I love South Essex

Strolling on West Canvey Marshes this morning, the flat, damp expanse of grazing marshes filling the space between the snaking mud channel of Pitsea creek, and the Canvey Way Avenue of Remembrance, as the A130 becomes when it crosses onto the “island,” and in the shadow of the huge former Coryton Oil Refinery, and its docks, I was struck by something. South Essex, you are flipping beautiful. Never change what you are.

Black Tailed Godwit at West Canvey Marshes

The water on the reserve was high, and there were puddles on the paths. These wet coastal meadows are a typical local habitat, sculpted by centuries of moderately intensive human land use, the coastal grazing marshes. The reserve is still, declare the information boards the RSPB have installed about, a working farm, and cattle graze its lush swards. The pool beside the A130 was attended by busy Black Tailed Godwits, prodding about on its grassy margins, and Lapwings stood on its banks.  The gentle mews of Common Gull, and the whistles of Wigeon, striking ducks with bold yellow stripes on tops of their heads seemed to fill the air, a winter chorus, despite the constant competition from the traffic just a few metres away.   These calls are evocative of the cold winter air, these birds have travelled from distant breeding grounds in Scandinavia, or Siberia, places compared to which these windswept marshes are relatively hospitable winter habitat.

I wander on as a trio of chirping Meadow Pipits fly overhead, more seasonal refugees from the uplands. Stonechats are here too, bold, striking and confiding. Stonechats watch you as you watch them. They seem to keep an eye on the observer, and occasionally take off to snatch one of the few insects still active in late Autumn, from the air or off the ground.  As I neared the next hide I was aware of the sky filling with birds, Godwit, all the ducks, Lapwings, and smaller Starlings, so often seen in the company of Lapwings on South Essex marshes at this time of year, and previously hidden among the long grass, all taking to the air.   Presumably disturbed by all the commotion, a Grey Heron joined them too.  They wheeled and climbed, alarm calls echoing, staying airborne, indicating the presence of an aerial predator. I could not spot one.  In the photographs of the flock the roofs of passing vans on the A130 are visible, but I was not aware of them at the time. This was wild Canvey. I sat down in the hide, and as I did so the birds began to settle again, Wigeon landing on the water en masse in front of me, hundreds of them.  A circling Marsh Harrier seemed too distant to be the cause of their collective alarm. A couple of ducks took off from the other side of the water, and a shape raced toward me across the water. I couldn’t make it out at first but within a few seconds I was eye to yellow eye with a Sparrowhawk. We seemed to hold each others’ gaze for a second as the raptor climbed a little, effortlessly, giving a piping alarm call of its own, and passed over my head, and over the top of the screen, dropping in behind a hedgerow somewhere between where I sat and the Oil Refinery, and was gone from view. I have no regrets about lacking the presence of mind to point my camera at it, that would have deprived me of the eye-to-eye moments I had with the bird, and the breathless, heart racing moment.  I hadn’t recognised the bird at first because its outline was broken by the dead starling in the hawk’s talons. This was a stunning wild predator, in a stunning wild landscape.

Flocking Wigeon, with passing traffic.

Walking down the path, between the hedges, crossing the bridge over the reed beds where a few short weeks ago Natalie and I had been watching the swallows gather to roost before their flight to sub-Saharan Africa, now long gone, I could not help but wonder at this oasis, and the beautiful, underrated part of the country into which it fits, the Estuary England, the South Essex Marshes. Like so many South Essex wildlife sites, West Canvey does not exist separately from the urban and industrial places which surround it, but merges seamlessly with them to form a wider landscape, continuous and stunning and interwoven.  It is not far from Basildon, and is one of a suite of marshes the RSPB helps to look after locally. Here and in the wider area, from Fortress Purfleet, known to the RSPB as Rainham Marshes and sitting West of the Dartford Crossing, to the wintering flocks of Brent Geese and Turnstone which hang around at high tide at the foot of Southend Pier in the East, and Wallasea and Foulness Islands beyond, both noted for their wintering raptors, these sites are settle easily into a landscape shaped by human activity along the river. So many, such as the chalk habitats at Chafford Gorges near Thurrock, once a chalk quarry, or the new invertebrate reserve managed by BugLife at Canvey Wick, home to rare bees and other invertebrates, once an oil refinery, exist on Brownfield sites, shaped by industry, and these industries existed here because of the river, connecting London with the open sea.

