Foxtrot bravo
Ken Adams 63 Wroth's Path, Baldwins Hill. Loughton. Essex 1G10 1SH
Avid readers of the Daily Mail will no doubt have seen the recent article on the fox cub
found in a bathroom in Ilford. An RSPCA expert commented that 'it is exceedingly rare
for a fox to enter a house' and 'foxes generally avoid human contact — and for this
reason do not represent a safety risk'. Don't you believe it! Not our's. We have two
foxes that case our cul-de-sac regularly twice a day during daylight hours and are not the
slightest bit timid. A smart-looking dog fox and a mangy vixen. A few weeks ago, I had
left the front door open on a hot day and the remains of a packet of ginger biscuits on the
arm of a chair in the first floor living room. Finding the packet on the floor with a single
biscuit left, I assumed it had fallen off the chair, until that is I went down to the drive and
found a biscuit lying there. I was all prepared to take it out on the local cat, then the
following day, while talking to Ray Reeves on the doorstep, a fox suddenly appeared
and trotted straight up to us. It stopped dead a few feet away and looked straight at me
as much as to say 'get out of the way I want to come in'. Being thwarted from getting
past me on the right it tried on the left, then went round the back of the car, and tried to
sneak in again. According to the neighbours this fox will enter any house in the road if it
finds a door open. If you walk along the street while it's on its rounds it will quite
happily overtake you on the same pavement and look back as much as to say hello. So
far one of them has chewed up a pair of one neighbour's trainers while another had £40
worth of rather smart shoes similarly dismembered. Its latest escapade was to get inside
my inflatable boat, left inflated on the back lawn after our EFC pond survey meeting,
covered in old blankets. The fox got into the gap between the seats, and whizzed round
and round until all the goose grass seeds had been transferred from its fur onto my
blanket. As for the local dogs, they simply look on, he's one of them!
A long lost Essex orchid returns
Ken Adams 63 Wroths |Path, Loughton IG10 1SH
Those of us who know the silt lagoons at East Tilbury, just north of Coalhouse Fort,
used originally to deposit dredgings from the Thames, were disappointed when the saltings
dried up and began to grass over, and the colonies of such interesting plants as Sagina
maritima, Vicia lutea and Polypogon monspeliensis disappeared. Recently however
they have taken on a new lease of life as the dust-like seed of several orchid species
have taken hold. This year Ray Reeves found around 200 flowering spikes of Bee Orchid,
and one of Pyramidal, neither that unusual in this sort of habitat, but more spectacularly
two spikes of Early Marsh Orchid, Dactylorhiza incarnata ssp. incarnata and one
magnificent spike of the Chalk Fragrant Orchid, Gymnadinea conopsea ssp. conopsea,
the first reliable record of the latter in Essex since 1972 when the late Arthur Adams
confirmed Eric Saunder's early find in the Warren Chalk Pit at Grays. Ray's photos of
8 Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 57, September 2008