Accommodation was initially in an old wartime hut alongside the thicket but after a few
years moved to a Nissan hut at Eastlands Farm, the sheds on either side being occupied
by hens (it was part of a chicken farm) and - in the early 1960s - to the village hall,
nearly two miles from the coast. This last was on the large side - and damp - so damp in
fact that the cutlery turned green from one weekend to the next and the blankets had to
be put through a ringer before use while the legs of the beds were fitted with rat-stoppers!
The small wood alongside the building was an excellent ringing site but little recording
work was carried out on the coast and the fortunes of the Observatory reached a farcical
nadir when a group of Beatniks rustled some chickens from our former accommodation
and barbecued them over our bird-hide on the beach! In 1967 the Essex Birdwatching
Society came to our rescue and purchased a new hut that, with the permission of the
landowner, was sited on the edge of the saltings next to Linnett's Cottage. This luxurious
dwelling slept eight in two bunkrooms and also boasted a living-room, kitchenette, porch
and an elsie! It gave the Obs a new lease of life but a further crisis arose in the late 1970s
when the hut was flooded by exceptional high tides two winters in succession. The first
time it happened I remember spending much of one day on my hands and knees trying to
mop the floor clean of a half-inch of glutinous estuarine mud. By evening I had transferred
most of it from the floor onto my clothes but when I pulled an easy chair in front of the
fire for a well earned rest I was immediately enveloped in thick clouds of steam! The
EBWS again came to our aid and in 1981 the hut was moved onto slightly higher ground
nearby, where it resides to this day.
There have, of course, been enormous changes to the landscape during the past fifty
years. Aerial photographs taken by the Luftwaffe in the 1939-45 war depict a thickly
hedged landscape with relatively small fields and even as late as 1965, when I first
visited the area, some parts of the peninsular remained like this, including the farm
behind the Obs. Since then the coastal belt has been stripped of all its hedgerows and
on a cold, wet February afternoon when a screeching easterly gale is trying to bite your
ears off the term 'prairie' cannot begin to do justice to its awful bleakness! With the
hedgeshave gone the weedy stubble fields and many of the other habitats which farmland
birds depend on and here, as elsewhere in East Anglia, there has been a catastrophic
decline in the number of many species. However, it remains one of the last surviving
strongholds of the Corn Bunting (Miliaria calandra) and a flock of 350 seen near
Southminster this autumn could probably be equalled in few other parts of the Country.
Curiously, it also supports the highest density of Barn Owls (Tyto alba) in Essex, with
at least 20-25 pairs scattered about the peninsular. This is probably explained by the
large number of field ditches with uncut banks of rank grass but a combination of falling
wheat prices and the modern day farming obsession with tidiness as a way of increasing
production means that even these are now under threat. Although mature elms remain
relatively numerous in the peninsular as a whole, compared with inland Essex, their
removal from most of the coastal strip has led to the disappearance of the White-letter
Hairstreak (Strymonidea w-album) from this area, a butterfly that was apparently common
in the vicinity of St Peter's Chapel before the war. Thus it was with particular pleasure
Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 40, January 2003
15