22
Several car loads of Basildon Natural History
Society members collected at the Towngate Theatre
and left for Wakering Stairs, Foulness at 1.05
promptly. An uneventful journey brought us to the
fields of Foulness where our first sighting was some
100 or so Brent Geese and a flock of Lapwing.
Arriving at the seawall known as Wakering Stairs we
met up with the Essex Field Club members making some
30 members and friends in all. After a few minutes
in which time various pieces of waterproof footware,
anoraks and other items for collecting, digging etc.
were got together, the group set off across the mud at
a leisurely pace catching our breath and braving the
icy blast. Live mussels, Mytilus edulis L., were
found holding together small patches of stones and
one or two unfortunate edible periwinkles Littorina
littorea L. On the muddy sand surface from which
small strands of Zostera or eel grass sprouted a number
of very small edible cockles, Cardium edule L.,were
lying and slightly buried a Peppered Furrow Shell,
Scrobicularia plana L., eaten in France, and some
Baltic Telline, Macoma baltica L., named because they
were found first of all in large numbers in the Baltic
Sea by Linnaeus.
A short distance out from the seawall brought us on to
a patch of Spartina maritima var. townsendii, looking
extremely 'moth eaten' and dead from the winter storms
and cold, in which large numbers of variously
coloured (pinks, reds, oranges, yellows and whites)
dead double valves of Macoma were trapped amongst the
brown wind-beaten stems.
Further round the corner and in the pools nearer the
seawall we found hundreds of Hydrobia ulvae and a
sprinkling of ventrosa, two species of estuarine
gastropoda that look like grains of rice and thought
to be the main food source of the Shelduck of which
half a dozen were seen further along the shore.
Recent evidence from the crops of dead Shelduck seems to
place some doubt on the connection between the two
animals and further research will have to be carried