Blog Archives: WildEssex

Beeleigh Abbey and the Mundon Oaks

Britain's Wildlife, Travel by Bus, WildEssex

The intense heat has subsided, a little rain has fallen, and autumn is upon us early. Time for our first September short break, this one a return to Maldon after our lovely time there in April last year. Unfinished business, and all by bus!

As always, travelling familiar routes by bus for the first time gave lots of opportunity for looking and seeing, finding details and nuances in the landscape that are lost when you are concentrating on driving, and we arrived in Maldon as planned at lunchtime. Time for a drink in the Muddy Duck, looking at the River Blackwater, albeit from the shelter of the bar, given the at times blustery wind.

Sea Aster flowered from the ooze, while the creekside path was flanked with Dog Rose bushes adorned with Robin’s Pincushion galls. Great Horsetail filled a spring-line, and the opening Ivy flowers were attracting Ivy Bees and marauding Hornets.

From there it was upriver to Beeleigh Abbey for its open garden day, one of our bits of unfinished business as it wasn’t open the time we walked past previously.

The gardens are perfectly pleasant, without pushing any boundaries, the only somewhat surprising plant being a Persian Silk-tree Albizia julibrissin flowering in the tea garden.

As always there was some wildlife to be found, including the larval workings of the Fig-leaf Skeletonizer moth and Hornet Hoverfly, two species that have shown marked northward shifts over the last couple of decades, no doubt due to climate breakdown.

For me, the greatest attribute of the garden is the amazing house it enfolds, a remnant of a Praemonstratensian monastery founded by the White Canons around 1180.

Much of the original abbey didn’t survive the dissolution of the monasteries; what remained was granted to Sir John Gates whose position as a favoured courtier came to a sticky end when he was executed for High Treason when he attempted to establish Lady Jane Grey on the English throne.

Thereafter, there was a Tudor extension to the abbey building, remaining a farmhouse until the 18th century when it became a public house. But by the end of the 19th century all was in a ruinous state, and restoration of both the Grade 1-listed house and gardens continues to this day.

The older parts of the house exterior were especially fascinating, the walls essentially constructed of rubble, a mishmash of whatever was available, it seems: brick, Roman tile, sandstone, flint, septarian nodules and, most remarkably, great chunks of ‘puddingstone’.

But this is not the well-known Hertfordshire Puddingstone, dating from some 55 million years ago, one of the hardest of natural conglomerates in which the constituent pebbles cleave when worked, as the silica matrix is so hard. The Beeleigh puddingstone is technically ferricrete, in which the pebbles are bound with iron oxides derived from the local London Clay. This rock is only about a million years old, and nowhere near as robust as true puddingstone, hence the display of whole pebbles poking from rusty boulders.

The current owners of the Abbey and estate are relatively new and clearly making positive changes. A path has recently been opened along the river side of the garden wall, giving views over the tidal river, with Grey Heron, Little Egrets and Cormorants …

… and effectively extending the garden outwards, a place where Buddleja was being visited by a Hummingbird Hawkmoth and stands of Chicory held flocks of tinkling Goldfinches, all under the watchful eye of a Kestrel.

And at the end of our visit, a wonderful sight awaited us: several large Lime trees had what looked at a distance like gleaming piles of red berries at their base. Yes, our favourite Firebugs, here in profusion!

We left the gardens with a spring in our step, and headed back to Maldon and thence to our home for the night in the Blue Boar Hotel. By sunset, the sky had at long last cleared and cast an ethereal glow down the High Street, lighting the classic 1935 Art Deco profile of King George’s Place beautifully.

It was Friday night, so the streets outside the hotel late at night were a little rowdy. But earplugs were thoughtfully provided! Breakfast was very good, and the sun streamed in so we headed straight out, first for a spot of charity shopping and then by bus to Mundon to see the rest of our ‘unfinished business’.

Stepping out onto the flatlands of the Dengie Peninsula was a real contrast to the crowded, narrow streets of Maldon: wide open spaces, and big skies occupying the valley between low clay hills to the north and south.

A place that makes its own landscapes, criss-crossed by telephone lines, parcelled by dead Elm hedges, and Mundon Furze standing as a landward full stop to all the flatness…

A few Poplars alongside the track whispered in the light breeze, the sound of a light shower under perfectly blue skies. The thicket Elms, still alive, showed us the larval working of a Zigzag Sawfly, and then some Lime trees. With, of course, more Firebugs, unerringly finding their favoured food even in far-flung corners of the land. But how? Supposedly flightless, it seems our summer heat may have triggered the emergence of more macropterous individuals capable of going boldly where none has gone before…

Out in the open fields, Firebugs again, here associated with their other foodplant, Common Mallow. But also, perhaps challenging the accepted wisdom of their restricted food range, foraging on thistledown, another Firebug fact rewritten?

The few remaining flowering Hoary Ragwort plants were drawing in furrow-bees Lasioglossum sp. and Large-headed Resin-bees Heriades truncorum, running the gauntlet of the ‘sit and wait’ predatory Flower Spider Misumena vatia.

Arable fields with rough grassy margins sparkled with a few Small Coppers, lots of Common Blues (visiting their larval foodplant Narrow-leaved Bird’s-foot-trefoil) and most impressively dozens of very active (ie unphotographable!) Clouded Yellows, presumably the offspring of earlier immigrants that fed as caterpillars on the Lucerne fields.

Clouded Yellows brought to mind our past autumnal ramblings in Menorca. That feeling was only sharpened by the sound of flyover Corn Bunting and Yellow Wagtails, and then a weakly fluttering moth landed at our feet and after careful searching resolved into a Vestal. Again a species that cannot (yet!) survive the winter here, it migrates in lesser or greater numbers each year and this could, like the Clouded Yellows, be locally bred.

Passing a thatched house, with the reinforced ridge probably very necessary in these windswept wilds…

… we approached the farm before veering off to the delightful little St Mary’s Church.

Until recently derelict and still in need of much restoration, this is now under the care of the Friends of Friendless Churches, a wonderful charity to support irrespective of one’s religious persuasions. And it was good to see the church laid out for a wedding, which we actually rather gate-crashed an hour or so later, it seems the first wedding since the church became useable again.

Inside is just as spectacular as the outside in an understated way.

Most impressive were the fragments of wall paint, including a Georgian trompe l’oeil over the east window depicting bunched curtains and the tasselled draw-rope…

… together with fragments of mediaeval pigment …

… including a depiction of Saint Edmund, who ruled East Anglia from 855 to 869 AD until killed in the Viking invasion. The even more fragmentary image above him has been interpreted as the Devil, though to my eye it is more like a dragon, and one which would be contemporaneous with the Wormingford dragon, depicted in Wissington Church and etched into the ground at Bures, a few miles to the north on the Essex-Suffolk border. The reality of this ‘Essex Serpent’ is not known, but I have always thought that it could be one interpretation of the sight of Viking ships with carved head-posts edging their way upriver on a misty morning…

And then looking out of the east window, a continuation of the flatlands which extend out to the end of the Dengie Peninsula.

But just one field away a rather motley collection of dead, gnarled oaks, mostly former pollards. What a wonderful day to view them, with flat bottomed clouds in a Magritte patchwork setting off the tree skeletons perfectly.

