey. A few overhead Swallows and Meadow Pipits represented respectively the departing summer and coming winter.

Looking seaward it was high tide, so few signs of returning autumn waterbirds, at least close up; over in the distance, hiding in the heat haze and the sun-twinkled water, as the tide dropped away there were Black-tailed Godwits, Redshanks and Grey Plovers, identifiable by their distant calls.

By the Sailing Club, Strawberry Clover is having a good season, seemingly spreading, and at this time of the year in flower and fruit:

The saltmarshes are assuming the purplish wash of their autumn colours, with Annual Seablite especially turning into a visual feast, from fresh green to deep purple and every shade in-between, while the Glassworts have not yet picked up the cue of the advancing year:

And fringing the sea wall, the Shrubby Seablite too is rapidly assuming its autumnal glow:

At Grange Wood, fungi were showing, in the form of Birch Bracket and Ergot (on the flowers of Sea Couch), but too early yet to see whether the recent rains will trigger widespread fungal fruiting following our hot, droughty summer.

But no such shyness among the fruits of  the hedgerows. Everything seems to be producing in abundance, from Dog Rose and Blackthorn to large and numerous acorns:

And now of course is time to look closely at the Oak leaves. There were a few insects to be found, including this Caliroa species, one of the oak slug-sawflies…

… and most obvious of all, galls everywhere. Common Spangle galls, normally the most abundant, seemed pushed into second place by Smooth Spangles, in a range of colours from white to deep red, but seemingly, at least not in the stretches we walked, no Silk-buttons, normally the second most frequent oak leaf gall…

… while other leaf galls included Oyster galls, and the woody, bud galls included Marble and Cola-nut galls.

So much to see in just a couple of hours, boding well for a productive autumn in #WildWivenhoe!

The Wild Side of Beth Chatto Gardens: all set for an early Autumn

Beth Chatto Gardens, Britain's Wildlife, WildEssex, WildWivenhoe

It has been great to get back into the gardens after a month’s absence. And it has been ‘all change’: the rains of late July provided merely a brief respite, and drought has reasserted itself, with the effect of producing an exceptionally early autumn.

Many flowers are fading, leaves are colouring, fruits are forming and even a few fungi are sprouting, including Boletus radicans. Fledgling birds like this Song Thrush are all around the garden, and there has been a steady stream of Swallows heading southwards overhead.

Of course by the ponds and in the damper corners, drought is less of an issue and here late summer is at its most luxuriant, with still plenty of aquatic insect activity, especially Ruddy Darters and Willow Emeralds.

Pride of place flower-wise must go to Bistorta amplexicaulis and Rudbeckia, side-by-side and buzzing with life, the former especially with social wasps and tachinid parasite-flies such as Tachina fera, the latter with all manner of flies and bugs like Green Shieldbug.

Plenty to see around the rest of the garden as well, including German Scorpionfly, Dock Bug, Tarnished Plant-bug and the autumnal micromoth Agriphila geniculea, with butterflies such as Small and Green-veined Whites and Commas still active when the sun emerged.

And as always, a few less common species. The Field Digger-wasp Mellinus arvensis is only thinly scattered across most of Essex, although with concentrations along the Thames bank and the gravels around Colchester. I have seen it in the gardens only a couple of times previously.

The sawfly Selandrina serva has, according to the maps, only a very few Essex localities, but this is surely down to under-recording and under-reporting of what is not a popular group among non-specialists. What is more certain is that the Spurge Bug Dicranocephalus medius is genuinely scarce in the county, with the map showing just two localities. One of those is my previous sighting in the garden in April 2024, no more than ten metres from today’s on the Rudbeckia.

And staying with the Rudbeckia, best of all was an extraordinary number of Locust Blowflies Stomorhina lunata, maybe ten in total in one small area. We found one of those in the garden back in October 2016. At the time there had been only two previous records from Essex of this distinctive fly that lives as a parasite of desert locusts. It is still believed to be entirely migratory to this country, probably from Africa, but it has certainly increased over the past decade, and there have been reports from elsewhere of much larger numbers than ever before. Look out for a blowfly with stripes like a hoverfly, a longitudially striped thorax, a protruding beak, and stripy eyes, especially in the less well marked female. Wonderful to see so many!

 

The Wild Side of Beth Chatto Gardens: after the Ladybird Blizzard…

Beth Chatto Gardens, Britain's Wildlife, WildEssex, WildWivenhoe

My July Wildside Walks around the Beth Chatto Gardens came with a backstory. Just over a week previously, we had seen an influx of insects into north-east Essex that was unprecedented this millennium. Two previous blogs cover the events of that week: I didn’t have time to get to the gardens while the influx was actively under way so we had to enjoy the spectacle from Wivenhoe Lower Lodge and Walton-on-the-Naze. In fact I have to go back to the long, hot summer of 1976 to recall such numbers…

I did however manage to get to the gardens the day after the insect blizzard and found the flowers to be dripping with hoverflies and ladybirds. In keeping with our observations from the previous couple of days, all ladybirds seemed to be 7-spots, and the hoverflies were of six main species: Eupeodes corollae, Eupeodes luniger, Syrphus ribesii, Episyrphus balteatus, Sphaerophoria cf scripta and Scaeva pyrastri.

 

A week later, for the walks, things had quietened down a lot. Yes, there were still many more than the (recently) ‘normal’ number of insects (aside from aphids which the hungry hordes had hoovered up), but clearly many of the ladybirds and hoverflies had either been eaten or moved on. We were in Blackpool four days after our influx, and noticed a significant arrival of ladybirds there, perhaps ‘ours’, having crossed the North Sea and pushing on, boldly going places where there might still be aphids left to eat.

