Chafford Gorgeous

How quickly the season and the mood can change? It was like a summers day when I arrived for the weekly work party at the lovely urban oasis of Essex Wildlife Trust's Chafford Gorges LNR. The volunteer team I was with were assigned a number of tasks including the pruning of a low hawthorn hedge. After a breif struggle with the prickly shrubs, we managed to finish early, and a few of us took a walk through the floor of Warren Gorge, a former chalk pit now vegetated with chalk grassland, goose-grazed short grass, scrub and open water, abandoned in the 1950s and now turned over for use as a nature reserve, part of a larger complex of chalk workings used for this purpose. 
One of the first birds I saw was, perched in one of the trees emergent from the water, was a kingfisher. It was bright orange from it's chin to it's feet, and when it took off, unnerved presumably by our continued gaze, I saw the bright turquoise blue of the bird's back. Notable by their absence and as such perhaps an indicator of the fast changing season were some of the waterfowl. Shoveller and Gadwall, which had been common into recent weeks, were apparantly absent. A single Grey Heron flew over us and a large and noisy group of Black-Headed Gulls, still in their winter plumage reminded us it wasn't yet summer. The sound of birdsong, of Robins and Dunnocks was everywhere. Long tailed tits can be seen in any season and these seemed also to be there in numbers.
Something small fluttered through my field of view, rising from a sunny spot on a patch of bare soil before sinking back there. It was a butterfly. My first of the year on the first of March. It was a Small Tortoiseshell, Aglais urticae a pretty orange nymphalid butterfly, which had spent the winter as an adult, in a state of torpor, asleep in a cool place. This species sometimes appears in guest houses or in sheds, a dark triangle hanging from the cieling. It is usually one of the first species to appear in spring, taking advantage of it's already mature condition and any early sunshine. Just a few seconds later another small, dark, fluttery shape catches my eye. Instantly my butterfly year list doubled in length! It was a Peacock, Inachis io. It's uniform black underside gives no hint of it's bright and complex pattern of eye spots on the top side, which it can flash even when in  torpor to deter an approaching predator. It has similar habits to the Small Tortoiseshell, and both species, as larvae, feed on stinging nettles. So no complaining if you get stung at a nature reserve!
These signs of summer where in contrast to what I encountered next. A charm of Goldfinches were feeding on the dangling birch catkins, and with them were three birds I would very much regard as a wintering species in this country. Lesser Redpoll, one of several species of redpoll but I can't distinguish between them, does breed in Britain although its breeding numbers are definitely lower than its wintering numbers and it definitely doesn't breed round here. They are brown and streaky with red on their chests and crowns. As the birds hung upside down extracting seeds from the catkins their glossy red crowns caught the sunlight. I'd never seen Redpoll going around with Goldfinch before having more associated them with siskin. I watched the little charm for several minutes before they carried on in search of fresh pickings, the Redpolls leaving first and the goldfinch, flashing their bright yellow wing bars, followed.

Butterflies and winter finches in the march sunshine!  We walked past the Greylag and Canada geese, with the attendant young families, brought out, like the butterflies, by the sunshine, throwing bread at them, towards the visitors centre.