Although somewhat anomalous in a landscape more or less devoid of large trees, in some ways they fit right in, especially when from certain angles the giant wind turbines further down the Dengie are framed by the trees. It is said this Dengie landscape provided one inspiration for H G Wells’ War of the Worlds, and if anything the new additions provide a fitting adjunct.

I have written about the Mundon Oaks (and indeed the church) before: in a nutshell, they may now be maybe 900 years old, but they were killed when a tidal surge reached these levels, perhaps some 300 years ago. And so they have remained, a forest not petrified but dead and decaying slowly…

It is a very special landscape, not just of death but death supporting life. Hornets were nesting in one large hole and a Little Owl, no doubt nesting in a similar cavity, surreptitiously snuck into one photo.

Even the skeletons with no sign of life seem imbued with the spirits of the land, from angry demons to elegant waterbirds…

Unfortunately, the current custodian seems to want to keep the trees to themself. A public footpath runs round two sides of the field; of course it is fenced as any Jurassic Park should be, but does it need a thick new hedge that will before long obscure the ancients? A good farm track runs around the other two sides: does that justify visually polluting the area with a myriad of coloured signs screaming ‘Gerroff my land’? And nothing, to me, excuses the liberal deployment of anti-climb spikes on gates and fences when to do so would not even get you into the site.

On a happier note, I worried after my previous visit that the ravages of time were creeping up quickly on the ancient skeletons. Certainly there was plenty of evidence of fallen limbs but no idea when that happened. Their home is a very wind-prone spot, so it is pleasing to note that in a side-by-side comparison of photos from February 2023 and September 2026, not the smallest twig seems out of place.

All that was left was to head back under cloudless skies, entertained by Clouded Yellows all the while, to the Mundon White Horse, a friendly welcome and a fine pint of local Maldon Oak beer, and then to await the bus back to Maldon. Even the bus shelter gave us wildlife in the form of the autumnal grass-moth Agriphila geniculea.

Maybe we no longer have unfinished business left around Maldon, that we know of, but I suspect we will return yet again, perhaps at a different season…

The Wild Side of Beth Chatto Gardens: the WildSide walks of August

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

Two sets of WildSide walks this month, separated by two weeks, a fortnight that might just have seen the transition back to more normal weather. The first walks, in early August, were around a browned, crispy garden, where not a drop of rain had fallen for two months. Never before have I seen the water in the ponds without any flow between them: the spring-fed brook seemed dormant.

But clearly the garden was still producing insects. As I arrived early in the morning, feeding flocks of Swallows descended on it, a very reassuring sign that we are doing something (hopefully everything!) right. And a clear sign that autumn is upon us, an early autumn ushered in by drought, there were two Willow Warblers in subsong. Both these species are in freefall as breeding birds in Essex, Willow Warbler almost extinct, some of the losses we are seeing as a result of climate collapse, but their populations are at present maintained further north and those birds must pass through our skies on migration, so we can see places like ours as oases to enable them to migrate successfully. Although Willow Warbler undoubtedly bred with us in the past, this was my first definite record for the garden.

Two weeks later, the heatwave had broken. It had even rained, just a little, enough to freshen up the garden, start the process of regreening the lawns, if not dealing with the accumulated drought of the ages. The Swallows and Willow Warblers were still there, along with singing Chiffchaffs, rampaging family parties of Blue, Great and Long-tailed Tits, and Greenfinches feeding on seeds in the Reservoir Garden. To complete the woodland bird scene, there were Blackcaps, a couple of Treecreepers, and Great Spotted and Green Woodpeckers calling.

High summer is insect time. Usually. But the intense drought has made its presence known especially in the higher, drier parts of the garden. While hopefully we will not have lost many plants (if we have, we will take positive messages from it, and learn), certainly the floriferousness of the Gravel Garden, Scree Garden and Reservoir Garden is much lower than usual at this time of year.

So the insect epicentre has shifted to the Water Garden. Especially around the ponds, there were Ruddy & Common Darters, Brown Hawkers and, during the later walks, Migrant Hawkers. Remarkably, of those that came close enough to be sure, more than a half of them were Southern Migrant Hawkers, a new arrival in the UK over the last two decades. We have only a couple of records previously.

Blue-tailed Damselflies are still around the margins, but Willow Emeralds are now everywhere, often hanging from tree branches. This species too is relatively new to Britain, but it has now established as THE damselfly of autumn, often persisting to the start of winter.

Other insects were being attracted in vast numbers to the waterside marginal flowers, most notably the ten-metre stretch filled with the triumvirate of Bistorta, Rudbeckia and, at the back, Eupatorium, each providing vast nectar and pollen resources. The most noticeable insect on both visits was Tachina fera agg., a parasite-fly in swarms that I have never seen the like of before, anywhere. Whatever the reason for this proliferation, it is safe to say that the next few months will not be a good time to be a moth caterpillar! Female flies lay eggs on leaves, but when the egg hatches the larva senses the proximity of a caterpillar, burrows in, and devours the caterpillar from the inside…

In addition, Bistorta was feeding large numbers of social wasps (including the large Median Wasp), bumblebees, Bee-wolves and other insects, with predatory Hornets swarming among the wiry stems like sharks hunting through a kelp forest.

The flatter flower-heads of Rudbeckia supported a different supporting cast to the Tachina throngs: familiar butterflies and ladybirds…

… hoverflies and other parasite-flies…

… bees and wasps …

… and true bugs, here a nymphal Hairy Shield-bug, a small Nysius species (probably N. senecionis) and adults and nymphs of both British species of Stictopleurus, S. punctatonervosus being a new garden record.

And wherever insects gather, there are stealth predators waiting in the wings!

 

Elsewhere in the garden, particularly the stockbeds, other yellow composites such as Inula and Helenium  fulfilled a complementary role to Rudbeckia:

A final selection of insects from this month starts with Common Field Grasshopper, German Scorpion-fly,  Hairy Shieldbug and Rhododendron Planthopper.

Typical late-summer butterflies included Common Blue and Small Heath (with, sadly unphotographed, Clouded Yellow), while spangle-galls of the tiny wasp Neuroterus quercusbaccarum signify the start of autumn senescence.

And flies featured heavily everywhere, with Hornet Hoverflies, our largest and most impressive; variable bee-mimic Furry Droneflies; and the first Locust Blowfly of the year. The latter is believed only to breed inside locusts, and so to always be a long-distance wanderer to this country; indeed when we first found it a decade ago, it was only the third-ever Essex record. Since then it has become more frequent, and 2025 saw a record influx, including multiple records from the garden in July and August, perhaps fuelling the suspicion that in our warming, uncertain world, native grasshoppers can now act as a host.

As for the other highlights, the first walks were treated to the sight of a Hummingbird Hawkmoth sipping the Cirsium and a Wasp Spider nestled among the Catananche…

… while the later walks enjoyed the sight of Firebugs, now firmly established with us,  swarming all over Althaea cannabina in search of seeds to suck the juices from, and a Sand Wasp Ammophila sabulosa clearly nesting in the bee-bank, another new species for the garden and not at all common in Essex although it did colonise Chattowood a couple of years ago and the Meanwhile Garden earlier this year.

Always something exciting to see! If anyone wants to join one of my WildSide Walks, you still have another chance on 11 September, book here Courses & Workshops – Beth Chatto’s Plants & Gardens. And failing that we hope to be back next summer: who knows what weather, wildlife and worry  the predicted ‘Super El Niño’ will bring our way?

