Funky fungi

Inspired by others posting photos of waxcaps from elsewhere in the county, in what seems to be a bumper year for them, I was pleased to discover that we had some too!
Waxcaps are grassland species that like short, low nutrient, long-established grassland: the kind of vegetation that can be found in many churchyards and cemeteries. I had a plan to tour all of Maldon's cemeteries looking for them. Luckily my first stop, at Heybridge Cemetery on Goldhanger Road, struck gold!

Surprisingly perhaps, several different species often share the same site, providing a kaleidoscope of different colours. Identification can be difficult- I reckon I saw six or seven species of which I am reasonably confident about naming five of them. Please let me know if you think I have got any wrong!! 
There were also a number of other grassland fungi present, including Silky Pinkgill and a couple of species of bonnets.

Snowy Waxcap (the most abundant of the species found)

Snowy Waxcap

Butter Waxcap (Second in abundance)

Butter Waxcap

Parrot Waxcap

Parrot Waxcap (they turn yellow with age)

Vermilion Waxcap

Vermillion Waxcap

Blackening Waxcap

Silky Pinkgill

(All photos copyright John Buchanan, Nov 4th 2024)

A Common Tern, a ring and a mystery solved

In recent months, Peter Jackson has been regularly photographing the birdlife around Maldon Hythe and the Prom Park. 
Back in May he took some shots of a particularly photogenic Common Tern that sat on the  fence along the edge of the model boating lake. 

Common Tern, Maldon Prom Park, May 2024 (Peter Jackson)

After posting on Facebook it was noticed that the bird had a ring on its leg. Luckily, Peter's photos were good enough to mean that zooming in would allow some details of the ring to be read. 

Common Tern ring details (Peter Jackson)

Although no one photo had all the information, piecing together the different elements led to the intriguing suggestion that the tern may have been ringed in Africa. Further detective work by Simon Wood identified that the ring had been applied by the SAFRING team, who are based in Cape Town. However our story does not end there. Dr Simon Cox then contacted the British Trust for Ornithology (who oversee bird ringing in the UK) and it turned out that our tern had in fact been ringed by the SAFRING team in Senegal during a project they were carrying out monitoring birds passing through on their way from further south in Africa.

So our Maldon Common tern, that has probably been breeding at Heybridge Pits this year and may even have originally been born at the pits, was ringed at La Langue de Barbarie in Senegal as it headed north on March 30th 2023. This means that this year will have been at least the second time it has made this big migration north.

Common Tern ringing site, La Langue de Barbarie, March 2023

Thanks to the concerted efforts of ringers over the years, the BTO have been able to put together an impressive map showing locations where UK breeding Common Terns travel on their annual migrations. 

Ringing recoveries of UK Common Terns
(BTO Map retrieved from https://www.bto.org/understanding-birds/birdfacts/common-tern)

Considering that the BTO has recorded a Common Tern living for as long as 33 years, it is mind-blowing to consider how far some of these birds must travel during their lifetimes!

Many thanks to Simon, Simon and, of course, Peter, for the parts they have played to solve this detective story! It was good to see that the tern seemed happy here in its summer home- Peter was able to photograph it again, in June, perched in the park.

Common Tern, again, Maldon Prom Park, June 2025 (Peter Jackson)

Postscript
During a recent trip to Cape Town in October 2024 I was amazed to see how many Common Terns winter there- I saw literally hundreds around Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope. It is likely that many of these will be birds that spend the northern Summer in Europe.

Common Tern, Sandwich Tern, Crested Tern and Hartlaub's Gull
Cape Point South Africa, October 2024 (John Buchanan)

More Wick Meadow Flowers

It was great a week or so ago to find some sunshine for a short couple of visits to the meadow at Maldon Wick and to find that, as last year, the wild flowers were blooming,

The meadow at Maldon Wick EWT reserve (opposite Morrisons)

(Comparing with 2023) one of the post obvious flowers was again the Corky-fruited Water-dropwort and there were plenty of different peas- Common and Tufted Vetch, Meadow and Grass Vetchling, Birdsfoot and Lesser Trefoil, Smooth Tare and Red and White Clover.

Corky-fruited Water-dropwort

It was good to see species I had not recorded there before, including Common Centaury, Agrimony and Red Bartsia.

Common Centaury

Agrimony

Red Bartsia

Best of all was my first Pyramidal Orchid on the reserve, to add to the list of Bee and Common Spotted Orchid seen previously.

Pyramidal Orchid

It was good to see that the developers of the neighbouring estates have refurbished the old railway bridge to allow access from one side of the embankment to the other. Hopefully this will direct  pedestrians and cyclists away from the old railway line, thus reducing disturbance of the reserve itself.

