many of the flowers we saw. Much of the old meadowland on the east of the Settle Road
car park was covered with Pignut, then we saw lots of Buttercups, both Creeping and
Bulbous, then Tormentil and Sheep's Sorrel, both acid soil indicators. Then we went
down into woodland, full of Bluebells past their best, and several other ancient woodland
indicators such as more Pignut, but also Dog's Mercury, and the delightful Town Hall
Clock, for which the preferred name is Moschatel. We hugged Hornbeams, learnt how
to make sloe vodka, and what happens if you eat Hemlock, among other things. More
colour was provided by Herb-Robert, Greater Stitchwort and Ground-ivy. After a walk
of over two hours we all managed to find our way back to the car park, even though none
of us was familiar with the park geography!
I was in Laindon one evening and someone at the meeting said they had seen 4 Magpies
going for a Fox in broad daylight. The Fox swiftly ran away into cover. The same
person related how they had seen a Jay go for a Magpie, and successfully saw it off.
Now Foxes are much bigger and cleverer than 4 Magpies, so 1 was really surprised the
Fox fled, and equally I was surprised that a Jay would see off a Magpie, as a Magpie is
surely bigger than a Jay? I assume, in the first event, that the Fox had some food that the
Magpies wanted, and in the second, that the Magpie had something the Jay wanted.
Some of you out there will no doubt be familiar with this strange animal behaviour, and
1 would be grateful if you could enlighten me as to what was going on here.
Out botanising recently in and around St George's hospital in Hornchurch, I stumbled
upon a patch of Subterranean Clover (see pic). This is a very uncommon plant and is on
the Red Data List for Essex, so I was quite excited to find what I thought must be a new
site for it. And not just one tiny plant, but a substantial patch of plants a few metres
across, with a hundred or more flowers. The flowers do not look particularly clover-like
as they are only present a few at a time, white, not in a dense head like most clovers. The
interesting bit is what happens after the flowers have been pollinated and the petals
fallen. The little pods turn backwards on the stalk, making a sort of point with the back
end of all the pods together, and the stalk curves down so the pods are pushed down into
the soil as they grow and mature. This is why it is called 'subterranean', rather than that
the whole plant is entirely below ground. As you can imagine, this only works in soft
soils: it only grows in very light soils, usually sandy, and often near the coast (which St.
George's Hospital isn't, but these plants hadn't read the books).
We went on holiday to France, camping, in the last week of May. First, we discovered
we had a Bank Vole under our tent, making a nest between the grass and our groundsheet.
We saw him/her once, but mostly we heard him/her scratching or biting sounds as he/
she gnawed bits of the groundsheet, chiefly at night. When we broke camp and moved
on, we saw the neat round, nest, woven with grass and lined with bits of our groundsheet,
that was made, presumably, ready for babies to be born into. Another night, in another
6 Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 54, September 2007