The Wild Side of Essex: Wivenhoe & the Colne, after the heatwaves…

Britain's Wildlife, WildEssex, WildWivenhoe

It was the day after the first rain in North Essex for more than two months. But it barely touched the sides: the wild side of Essex was brown, crispy and drooping, droughted to the extreme by an unprecedented summer of heat. But still we persevered, slowly and steadily focussing on the minutiae of life, as well as the geology, landscape, history, estuary life and townscape: everything that makes Wivenhoe special.

For the first stop, we had only to walk 10 metres from our meeting point, into the Station Community Garden. There one of the overriding themes of the day started to evolve: the wildlife and human impacts of climate change. In this case, it was highlighted by the arrival of two new species from more southern climes in recent years: Firebugs and Hollyhock Weevils, both feeding on the garden Hollyhocks.

The evident interest of the group meant that I ransacked  my store of stories about these creatures and changes, and then I realised more than thirty minutes had passed! Clearly I had a very receptive audience to the bigger picture, keen on an amble not a ramble, and I adjusted my plans and expectations from the day, which proved the right decision given the scorched earth of some of the habitats further from town.

The next stage of the walk was along the cycleway towards Colchester, one of the earliest parts of the National Cycle Network to be created, part of Route 1 that now runs from Dover to Aberdeen. The fringing trees and scrub revealed all manner of biodiversity, hidden to all except those who stand and stare… Oak Mildew Erisiphe alphitoides coating the lammas leaves, galls of Blackthorn Mite Eriophyes prunispinosae and leaf-mines of the micromoth Ectoedemia heringella in Holm Oak.

Ivy flowers were just starting to open. These will soon be the richest source of insect food imaginable, steering our bees and butterflies into an uncertain winter, while the birds will be supported by wild fruits, such as sloes, blackberries and rosehips. Given the lack of summer rain, it seemed surprising that the fruit was swelling as much as it was.

Moving onto the Ferry Marsh sea wall, our first glimpse of the estuary. The tide was out but there were very few birds: a few Mallards, a fishing Cormorant, and fly-over and feeding  Little Egrets. And of course the gulls, mostly Black-headed along with a few Lesser Black-backs, one of the juveniles of the latter colour-ringed and presumably locally rooftop-reared.

Stunted Oaks on the sea wall featured an array of galls, including Knopper Galls on the acorn cups and Common Spangle-galls on the underside of some leaves, and one harboured a very striking form of Harlequin Ladybird.

One result of the drought was a near absence of flowers on the sea wall. There were a just a few flowering Bristly Oxtongues, along with Hoary Ragwort, typically a late-flowerer but now rushing headlong into seed.

The elevated position of the sea wall gave good views over the reedbed, although there was little to see or hear (it is that time of year), apart from a very occasionally singing Cetti’s Warbler and some Whitethroats, probably a family, keeping together with contact calls. Overhead, both Swallows and House Martins hawked for flying insects.

As soon as we went down to reedbed level, temperature and humidity increased, as did insect activity, including several hunting Migrant Hawker dragonflies. Flowering Teasel showed what a huge resource for late-summer pollinators its flowerheads can be, and the leaves of Dittander picked judiciously from above the dog leg-lifting zone provided a refreshing horseradish hit for all.

Estate trees showed the considerable value of many to native wildlife, as well as casting welcome shade. Swedish Whitebeam was in full fruit and will feed birds over the coming autumn, while its bark was a suitable substrate for lichens responding to reductions in air pollution that have been achieved in recent years.

Thence onto Wivenhoe West Quay, attractive re-use of a former port on one side, tidal mudflats and marshes on the other.

The mud had feeding Redshanks, a single Black-tailed Godwit recently returned from its Icelandic breeding haunts, and single Lapwing and Curlew, probably having bred rather closer to home in the moors of the north country.

And the tidal saltmarshes showed a fine range of salt-tolerant plants, including Marsh Samphire (or Glasswort), Sea Beet and Sea Purslane, the ‘desalination plant’ par excellence, together with the relatively newly evolved (through hybridisation and chromosome doubling) Common Cord-grass, on the marsh but also spreading down onto the mudflats.

After lunch (thanks to Sara at the Rose & Crown for allowing us to use their loos), we continued along the frontage of old Wivenhoe. Lovely gardens spilling over into the wild gave us Fennel and Rock Samphire, two more sets of scents and flavour, and Buddleia living up to its other name of Butterfly-bush with a couple of pristine, locally reared Painted Ladies as well as an assiduously feeding Hummingbird Hawkmoth, bobbing in and out of the camera frame. How long will it be before we stop referring to these as immigrants to Britain?

Wivenhoe waterfront is a palimpsest of overlapping histories, from fishing, ship-building, and ports to art and commuterland residential. But all these uses are set within the context of a tidal river, always a resource, on days like today benign, but on others a threat. Hence the reassuring presence of the Wivenhoe flood-defence barrier downstream…

Beyond the barrier, the highest line of the unconstrained tide was the location for Strawberry Clover, as lovely in seed as in flower.

Barrier Marsh failed to live up to its name, barely a blade of green grass to be seen, although making it easier top see the ancient trackway of the Chase, historic access for an otherwise landlocked parish to the resources and opportunities of tidal waters, along with the massive, perhaps up to 400 year-old, anthills on the probably never ploughed eastern ‘marsh’. From our sea-wall vantage point, raptors hove into view in the form of Buzzards and a pair of Red Kites, while a Kestrel remained stubbornly at rest atop a dead tree and a Green Woodpecker flew silently from anthill to abandoned, rewilded railway line.

By now the tide was flooding and the waders started to show their numbers, just one Avocet, a handful of Curlews, low tens of Redshank but maybe 400 Black-tailed Godwits, although sadly they chose to head to high-water roost on the other side of the estuary.

All that was left was to wander back through Wivenhoe. The Shipyard produced two of its specialities, stunted, trampled, droughted but seemingly very well settled Four-leaved Allseed and that ‘new kid on the block-paving’ Spotted Spurge.

The gardens of Queen’s Road gave us a tree-topping, ‘chick’-ing Great Spotted Woodpecker that held its high ground for several minutes, before we got back to our final two stops of the day. The ‘Old King George’ Oak still stands despite antipathy from Aviva and apathy from the Town Council; for now it is secure and cannot be felled as an interim injunction is in place. We are hopeful this will be confirmed at a High Court hearing we understand may be coming up…

And finally into the King George V playing field, the former front garden of the now-long-gone Wivenhoe Hall, introducing a new, useful word (‘quincunx’) for the Scrabble enthusiasts, and demonstrating just how parched the uplands have become over our unprecedented summer.

All in all, a very different Naturetrek walk. Unique in fact. We covered less than half the distance we usually do, but in the same time. Fortunately this particular wonderful group seemed to appreciate a gentle day of stories from and about Wivenhoe. Thanks to all!

 

The Wild Side of Essex: The Naze in High Summer

Britain's Wildlife, WildEssex

Summer breeze and thistledown! A day with a deliciously cool start, and even threatened rain, which of course never came, but soon the unforgiving heat of this summer reasserted itself, very hot and humid where sheltered from the wind.

