be coming your way. Can anyone tell me whether they become a pest, and, if so, in what
way?
"The cuckoo comes in April, sings his song in May..." but the first one I heard was
shouting on 30 April, one day early!
A couple of days later a friend and I were botanising in arable areas near North Ockendon.
As we crossed a pasture field (thankfully with no large herbivores in it that day) we
noticed two Brown Hares running and leaping about, as if enjoying the spring weather.
Their bright brown coats gleamed in the morning sunshine. Larger than rabbits, and
with longer ears and a different gait while running, they are very distinctive, but we do
not often see them round here. We got quite close before they bolted. In the same
morning we saw a Fox wandering about, and we flushed a Cock Pheasant from a hiding
place in a hedge. I should add that the animals were much more exciting than the plants
in this particular area.
On Friday 4* 1 was down on the meetings programme to lead a botanical afternoon at
Brickbarn Wood near Davy Down. But when I went for a quick look around the day
before, everything was so dry, and the rabbits and horses had cropped so closely, that
the area was more like a desert and there were so incredibly few of the special plants of
that area visible that we called it off. Some of us went to Belhus Woods Country Park
instead, where the shade of the trees meant the woodlands were not quite so parched,
plus the lakes help to keep the plants near the edges going. On the lake at Hunts Hill
someone spotted a Ruddy Duck, presumably male with its bright blue bill and chestnut
body plumage. We looked at a small pond where Ken Adams found some pondweeds I
had failed to spot earlier, and named them. We admired a number of the wild flowers
that are ancient woodland indicators, including Early Purple-orchid and Twayblade,
both out, and then Brian Ecott saw some Harlequin Ladybirds in a Blackthorn hedge. I
had never really looked for these before, and I was amazed at their variety and beauty
(see plates 2 and 3, taken by Brian, to whom many thanks). In addition to the ones in the
pictures, which were busy copulating as you can see, we saw one orange one with no
spots at all and a few other colour combinations on other specimens. I understand you
have to look for the conspicuous white patches on their faces where the eyebrows would
be and their brown legs, as compared with black legs on our native ones. Both features
were easy to see on the ones we met. They are, as most of you will know, much-dreaded
foreign invaders who may kill off most of our own native Ladybirds plus some other
useful insects. Belhus Woods Country Park seems to get every pest going!
A day or two later a group of about a dozen people went for a wild flower walk in
Dagnam Park, Harold Hill, now a Local Nature Reserve called The Manor. Botanist's
lenses (10x loupes) were available, and people enjoyed using them to see the detail in
Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 54, September 2007
5