Refurbished Railway Bridge

Chinese Water Deer!!

Something of a surprise when looking for a reported Hen Harrier around Ulting, to look into a field and find a Chinese Water Deer staring back at me! 
They have been spreading into Essex from East Anglia in recent years but until now the closest reports have been from Mersea Island and Copt Hall. This record is over ten miles further west and the first record from the Maldon Tetrad. 
Unfortunately 100 yards just outside our Maldon recording patch😧
Hopefully more records to come!

Chinese Water Deer, Ulting, 14th Jan 2024

A stroll from Heybridge to Osea and back- 12th Jan

My normal river walk is along the south bank of the Blackwater from the Prom Park eastwards, so it was a pleasant change to join a walking group heading out along the opposite sea wall, from Heybridge.

Like the bay by the Dump, there is a bay just past Blackwater Sailing Club that accumulates waders as the tide comes in.

Bay by Blackwater Sailing Club

Waders gathering at High Tide

It was good to see a flock of Wigeon grazing on the grass by the sailing club lake.

Further along it was big surprise to see a group of five Great White Egrets heading north. Larger cousins of the regular Little Egrets, this was a record local number.

Great White Egrets- drifting north

Past the Osea causeway, nice to see a Barn Owl perched by the nest box near the sewage treatment plant.

As the tide was rising, birds were running out of places to rest.

Dunlin, Turnstone, Brent Geese

Dunlin

By the time I reached the point beyond the causeway, the tide was almost in. There was an amazing gathering of waders- Knot, Dunlin, Turnstone, Grey Plover, Oystercatcher, Curlew... plus dozens of Shelduck on the water.

The Knot and Dunlin started rising up and swirling and I became a witness the best display of wader aerobatics I have seen locally. Thousands of birds, rivalling the footage from Winterwatch!
Sadly my phone footage doesn't do the spectacle justice...

Heading back, a male Marsh Harrier was sat in the reedbed.

Male Marsh Harrier

There were still a few perches available for those waders delaying their flight to a roosting site, including here a Grey Plover and some Turnstone. A Little Egret was able to carry on feeding in the shallows.

Little Egret

After failing to see any sea duck by Osea Causeway, it was good to find a Red-breasted Merganser fishing off Heybridge Pits.

 

Red-breasted Merganser

Opposite the pits, the wintering Avocet flock was looking for somewhere to settle.

Avocets by the dredgings opposite Heybridge Pits

Three of the local wintering Greenshanks were feeding just by the sea wall.

Greenshank

All in all an enjoyable walk with good selection of year ticks!

Northern Waterthrush, Heybridge 3rd-8th January at least When I sat down to lunch on Wednesday, little did I know that I would not finish that meal for several hours... I happened to see movement to my right, through the glass doors, on the patio. Stunned silence, then expletives, followed as I realised that I was looking at a Northern Waterthrush, a small songbird that should really be wintering in the Caribbean and Central America.

Having overcome the adreneline rush, and shaking hands, I took a series of shots and the news was released nationally mid afternoon, to a fair bit of incredularity! To cut a long story short, the bird was refound the next day a short distance to the west of my house, in an area of scrubland which has been able to take the pressure of the twitch, something which my tiny garden would not have done! To date (8th January), perhaps a 1,000 people have successfully made the journey to see this remarkable little survivor.

A very short blog! Following on from my post earlier in the year on all things tiny, the best find of the year turned up in one of the moth traps on the night of 25th September in Hazeleigh Wood. The pseudoscorpion Dendrochernes cyreneus, is very rare in the UK, a Red Data Book species that inhabits ancient woodland and lives under bark etc. on the south facing side of trees. It is an ancient woodland indicator and is found at just a few sites including Burnham Beeches, St James Park, Windsor Park and Sherwood Forest so Hazeleigh joins an elite bunch! It is almost a giant amongst UK pseudoscorpions, of which there are 27 species, but is none-the-less rather small at no more than 4.5mm in size. It is, however, an impressive looking beast

A Dolphin on the patch!

Yes amazingly, last Thursday, a Common Dolphin was photographed by River Bailiff Nigel Harmer on the river off Maldon Prom!!!

What is more, it returned again over the next couple of days. Myself, Simon Wood and Carla Davis were lucky enough to be able to watch it for over two hours on Friday (27th Oct). It later transpired that it had also been seen and photographed a couple of days earlier, off Maylandsea on Wednesday (25th Oct).