Just before the walk started, about 20 Swifts in two loose groups passed through, but birds generally were few and far-between, no doubt in part to the desert like conditions of parched brown grass and wilting scrub. But the Pied Wagtails and a Green Woodpecker were clearly finding food, as the Herring Gulls just waited for a supply of discarded chips…

The clifftop was drier than I have ever seen it, and apart from a  couple of  skulking family groups of Whitethroats, the scrub seemed empty, although in places at least the sloes are filling nicely, testament to fine conditions at Blackthorn pollination time, but where have they got their juice from? Not a drop of rain has fallen here for six weeks, with an earlier spring drought before that for good measure.

There were of course still some flowers flowering, especially deep-rooted members of the daisy family, like Yarrow, Common Fleabane, Tansy, Bristly Ox-tongue and Hoary Ragwort …

… along with a good number of non-native plants like Narrow-leaved Ragwort, Buddleia and Duke-of-Argyll’s Tea-tree, improving upon nature by blooming when many of our natives are not up to the job. A message for all perhaps at times of crisis, climatic and otherwise.

One rare native that seems to be thriving, maybe because here it is at the very northern end of its world range, is the local speciality Sea Hog’s-fennel. And while we could see no evidence of the larval workings of Fisher’s Estuarine Moths, its other rare speciality, the micromoth Agonopterix putridella, is clearly abundant from the densely twisted  shoots in which its caterpillars feed.

Especially in sheltered spaces, insects were out, although bumblebees tailed off noticeably as the heat turned ferocious. No fun wearing a fur coat in a furnace! Butterflies included Holly Blues, Red Admirals and Gatekeepers, with smaller numbers of Meadow Brown, Small Heath and Common Blue, as well as a few Silver Y moths.

And of course there were predators too, including a small White Crab-spider waiting and a Candy-striped Spider with its kill. Single Ruddy Darter and Southern Migrant Hawker were feeding in the John Weston Reserve, around the dry pond.

The range and coverage of bark lichens seems to increase between every visit, perhaps a sign that we are doing some good in terms of reducing aerial pollution. Goodness knows we need some positive stories from our beleaguered planet…

Galls also proved interesting. The few Pedunculate Oak Trees showed marble, spangle, artichoke, ramshorn and knopper galls, all caused by tiny wasps…

… with other causal agents being fungi (on Silver Birch), sawflies (on willows), true flies (on Creeping Thistle) and mites on Sycamore.

Down to the beach, the magnificent cliffscape revealed itself, with Sand Martins trilling and feeding overhead:

So many stories to tell, of ancient palm-fringed lagoons and volcanic ash clouds, cataclysmic continental collisions, pre-glacial beaches and left-handed snails, cryoturbation and modern mass-movement and erosion…

Looking seaward, the scene was unperturbed by birds, save for gulls, a couple of Cormorants and a few Sandwich Tern family groups heading noisily into Hamford Water…

… with just a sprinkling of northern waders, including three Whimbrels, a Curlew and a dozen Turnstones that sped past in a burbling tortoiseshell blur.

Rounding the point, the seawall shone brightly under Sea Mayweed, as ominous clouds massed overhead. And then dispersed. Still waiting!

Marram grass on the dunes proved to be rather heavily infested with Ergot, and both Sea Spurge and Prickly Saltwort added to the protective vegetation layer.

The saltmarshes produced a final flowering flurry, including Common Cord-grass and Golden Samphire here at its northernmost locality on the North Sea coastline, while Marsh Samphire fringed the creeks alongside Annual Sea-blite, now adopting an outrageous range of vegetative colour-forms for just one species!

A lovely, varied, hot day of delights from the world of nature.

#WildEssexWalks: an evening potter around Wivenhoe Barrier Marsh

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

It was third time lucky for our evening walk around Barrier Marsh and Wivenhoe Waterfront, postponed once because of extreme heat and once more through illness. Our third attempt with an eager throng of friends was still warm, around 24°C at 7pm when we set off, but a delicious, gently cooling easterly breeze made conditions very pleasant.

Starting at the Shipyard, our block-paving population of Four-leaved Allseed seems to be having an outstandingly successful year, seemingly impervious to extreme drought and chemical onslaught. First found here during the pandemic, its distribution is still expanding from its original haunts of south Cornwall and the Scilly Isles.

The saltmarshes have no showy flowers at the moment, at least until the Sea Aster comes out later this month, although Common Cord-grass is in flower along with Sea Purslane. The super-salty hit of the leaves of the latter, covered in the excretions from its desalination cells were a surprise to many. And Marsh Samphire was, as is typical of some forms at this stage of the season, shot through with succulent emerald.

The Sailing Club hedge was starting to look very autumnal, with sloes, hips and haws all filling nicely, surprisingly perhaps given that it has not rained a drop here for more than a month. These will of course become vital winter bird food, assuming the hedge is not attacked by the ‘tidy brigade’…

As usual, Strawberry Clover was looking magnificent along the extreme high tide line, and an interesting new feature, a microcosm of Orford Ness, has recently been installed:

Below the Barrier, the estuary widens and the local moulting Black-headed Gulls were joined by the first returning Curlews, plus Oystercatchers and Redshanks, some at least of which may be local breeders.

The seaward face of the sea wall was in places clothed with the grey, absinthe-scented leaves of Sea Wormwood, although it has yet to come into flower.

Crossing the grazing marshes on The Chase, it was, as everywhere, very parched, especially so on the tops of the numerous anthills illuminated beautifully by the slanting, setting sun.

Few flowers were showing apart from occasional Hairy Buttercups and patches of Creeping Thistles, on one of which Jude (of course!) spotted a beetle Anthocomus rufus, sometimes known as the Red Malachite-beetle, a species closely associated with coastal habitats. Although it appeared to be feeding in the flowers, it is primarily a predator of other insects, and so may have been searching rather than supping. And with the aid of our bat detector she also picked up the song of a Dark Bush-cricket. But nobody could hear it unaided…. we are all of a certain age!

Birds were few and far-between, just a calling Green Woodpecker and skulking Whitethroats and Reed Warblers in scrub and reedbeds respectively. That is until sunset, when the birds woke up, with Robin and Cetti’s Warbler singing and groups of Little Egrets heading down river presumably to a communal roost.

All that remained was to potter back along the Wivenhoe Waterfront in the glorious gloaming, buy a welcome cooling pint at the Rose & Crown, and settle down outside to watch and hear the first hunting Common Pipistrelle, as well as a remarkable chorus of House Crickets. From the bottom of Anchor Hill to Bethany Street, there were multiple singing males, many more than we heard last year, the first time we recorded them here. Instant transportation to the southern climes of Europe, and a thrilling, trilling end to a lovely walk!

Saturday Morning Moth Club at the Minories – July 2026

Britain's Wildlife, WildEssex

Compared with the first one a month previously, our second Saturday morning moth club of the summer in the Minories garden was a little disappointing, with fewer moths of fewer species. In part this might have been the result of competing light sources, but the overwhelming reason must have been the weather. Not a drop of rain had fallen on the garden since the very night the trap was last set; the ‘lawn’ had turned to dust, and the plants of the garden were drooping as if in collective mourning for the state of the climate.

And the moths that were found told much the same story, new arrivals to this country, or species previously restricted to favoured warm localities on the south coast that have been able to expand their range as our temperate isle becomes ever more unpredictable and extreme. Seeing these new things is obviously interesting, but recording them is also important so we can try and understand (and maybe manage) the risks of climate collapse to our wildlife and indeed our own lives. A full list of all we recorded, with previous events for comparison, is found here: Minories Saturday Morning Moth Club to July 26

Biggest and brightest was the Jersey Tiger, of which there were three in and around the trap. This started to spread from the extreme south coast of Devon around the start of the century, and started to move through London and up the Lee valley into Essex shortly thereafter, although it has been regular in the north-east of the county only since about 2020.

