A wildlife diary
Mary Smith 33 Gaynes Park Road, Upminster, Essex RM14 2HJ
December stalled with the Exhibition and Social meeting on Saturday 4lh. Everyone I
asked declared the new venue much superior to the previous one, as we had a bit more
space, better facilities, especially in the kitchen, and matching tables that all worked! The
exhibits were as varied as ever, with living mosses and fungi to accompany mollusc
shells, photographs and other non-living things. Virtually all the food went too. If you
missed it, perhaps because you were not sure of the venue, then please put it in your new
diaries now for 3rd December, 2005. Directions and maps will follow later.
On a cold but bright day later in December we went down to the Thames side at East
Tilbury around low tide. We had binoculars with us, hoping to see some Avocets. You
have to realise, dear readers, if you do not already know, that we are not, repeat not,
birders. I much prefer plants, including bryophytes, and fungi, as they stay still when I
examine them, and are usually still in the same place the next day when we go armed with
the camera, and you don't have to stand around gazing with binoculars into empty sky.
Usually, on the Thames mud and similar areas, there are some wading birds. We sort
most of them into 3 groups: little waders, middle-size waders and big waders, and that is
as far as we get. But our ornithological skills are slowly improving. With Avocets, which
even we can recognise, we were not disappointed. There were dozens and dozens of
them, and they really are very attractive birds, of the middle-size waders group. We
walked on towards the next bend in the river, then turned back, and we saw a Little Egret
in a Saltmarsh pool. It was definitely not here when we passed along going north only 10
minutes before, but had clearly just arrived from somewhere else, probably across the
River in Kent. We have seen some of these in Kent, on the Cliffe Marshes, but this was
a first in Essex for us. We noticed that a substantial contribution to the landscape was
made by several big clumps of Pampas-grass, which make a fine display in winter.
Christmas weather is usually mild and a bit moist, but this year it was frosty and bright.
Eleven of our family, including 6 children, very much enjoyed a walk by a nearby lake
where there were sticks to poke the ice with, small pebbles to skim across the surface,
bubbles of marsh gas (methane) arising from the rotting leaves on the lake bottom (fart
gas, my son told them, as many people produce methane in the lower gut), ice crystals to
examine quickly with a hand lens before they melt under our warm breath, and small
living things like mosses and lichens and tiny invertebrates. I have found many children,
and not a few adults, are absolutely fascinated by a simple x 10 hand lens, and it makes an
excellent stocking-filler for any child from 5 years old.
Marsh gas explains the strange phenomenon of the 'Will-o'-the-wisp', or ignis fatuus, a
Latin phrase meaning foolish fire. White wispy wraiths over marshland at night would
lead travellers astray, often to their doom. And there was much more open marshland
back in the Middle Ages than there is now; it is one of Britain's many disappearing
Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 47, May 2005
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