Stonechat on Canvey Island

South Essex, I thought, as I became surrounded by the squeaking contact calls of busy long-tailed tits around me, you are bloody gorgeous and I love you. Then I thought, oh look, a Goldcrest.

Pitsea Creek.

Falls of Clyde

On Thursday I was lucky enough, while North of the Border, to visit Scottish Wildlife Trust's reserve at Falls of Clyde. It sits beside the New Lanark UNESCO World Heritage Site, designated for its industrial history. Mills were established by Richard Arkwright in the 18th century beside the river Clyde's only waterfalls. Arkwright was certainly not noted for his philanthropy, but his successor at New Lanark, Richard Owen, a reformer and philanthropist turned the mills and the town into something of a social experiment and example of Utopian Socialism, a philosophy which he helped to found. Today the only industry there is a hydroelectric power station.

Today the site is largely a tourist attraction, and reached by a steep set of steps from the public car park, which sits between the village and the car park. Here several crows were mobbing a Buzzard, the only raptor I saw that day. Falls of Clyde is famous for its Peregrines, which are best seen in summer when they are nesting.  I passed among the stone mill buildings to the River Clyde.

In the shallow water where the river is relatively wide through the village of New Lanark itself, a Dipper was bobbing about on a moss covered rock. Throughout the wooded valley could be heard the roar of the waterfalls, ever present, continuous. The Corra Linn falls are the largest on the Clyde, and the riverside path offered views of the falling, churning white water.

Corra Linn on the Falls of Clyde.

The woodland which fringed the river seemed to be mixed in composition, featuring birch, oak and pine trees. When the open country outside the deep gorge could be seen from the path, snow capped peaks looked in the far distance. The woods echoed with passerine contact calls but they seemed reluctant to be seen, although ubiquitous friendly robins, and early singing great tits were seen, as well as a wren, busy in the undergrowth. On the river itself a single female and three smart male Goosander were about, the males resting on the bank yards from the cascading water.

A beautiful place.

The Orchids of Grays

Crab Spider on Common Spotted Orchid Inflorescence.

Just a brief blog post today and an opportunity to share a couple of photos which came at the cost of trudging through some very wet grass on an Orchid Survey at Chafford Gorges today. I dragged my hangover and sleepiness out of bed this morning and grabbed a flask of coffee, and managed to get myself to Chafford to join some of the volunteers there to count some interesting flowers.  An interesting aside, on the way to picking up my hangover at the Huntsman and Hounds, I was lucky enough to watch a hunting Tawny Owl for several minutes, flying up and down over one of the meadows at Cranham Marsh.

Abundant Man Orchids at Grays Gorge.

But this morning, Orchids, back to the subject in hand. Grays Gorge, one of the less visited parts of the small network of sites collectively known as Chafford Gorges Nature Park, hosts some of the sites most exciting vegetation. The floor of the gorge holds woodland, and early succession habitats, but today work was focussed on the habitats around the tops of the chalk escarpments. Here, careful management to prevent the succession to scrub, ensures the survival of chalk grassland with characteristic  plant species. Grays Gorge has orchids, in short, and today I spent my morning counting the tall flowering spikes of Man Orchid, a plant with small, green flowers, with a distinct, closed “head” with a vaguely person-shaped appendage hanging from it, assembled on a tall inflorescence. There were hundreds of these. As I counted Man Orchids, the people next to me were counting Man Orchids, and the beautiful purple inflorescences of Common Spotted Orchids, and discovering the curious green flowers of Twayblades, so called because they always have two broad green leaves lying close to the ground, in the woods. 

Man Orchid Inflorescence

In one of the meadows we did not find a single Orchid at all, but other flowering plants were well represented, and we had to marvel a little at the variety of wildflowers peering through the long grass, even as we got soaked to the skin.

The Meadow.

Grays Gorge is well worth a visit for Orchid fans.  The spectacular purple flowers of the Common Spotted are something of a highlight at this time of year, and later in the season the Pyramidal Orchid, a relatively common but no less beautiful species, will begin to come into its own. 

Common Spotted Orchid inflorescence at Grays Gorge.