A Gypsy Moth sadly evaded my camera, but it paused long enough for everyone to see its extravagantly feathery antennae.  Originally a fenland species, this became extinct in those areas around 1900, but a new resident population has been founded around London since 1995, despite the attempts of the Ministry of Agriculture to eradicate it because of the risk of severe defoliation of important forestry or amenity trees. By now it is widespread in Essex albeit patchily distributed away from London fringes.

The Oak Processionary Moth shares a similar history, except that it never had a permanent UK population until around 2005. The first few windblown immigrants were found in Essex and elsewhere from 1995, but true colonisation came after batches of eggs were assumed to have been imported on horticultural produce a decade later. But irrespective of the mechanism, it was probably only a matter of time, and now it has spread out from London across the south-east of England, again in spite of official attempts at closing the stable door….

Box Moth is another one believed to have colonised via horticultural trade, this from the Far East. First seen in the UK in 2007, it reached Essex by 2009, and nowadays Box in gardens is a thing of the past, except to those gardeners (NOT at the Minories!) who are happy to kill the world with poisons if it creates a pristine, albeit lifeless, garden.

The latter is one of the larger micromoths, but there is also a host of the smaller micros that too have taken advantage of natural and/or unnatural vectors and a warming climate. Cydia amplana arrived (probably naturally) in 1990, was first found in Essex in 2004, and is now widespread across the county. Blastobasis adustella is a native probably of Australasia that was accidentally introduced into western Europe and the UK in the latter half of the 20th century, possibly via Madeira and other mid-Atlantic islands.

And Ethmia quadrillella has always been local in the country, found historically in fenland areas where its main foodplant Comfrey is found; it has now spread throughout Essex, probably as Comfrey has spread through urban environments, and the climatic warming may have allowed it to feed successfully on a wider range of memebrs of the Borage family.

There were of course other moths in the trap as well, including macromoths like Willow Beauty, Peppered Moth, Least Carpet and Haworth’s Pug…

… Swallow Prominent, Ruby Tiger, Marbled Beauty and Cloaked Minor …

… and a selection of forms that cannot be identified conclusively without killing and dissecting them under a microscope (which of course we will not do!), here one of the three Common Rustics and one of the four Ear Moths.

Other micromoths ranged from the colourful: Agapeta hamana, Mint Moth and Carcina quercana …

… to the intricately patterned Argyresthia goedartella, several Small Ermine species and Euzophera pinguis …

… and many in shades of grey or buff: Cydia splendana, Eudonia mercurella, Coleophora clypeiferella and Agriphila straminella.

And one final moth, one of the smaller ones but really quite numerous, the Water Veneer, which lives on aquatic plants as a caterpillar, and can realistically have arrived in the garden only from the River Colne, and as part of a mass emergence: the adults live only for a very short time, hours rather than days, and this there is a great evolutionary incentive for synchronised emergence.

But it was not all about moths. There are lots of other insects flying around by night, and many of those are equally attracted to the light of the trap. There were green lacewings, ladybirds, Strawberry Seed-beetles and a Common Carrion Beetle – large, black and orange, and with many hangers-on in the form of mites…

… and a wonderful array of true bugs. Several Birch Shieldbugs presumably wandered from the local Silver Birch in the garden, famously planted there by Yoko Ono.

Half-a-dozen Forget-me-not Shieldbugs spoke of a strong local population of what is always an unobtrusive ground-dweller. Its Essex strongholds are along Thames-side and in the Colchester area; I have found it especially abundant around the ruins of St Botolph’s Priory, where it may be feeding on the related Green Alkanet, but in the Minories garden there are several members of the Borage family that may be able to support it.

In the trap there were also three examples of the Eared Leafhopper, again not a common species in Essex, especially in the east of the county. This is a remarkable looking creature, and the second photo shows well why I think of this as the Mouse Bug!

And finally, once I had ruled out several other similar species, Eremocoris fenestratus, a Red Data species nationally, with just seven previous Essex records, none of which came from the Colchester area. Formerly restricted to Juniper on the Chilterns, it is believed to have become extinct last century, before it recolonised from 2010 onwards, probably brought in with related conifers introduced into gardens.

The bugs were so fascinating that we might just need to think about renaming Moth Club if we run it again next year! Thanks David and Jude for their helping hands, and to Eleanor. I was so proud of her gently passing moths from finger to finger of the younger ones in the audience, and for confidently showing our special guest Phil Jupitus the Jersey Tiger on the Folly!

 

The Wild Side of Beth Chatto Gardens: another dry July…

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

July: another month with almost no rain. The hum of summer pervaded the garden, if a little subdued especially in the heat of the hottest days. We’re in the midst of an unprecedented three successive heatwaves and almost continuous drought.

I had a busy month leading walks round the garden, but still found time to sit (in the shade!) and look. The full complement of dragonflies and damselflies has now emerged from the ponds with Willow Emerald, Southern Hawker, Ruddy Darter and Black-tailed Skimmer all flying.

Jersey Tigers have put on their now-expected emergence, a flurry of orange, black and white. Hard to believe that these have been with us for less than five years, having spread here under the influence of climate change. Hummingbird Hawkmoths have also been flying around the garden by day, feeding at Buddleja and other tubular flowers. This summer has seen quite a good arrival of these moths that have flown in from the continent; who knows when they will appear as permanent residents…

The same is true of Painted Ladies, ever-present this month following an influx earlier in the summer. Only Gatekeepers have been in larger numbers, feeding especially on Marjoram, alongside Common Blues, Brown Argus and other resident species.

Some other butterflies included Comma, Red Admiral and similarly familiar ones, including the first new-brood Brimstones, plus a few Small Tortoiseshells, very scarce this year presumably due to the relatively recent establishment of a new parasitic fly in this country.

Other new colonists over the past few years have also been apparent, such as Wasp Spider, Firebug (making more Firebugs, so we should be getting more!) and Rhododendron Leafhopper, only the second time I have seen this in the Gardens.

Parasite-flies have been very obvious, including Tachina fera and Eriothrix rufomaculatus, parasitic on larvae of other insects, and all helping bring natural balance to the garden.

Hoverflies have added their buzz to the soundscape, common species like Batman and Marmalade Hoverfly, together with less common ones like the Furry Dronefly, here in two colour forms mimicking different bee species, and Hornet Hoverfly.

As always there have been plenty of other things to enjoy as well, from Grey Herons around the Reservoir to Forest Bugs and Bee-wolves.

This was also the month we ran a moth trap over two nights, reported in detail here, and this alone added about forty new species to the burgeoning garden biodiversity list. But as always, casual observations added to the total. Several of these were leaf-mines and galls, a bit of a niche study …

… but there were others as well, from a couple of hoverflies (Scaeva selenitica and Eristalis horticola) to a jewel-wasp Pseudomalus auratus, a jewel-beetle Agrilus laticornis and the Viburnum Leaf-beetle.

As to what is in store for the rest of the summer depends largely on whether there is rain. But even if the drought persists, there will be things to see. There is always wildlife to see in a garden that prides itself as putting the right plants in the right place, right for us, the plants and for the insects that depend on them!