It seemed to be following a set pattern of behaviour, appearing on the rising tide and hunting in the channels before heading out again, shortly after peak tide. A plausible theory is that it was following fish (most likely Grey Mullet) as they were also coming in with the tide, much as we suspect the occasional Harbour Seals that we see locally are doing.

We were initially worried about the potential of stranding but the fact that it was repeatedly diving and had no listlessness about it led us to think it may have been fairly healthy. Its forays towards the shallows looked as though they might have been tactics to coral its prey, making it easier to catch. 

It was giving the occasional passing boat a wide berth. Perhaps the disturbance from the increase in river traffic over the weekend led it to seek feeding grounds elsewhere, following the last reported sighting off the Prom on Saturday 28th.

This is the first record of a dolphin that we are aware of anywhere around Maldon and Heybridge. Interestingly however, on 16th May this year, a pod of four Common Dolphin were seen and videoed on the River Crouch, off North Fambridge. It is possible that ‘our’ dolphin may have been associated with these ones.

The only regular cetacean to be found in the Blackwater is the Harbour Porpoise. Sadly the only porpoise records as far upstream as Maldon so far have been tideline corpses. With numbers apparently increasing in the outer estuary, we eagerly await our first live porpoise encounter within the patch. But we can hardly complain after our recent dolphin experience!

(All photos copyright John Buchanan)

Little mines, please little things….no, that’s not an error…let me explain. As well as birds, my other pretty much life-time fascination has been with moths. Most people’s experience of moths is a brief brownish blur in their car headlights or bashing around their bonce at night when standing under a light. Boring brown things, far less pretty than butterflies is what I often hear. How wrong people are...

Moths are attracted to lights (I should add that technically they probably are not truly attracted to light, but that is another story) and the use of moth traps which run mercury vapour, actinic or LED bulbs can ‘attract’ in large numbers of moths, sometimes in their thousands.

Mercury vapour moth trap

A moth trap in operation

If you ever get a chance to go to an organised moth trapping event, your perception of moths will be change for ever. By the way. the moths are released unharmed after being identified. 

Clockwise from top left - Convolvulus Hawkmoth, Antler Moth, Mocha and Herald, all caught round Maldon in the last two weeks.

 

However, having been trapping like this for many years, my attention has been diverted to looking for the feeding signs of many smaller moths and I mean small; some of our smallest have a wingspan of only 3mm. To find these feeding signs you have to have two things - a reasonable knowledge of plants and secondly, a willingness to spend hours peering into trees, bushes, shrubs and grasses etc without attracting too much unwanted attention!

Many such moths feed between the two layers of a leaf - a minuscule thickness about the width, well, of a leaf! And they make some amazing, but often distinct patterns which, when considered in conjunction with the species of plant that they are on, allow identification of the species involved. Others will graze the surface of the leaf of specific plants and then create a fold in the leaf, or they will create a mine over a small area of the leaf or perhaps will cut out a piece of the leaf, form it into a cone-like structure and wrap it round themselves and then feed from that. 

Caloptilia fidella - first Essex breeding record - makes a fold after grazing leaf surface 

In the last few weeks around Maldon, I have found some interesting species - the best being in my garden on Hops, Caloptilia fidella which is the first Essex breeding record (after the first Essex record of the species elsewhere in May this year).

 Others noted in the last few weeks include Stigmella tityrella on Beech and Bucculatrix thoracella on Lime at Beeleigh -

Bucculatrix thoracella - one of the smaller leaf mines

Stigmella tityrella - a small dark wiggly mine

 

Phyllonorycter rajella on Alder in Oak-tree Meadow, 

Phyllonorycter rajella - upper surface of mine (caterpillar is on underside)

Antispila petryi on Dogwood

Antispila petryi - note the caterpillar within the thickness of the leaf

 

and Etainia louisella on Field Maple in Hazeleigh Woods 

Etainia louisella - short mine in the seed of Field Maple

whilst going further back my favourite ‘case-bearer’ or Coleophora is the bizarrely shaped Coleophora kuehnella 

Coleophora kuenella - barely 5mm tall 

What do the adult moths look like, I hear you ask...well, that will have to be for another time.

This is just a tiny sample of the tiny moths out there, right under our noses but they are not the only families to mine leaves, large numbers of flies and beetles do too, adding an extra level of challenge to any identification. Indeed, two new species of fly never before found in Essex have been identified in Hazeleigh Wood over the last two years, both feeding on Wood Anemone.

Top Phytomyza hendeli, bottom Phytomyza anemones, both new to Essex

As you can guess, I have become enthralled by these tiny creatures and their fascinating lifestyles. Take a look next time you are out and about - see if you can see any, take a picture, go on, get hooked!