As always there were some star plants, doing the heavy lifting and feeding the most insects: lavenders, marjorams, sea-hollies, buddleias, scabiouses, fennels and spurges. Anyone wanting to enhance their own garden for summer wildlife could do a lot worse than to bring in some of these, or their close relatives.

Coming as this did right at the start of the Big Butterfly Count 2025 citizen science survey, I’ll start with the butterflies. In total, fifteen species were spotted and I could have easily added another five or more had I gone searching specifically for them.

The above were just a few of those on offer but, in terms of number, pride of place must go to the Gatekeepers. They were everywhere, seeming to love the marjoram especially.

And there was much more than just the butterflies. There were of course the remnants from the previous week’s arrivals: ladybirds and hoverflies.

Then there were several other hoverflies that seemed not to be represented in the main influx such as Drone Fly and Batman Hoverfly, while tachinid parasite-flies were also noticeable, especially Tachina fera and Eriothrix rufomaculatus.

Hogweed Bonking-beetles were numerous, and not restricting themselves to their favoured umbel inflorescences, while a Black-and-yellow Longhorn beetle nibbled the Eryngium majestically, pushing aside the hoverflies as it fed.

Many different bees and wasps were active on all the favoured flowers, and more. As well as bumbles and honeys, bees included miners and leaf-cutters, solitary bees that seem to be doing well here this year, perhaps related to their being apparently fewer Honeybees dominating the floral resources. Leaf-cutters have also been busy cutting discs from leaves, like a garden Matisse, then inserting them into suitable nesting holes.

The social Common, German and  Median Wasps (two colour forms of the latter pictured here) fed alongside solitary wasps like Bee-wolf and Ornate-tailed Digger-wasps Cerceris rybyensis:

With so much action on the flowers, not surprisingly there were those hoping to take advantage, including Flower Crab-spiders and Blue-tailed Damselflies, ‘sit-and-wait’ and ‘in-flight’ predators respectively. And with all that going on up top, our attention was rather deflected from the insects feeding on the leaves and stems such as this Hairy Shieldbug.

But probably the most notable thing about these walks was the number of ‘firsts’, at a range of scales. There was a first for me in this garden (although others have reported it as it has spread to our part of the world over the past five years): a Jersey Tiger moth. Another day-flying moth, albeit rather worn, was a Six-spot Burnet, probably the first garden record. And a dead Bank Vole was the first I have identified with certainty here, having not done any small mammal trapping surveys.

Three bugs were new to the garden list, although probably have simply been overlooked in the past: Nysius senecionis (just five previous records on the Tendring Peninsula, here with the small plasterer bee Colletes daviesanus for scale, showing how easy it would be to miss), Orthops campestris (only three Tendring records, all right by the coast) and Liocoris tripustulatus (widespread across Essex, albeit with records concentrated in the south of the county, which probably says more about the distribution of active recorders than the species itself!).

A Large-headed Resin-bee Heriades truncorum was the first garden record. This species has spread from being a south-eastern rarity in the last two decades, but in Essex has generally been found on brownfield sites by the Thames and west of Colchester: its two recorded localities on the Tendring Peninsula are both right by the coast. Perhaps caught up with the influx of Seven-spots, a single Adonis Ladybird (small, with spots weighted to the front half of the wing-cases) was also new to the garden list. This is found mainly in sandy areas and on brownfields sites, so in Essex it is most frequent west of Colchester and along Thames-side. Likewise the  lovely little fly Cistogaster globosa, a parasite of shieldbugs, that is found mainly in the same two areas of Essex, but rather more sparsely. And another parasite, the ichneumon wasp Ctenichneumon panzeri (if identified correctly: they are many and tricky) is recorded on the National Biodiversity Network Atlas from only 14 locations nationally, none of which is anywhere near Essex. The latter is surely down to under-recording.

But this is certainly not the case with the insect highlight of the day: two Long-tailed Blues, again probably ones that had been caught up in last week’s immigration spectacular. Not only is this a new garden record, there are only seven previous Essex sightings, and I have never before seen it in the UK. Safe to say, I got rather excited!

Although widespread in mainland Europe, Long-tailed Blue has rarely been proven to breed in this country, and its occurrence is generally the result of immigration. And so is unpredictable, irregular and always a delight. What a way to mark the first day of this summer’s national butterfly survey!

My next set of Wildside Walks are scheduled for 19 September, booking through the Beth Chatto website at 11AM or noon. Especially if we get some useful rain, I would expect the summer to continue in a similar insect-rich vein. While many of the current star plants are coming to a natural end, there are more to come. The various forms of Bistorta amplexicaulis  together with the daisy family (coneflowers, hemp-agrimonies, black-eyed-Susans and Michaelmas-daisies, for example) should prove some of the insect-feeding stars for the next two months.

I make no apologies for finishing by repeating what I have written in a previous blog in relation to this year of insect riches.

We must not let complacency set in, and stop doing all we can to save the future planet just because (unusually) there are lots of insects around. Nothing has changed fundamentally compared to last year when I was complaining of the Silent Summer. The same pesticides are used profligately. Habitat loss and fragmentation is increasing in the drive to build more houses to satisfy a ‘crisis’ promoted by housebuilder lobbyists. And climate collapse is accelerating, especially with world ‘leaders’ in thrall to big oil.

There are always oscillations around a declining trend. Last year was a trough, this looks like a peak. It may well be due to weather patterns of the last few months. And almost certainly many of the insects we have been seeing in coastal Essex are not home-bred. Thank goodness for immigration, as in so many aspects of life.

It is years like this one that give me hope though. As a conservationist over the past four decades, I have seen the continuing, worrying decline of wildlife, but I cling to hope that if nature is given the chance it can and will bounce back. It has to…