 

 

 

July Moth Morning 2026 at Beth Chatto Gardens

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

The second outing for our moth trap into Beth Chatto Gardens this year came just as the unprecedented third heatwave of the summer broke down, albeit not into a tumult of thunderstorms. The drought remained but the night temperature fell to a delightfully chilly 13 degrees. I had little idea what to expect as I opened the trap: it could have gone either way…

I characterised the previous trapping a month earlier as a qualified disappointment: the overall number of moths and species was lower than I hoped for given the heat of that particular night, and it felt the haul lacked a little in colour and the ‘big game’. The same was true this last weekend: it produced almost as many moths and almost as many species; plenty to see but just lacking a bit of spice.

At first view I was worried, though. Sitting on the outside of the trap was a Hornet. Even a small number of Hornets or other social wasps can cause carnage in a trap, but not this time. Just one Hornet outside, one and an equally predatory Common Wasp inside, and no obvious mortality. And the ‘big and beautiful’ were crown-pleasers: an Elephant Hawkmoth and two Oak Eggars…

Other ones distinctive in colour, pattern or posture included Rosy Footman, Black Arches, Scarce Footman and September Thorn…

Equally distinctive, though less obtrusive, were those hiding in plain sight and reliant on camouflage either as bark (Dark Arches, Iron Prominent) or bird poo (Lime-speck Pug, Least Carpet and Scorched Carpet)…

Another selection of macromoths helps complete the picture of their diversity and the delightful poetry of many of their English names: Large Yellow Underwing, Dingy Footman, Maiden’s Blush, Pebble Prominent, Twin-spotted Wainscot, Nutmeg, Spectacle, Lesser Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing and Sallow Kitten.

It is a simple fact though that even the macromoths are not always identifiable to species on external appearance. Some identicouples or moresomes can be specifically identified only by killing them and examining their unique genitalia, which of course is something we will not do. So the below must remain as Ear Moth (one of four possible species), Grey or Dark Dagger, and one of the three possible Common Rustics.

Turning to the numerous micromoths, most frequent were the several species of grass moth, along with small ermines of at least five species: Bird Cherry, Apple, Willow, Iceplant and Orchard Ermines.

Micros may (generally) be smaller but can be very attractive and/or distinctive, such as Agapeta zoegana, Ethmia quadrillella, Calybites phasianipennella, Water Veneer and Catoptria pinella:

Many moths are well-known as migrants to the UK from the Continent, and at this time of year a moth trap may well contain several specimens indicative of a recent immigration event. That was the case at the weekend, despite the fact that the breeze was northerly, with several Willow Ermines, Diamond-backs and Small Mottled Willows, along with single Silver Y, Dark Sword-grass, Rush Veneer and Rest Harrow, the latter until recently being considered a real rarity.

Hitherto migrant moths can and do sometimes establish breeding populations, and we had a selection of those too, with Tree-lichen Beauty, Cydia amplana and Plumed Fanfoot, first recorded in Britain in 1987, 1990 and 1995 respectively, and now likely to be breeding in and around the gardens.

All in all, the night’s haul amounted to about 350 moths of 96 species – see here for a full list and comparison with previous trapping at this site BC MOTHS TOTALS to July 26. This included more than thirty species new to the garden list: because we run the trap here only a couple of times a year, there is always ample opportunity to expand that list further! Running the trap in different locations and in different months would certainly add considerably to our overall biodiversity list.

As always, creatures other than moths found their way into the trap. Caddisflies are regular visitors, especially given the proximity of their aquatic breeding habitat, and included Glyphotaelius pellucidus and Mystacides azurea.

Another pond-dweller was the Supertramp Beetle Rhantus suturalis, one that is well known for dispersing at night and seeking out fresh ponds by the light of the Moon. A plant bug Phytocoris varipes was the first time we have recorded it in the garden, and the most dramatic element of the by-catch was a carrion-beetle Necrodes littoralis, a species best known from coastal strandlines, and indicative of the wondrous, largely unnoticed, flux of insects under the cover of night.

Our group also had time for a quick walk around the gardens and managed to see a couple of characteristic day-fliers, Jersey Tiger and Hummingbird Hawkmoth, along with a selection of butterflies, shield-bugs, dragonflies and damselflies.

*****************************************************

The trap was again pressed into action a few nights later, to prepare for a kids’ mothy session at the start of the summer holiday. With focus on experience rather than identification, we didn’t produce a full list for that event, but just appended new ones to the weekend trap results.

And what an experience it was for them, especially enthralled by the size of the Oak Eggar, the pattern on the Black Arches and the birch-twig camouflage of the Buff-tip. The latter was extremely compliant, allowing itself to be handed gently round all the little hands massed around the trap, one by one until even those who were initially scared had a go. And then it was released into safety, content in the knowledge that it might just have changed the life of one or more of the kids.

And remarkably, given that we had trapped only four nights’ previously, I found about 25 moth species that had not appeared in the trap on Friday night and, of those, nine were were completely new to the ever-expanding garden biodiversity list. Some of the absentees from the Moth Morning event were White Point, Gypsy Moth, Pale Prominent, Peacock Moth and Sharp-angled Peacock.

Hopefully the Moth Mornings will be back next summer, and after the joy of the kids’ moth event, I would love that to become a fixture too. Watch the Beth Chatto website events page for more details.

#WildEssexWalks: Lower Lodge in the grip of a heatwave

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

As is by now traditional, we organised a WildEssex walk in high summer around Lower Lodge nature reserve, near Wivenhoe. Lower Lodge is a lovely, flower -rich grassland site, mostly mown on a three- or four-year rotation by Colchester City Council, producing a diversity of habitat structure, from woodland, to dense scrub, to scattered scrub to open grassland. All components have their value, although the open grassland is especially diverse for both insects and flowers.

But we hadn’t planned on a summer like the current one. An unprecedentedly hot, dry summer with three heatwaves and droughts already, and it is only mid-July. So it was with some trepidation we set out onto the site to see what we could find. At least there were plenty of pollen- and nectar-bearing flowers, particularly Wild Carrot, Hogweed, Common Knapweed, Field Scabious, Creeping Thistle and the beautiful bicolored form of Field Bindweed.

From a distance there were a few butterflies flitting around, but I was stopped in my tracks at the very first Carrot umbel: Ectophasia crassipennis! A stunning parasite-fly that lays its eggs on unfortunate shield bugs before the fly larvae devour the bug from the inside. Slowly….

It is a species I know well from the Pyrenees that first reached the UK in 2019; it is now found widely along the south coast, but is only just starting to head our way. So far as I can ascertain there are only a couple of other records from Essex, one at Wrabness in the year of its first arrival and one last year that I found in Beth Chatto Gardens.

We then carried on on the parasite-fly theme, recording two more species, Tachina fera and Eriothrix rufomaculata.

What a great start and although individual numbers of most insect species were not high we kept on finding things of interest until the end of the two hours when the other absolute highlight performed as the very last insect of the walk. This was a Hummingbird Hawkmoth, always good to see and reasonably common this summer. But what was it doing hovering its way through, not over, the grass, avoiding the flowers, completely oblivious to us as it flew between us, and occasionally touching down? And then it twigged, ‘it’ was a ‘she’, she was laying eggs on the Hedge Bedstraw plants growing in the grassy sward. This is not a behaviour I have ever seen before, so our walk ended with me as excited as when we started!

Sadly, unless any larvae develop very quickly such that the next generation is out by early autumn, they are unlikely to survive our winter. But maybe, just maybe, a warm winter could allow it to succeed.

Other moths we saw during the walk were many and varied, from grass moths like Agriphila straminella (all very brown and flittery) to the stunning Brassy Longhorn (a specialist moth dependent upon Field Scabious, seemingly very scarce in Essex) and of course the Six-spot Burnets, resplendent in their black and red livery in the sun, whirring around, occasionally landing to feed, and some new emergers just drying out close to their vacated pupal cases.

Other flies feeding on the umbels included the hoverfly Chrysogaster solstitialis and lots of Flesh-flies, while sitting around on the leaves, either mating or on the lookout for insect prey were Kite-tailed Robberflies, alongside tiny sweat-bees Lasioglossum sp.

Another selection of insects feeding on flowers comprises a parasitic ichneumon wasp (the nemesis of caterpillars), Turnip Sawfly, a Knapweed Bug Oncotylus viridiflavus (for which there are only a couple of records east of Colchester), Hairy Shieldbug, Seven-spotted Ladybird, Thick-thighed Beetle and Hogweed Bonking-beetle. A veritable cornucopia of delights!

So among the insects that leaves just the butterflies. Gatekeepers were the most numerous, with just a few Meadow Browns, good numbers of pristine Painted Ladies, and a very few Small Skipper and Common Blues.

In addition, but not photographed, were Small and Green-veined Whites, single Red Admiral, Brown Argus, Small Heath and a Purple Hairstreak that had a lucky escape from a spider’s web up in an oak canopy.  And flying around the fields there were Emperor, Brown Hawker and Common Darter dragonflies, and Willow Emerald and Common Blue Damselflies.

Aside from insects, there was plenty more of interest, including a spider Enoplognatha with its hoverfly prey, abundant Oak Mildew, artichoke and marble galls on Oaks, and a good fruiting of sloes.

And just to finish off, the things we didn’t see as a group, but which I found on my recce a couple of days previously: leaf mines on oak and galls on Wild Rose (we just didn’t have time to hunt them all out on the walk)…

… Box Bug and Cinnabar caterpillars

… Ringlet and Small Copper

… and a hoverfly Xanthogramma pedissequum, known aptly as the Superb Dayglower.

Yes, Lower Lodge performed very well as always, a powerhouse of biodiversity on our doorstep!

The Wild Side of Essex: High Summer by the Stour Estuary

Britain's Wildlife, WildEssex

It was in the third heatwave and drought of the summer and the north Essex landscape was looking decidedly tired. Leaves drooping, few birds and insects braving the heat of the day and, sadly, several of our target species were missing. No Turtle Doves or Sand Martins seen or heard around their well known breeding sites, where they had been earlier in the year; no White Admirals flying in the woods – presumably their flight season has closed prematurely. But of course we carried on, always hoping, consoled by the notion of nature: if sightings were guaranteed, it would mean you were in a zoo, not the wild!

Actually the day started very pleasantly under a veil of cloud, but this soon burned off as the fierce sun once again took control. And all the time a stiff northerly breeze probably kept some activity down as well. But at Wrabness Nature Reserve, clad in its wind-damping cloak of scrub, there were Blackcaps and Whitethroats into their second broods, Goldfinches and Greenfinches twittering in the hedges, several Song Thrushes, presumably having a hard time finding snails and turning their sights on Elder berries, and some confiding fledgling Robins.

Flyover Cormorant, Little Egret and noisy Lesser Black-backed Gulls reminded us of our proximity to the Stour Estuary, while also in the skies Buzzard and Sparrowhawk drifted over, the latter being harried by Swallows rising from the nearby horse pastures and stables, along with a noisy family of Kestrels starting to master the art of flight.

Given the drought, flowering was a little more sparse than usual, but included yellow composites like Bristly Oxtongue, Ragwort and Common Fleabane, white umbellifers such as Wild Carrot and Hogweed, plus Yarrow and Common Knapweed, Great Mullein and Teasel…

… Viper’s’ Bugloss, Meadow Vetchling, Red Bartsia, Common Toadflax, Rosebay Willowherb and Field Bindweed  providing colour and the pollen and nectar for visiting insects.

And Dittander giving a refreshing hit of horseradish when chewed, a much-needed pick-me-up on a hot day!

Butterflies were pretty abundant, although most were Gatekeepers, and almost all were flying low, through the grasses, to stay in the shade. In addition there were a few Common and Holly Blues, Large and Small Whites, Red Admirals, Meadow Browns and Small Heaths, but very surprisingly, not a single skipper, often ultra-abundant here.

A few burnet moths whirred around, occasionally stopping to nectar, when the spots could be counted: most were 6-Spot Burnets, with just one being Narrow-bordered 5-spot Burnet.

Other insects included Cinnabar moth caterpillars, Squash Bug, Flesh-fly, Sphaerophoria hoverflies, Southern Hawker dragonfly and Common Blue damselfly, together with a couple of knapweed specialists, the bug Oncotylus viridiflavus  and the picture-winged fly Urophora jaceana.

But because the heat was starting to suppress activity, we also spent time looking at fixed features, especially in the shade: leaf-mines and gall. The leaf-miners included Holly Leaf-miner (a fly) and Stigmella aceris and Lyonetia clerkella, both micromoths, while galls included the pea gall and Robin’s Pincushion, both caused by gall wasps on roses.

Down towards the quiet estuary, there were Greater Reedmaces in flower as the spears from last summer exploded, and over the seawall, a saltmarsh alight with Common Sea-lavender:

Moving on to Stour Wood and lunch in the shade, I rapidly reformulated my plans and cut out any idea of heading out into the open agricultural landscape around the wood. In the woods we remained for the afternoon seeking out any hotspots of insect activity.

The trees, mostly Sweet Chestnut coppice with standard English Oaks and a sprinkling of Hazel, Hornbeam, Aspen and Wild Service, were still in full leaf, albeit drooping with drought, but the paths were littered with the recently shed chestnut catkins.

In the shade, the flora, just three months ago a sea of blue and white, Bluebells and Wood Anemones, was restricted to the unassuming Enchanter’s Nightshade…

… while in the rides and coppice clearings, Marsh Thistle and Ragwort added essential nectar resources. It was here that there were butterflies, including good numbers of Ringlet and thankfully, one our targets Silver-washed Fritillaries. They were few at first, but as the walk progressed and the group size dwindled, fritillary numbers increased, and at the end put on a fantastic show for me and the last, lucky couple!

Other activity along the rides came from dragonflies, both Common and Ruddy Darters flycatching, having come some considerable distance from breeding ponds after emergence, to colour up, feed and get into breeding condition before returning to ponds ready for action.

Bird-wise though, all was quiet, praeternaturally quiet, siesta time hopefully, although it will only be in hindsight (when it is too late) that we can evaluate the true impact of climate collapse on our nature and lives. Imagine a world in which the only memories of woodpeckers are their exploratory excavations in our trees…

So, all in all, a trip which failed to provide most of its targets, a struggle in the heat, but hopefully ultimately enjoyable, rescued to a great extent by the fascinating minuteries of life we might just have overlooked if Turtle Doves and Purple Emperors had been distracting our attention from everything else!

The Wild Side of Beth Chatto Gardens: June 2026 – deluge and furnace…

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

June was a month of two halves. After the record-breaking May heatwave broke down at the very end of the month, the first two weeks of June were damp, with some very heavy rain, before the even more record-breaking heatwave reasserted itself. Is anybody listening to the cries of the Earth?

My visits to the garden were all in the latter half and included a moth event covered in this blog Midsummer Moths 2026 at Beth Chatto Gardens | Chris Gibson Wildlife, successful up to a point but I think showed signs of the impact of the vagaries of the weather.

Bird broods were very much in evidence, including Great and Blue Tits, Blackcaps and Blackbirds. Three singing male Whitethroats and four Goldcrests were presumably proclaiming territories for their second broods, and my personal first record of a Coal Tit in the garden was also of a singing bird, perhaps a second-brooder that may have first bred elsewhere. Grey Herons seem to be dispersing from their heronries, with several flying over and one at rest by the Reservoir for some hours, while Swallows and a Kestrel were feeding over the long grass of the overflow carpark.

In the garden through the heat, insect activity during the hottest part of the sunny days was much reduced, but by seeking out the cooler times and shady spots, it was possible to find plenty of interest. But not always to photograph it: Silver-washed Fritillary, Rose Chafer and Willow Emerald damselflies were all zipping around, refusing to settle. And always active were the Hummingbird Hawkmoths that occasionally showed especially in the Reservoir Garden:

Painted Ladies have been present throughout the month, those at the end especially being pristine and presumably the offspring of previous immigrants. And the summer butterflies are starting, with Large and Essex Skipper (the latter the first confirmed record for the garden) and Purple Hairstreaks occasionally descending from the Oak canopies, while Speckled Woods loitered in the sunflecks.

Dragonflies and damselflies have continued to perform well, especially around the ponds, including a coordinated emergence of Common Blue Damselflies that proved a bounty for the Cucumber Spiders. But most exciting were the Banded Demoiselles: after a few years when they have appeared with us sporadically and unpredictably, this month finally they seem to have consolidated. Let’s hope they stay!

Of course there was plenty more to see as well, including Yellow-and-black Longhorn, Lily Beetles and masses of pollen beetles…

… mating Fencepost Flies, nectaring Tachina rufa agg. parasite-flies and sunning Dock Bugs …

… plus lots of lovely Hymenoptera: Iris Sawfly larvae, Gwynne’s Mining-bees in the Campanula flowers, Sphecodes blood bees that feast on nectar but whose larvae parasitise mining-bee nests …

… and around the bee hotel, Large-headed Resin-bees and a ruby-tailed wasp Chrysis ignita agg., the latter another parasite but on certain solitary wasps.

And as always a goodly array of new finds for our garden list, as well as those already mentioned, including a couple of moths, Epagoge grotiana and Virgin Bagworm…

… lots of Hollyhock Weevils, a fairly new arrival in the country that appeared for us in Wivenhoe three years ago …

… two ants, Myrmica rubra and Temnothorax nylanderi …

… a parasitic javelin wasp Gasteruption sp., being buzzed by Yellow-faced Bees …

… and Wool Carder-bee nesting in our bee-post.

So it was quite a challenging month because of the weather. Maybe July will settle down, and if anyone wants to join me, my Wildside Walks on 17th July and our Moth Morning on 18th July are all open for booking on the website Courses & Workshops – Beth Chatto’s Plants & Gardens.

Saturday Morning Moth Club at the Minories – June 2026

Britain's Wildlife, Eleanor's photos, WildEssex

After a successful exploratory event in 2025, Moth Club returned to the Minories garden at the end of June this year. Fortunately, given the propensity of hot bulbs to shatter in rain, we were able to place the trap in the Folly, out of harm’s way, safe from the thunderstorms and heavy rain that swept through overnight.

The thundery breakdown came after three days of record-breaking (not in a good way!) heat. Indeed when we walked into the garden first thing to turn the trap light off, the feel of heat was amplified by the highest humidity I have ever known. So the moths’ welfare came to the fore: we protected the trap from the rising sun and the free-range moths within the folly from marauding Wrens, and awaited the arrival of the booked participants.

Mothing in the heart of the city is always uncertain. The Minories garden is a green oasis amid intensive development, and the trap light could easily be diminished in effectiveness as a result of the multitude of other light sources which shine as the city sleeps. But on the positive side, the garden is close to the Meanwhile Garden, a noted biodiversity hot-spot, and just across the road from Castle Park which provides green links right down to the River Colne.

Before we even delved into the trap, it was clear that there were going to be some highlights, in the shape of six pristine Elephant Hawkmoths, all much appreciated as they allowed themselves to be gently passed around.

Overall there were probably some 400 moths, and a myriad of other insects in the trap, although the moth species seemed skewed towards the often smaller micromoths as we found also last year. A full list of our findings can be found here Minories Saturday Morning Moth Club, with last year’s catch for comparison

The most abundant macromoths were Riband Wave in all its colour forms, Dwarf Cream Wave and Least Carpet, the latter probably feeding upon the festoons of Wild Clematis that grow out of the lime-rich mortar of the Roman Walls.

A selection of other macros included Pebble Hooktip, Phoenix, Willow Beauty and Clouded Silver…

…Miller, Marbled Beauty, Poplar Grey, Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing, Flame and Grey or Dark Dagger (the two species cannot be separated externally and must be killed for internal examination, which we will not do!)…

… Vapourer, Short-cloaked Moth and White Satin…

… and Silky Wainscot, a largely coastal species that may well have found its way to us through the green corridors.

The most numerous micromoths were Garden Grass Veneer and three rather similar Small Ermine species: Bird Cherry, Apple and Willow, the latter at least possibly wanderers from the near-Continent.

Then there were some distinctive ones, displaying well the fact that micros can be beautiful tiny scraps of life: Agapeta hamana, Argyresthia goedartella and A. spinosella, Gold Triangle, Coleophora deauratella and Mother-of-Pearl…

… Acrobasis tumidana, Recurvaria nanella and Tachystola acroxantha (the latter a recent colonist of this country, probably originating in Australia) …

,… and another couple of inseparable pairs, at least to ethical entomologists: Caloptilia robustella/alchimiella and Endothedia gentineana/marginana.

Wanderers potentially from far afield also included Diamond-back, Pempelia genistella (a Gorse-lover perhaps coming from Middlewick Ranges?) and Crescent Plume, which feeds on Rest Harrows, the nearest of which is probably Spiny Restharrow in the grazing marshes of the tidal Colne towards Rowhedge.

Many other insects fly by night, and they too ended up in the trap, including a green lacewing Chrysopa carnea, Forest Bug and the plant bug Oncotylus viridiflavus …

… together with 10-spot Ladybird, Summer Chafer and very excitingly another Brown Chafer. Not previously recorded in this part of the county, we found the latter a week previously in Beth Chatto Gardens, and then in midweek in the Wivenhoe garden of a couple of friends.

And if the fare in the trap became too much of course there was still the lovely garden to look around in the rising heat. Hollyhock Weevils, as always, were up to no good in tandem on the Hollyhocks, but as for the plants, I shall leave it as usual to the camera of Eleanor, our eight-year-old granddaughter to tell the visual story of flowers and rain through her growing eyes…

Moth Club will return for one more session this year, on 25 July, all bookings via the website Night Garden Moth Discovery with Chris Gibson | Colchester | The Minories. A month apart, the trap contents should be very different, and will always surprise. That is the beauty of moth trapping…its like Christmas every day!