A wildlife diary
Mary Smith 33 Gaynes Park Road, Upminster, Essex RM14 2HJ
The first of April was a beautiful day of sunshine and blue skies. We visited Wat Tyler
Country Park, south-east of Basildon and owned by them, where we hope our new
Club museum and centre is to be built. WTCP is certainly easy to find, just south of
Pitsea railway station, and close to the A13. A road runs down the east side, and the
rest is the Park, with loads of Hawthorn woodland, lots of cleared areas, and wonderful
views from high points. I had assumed the Park would be flat, like the surrounding
Saltmarsh, but it is a hill well above the low-lying landscape (map-reading skills poor!).
There are three bird hides overlooking a creek and Saltmarsh on the south and west
sides, and plenty of children's amusements and recreation areas on the east side close
to the road, and close by a new large visitor centre is in course of construction. Some
large-scale gardening is clearly going on, and it will all look more interesting when
this is finished. As well as all this, there is a lot of history here, mostly to do with
ammunition production and defences of the Thames in WW2. We intend to visit again
later in the year when there are more plants to see and the bare places have become
green. And we saw a Brimstone Butterfly on the wing. Do visit, if you don't already
know this area.
I have been out botanising today, 3 April, near M25 J31 and Purfleet. After the relatively
hard winter I was surprised to see in flower for the first time this year: Ox-eye Daisy,
Scented Mayweed, Oxford Ragwort, Hawthorn, Wild Cherry, Field Maple, Wall
Speedwell, Wallflower (on the chalk cliff of a pit), Alexanders, Cow Parsley, White
Campion. Summer seems to have arrived here.
Today, 9 April, I visited Belhus Woods Country Park, near Aveley. Here very few
flowers were out! Yes, there were Primroses, Wood Anemones and Violets (3 species),
in glorious profusion, but not much else. But the Blackthorn was at its best, while
other common flowers were nowhere nearly out. Now I know that BWCP is low-lying,
but most of Purfleet is low too, especially in the bottom of the pits. Is the chalk so
much earlier to warm up than the sands and alluvium at BWCP? They are only about
3 miles apart!
Later on, the probable answer suddenly sprang to mind. The chalk is very well drained,
making a dry soil, so it warms up quickly when the weather warms up. But in BWCP
I was in woods, in moist alluvial soils near the Running Water Brook. It is the wetness
that makes the difference, as water takes much longer to heat up than anything dry.
The woods don't themselves make much difference, as most of the leaves arc only just
starting to open.
A week or so later I was out botanising in the Rainham area. Insects were definitely
on the wing, including huge numbers of Peacock butterflies, huge numbers of St Marks
Flies (quite large, black flies, with long legs that dangle down, but not biting), and
plenty of others, about whose names I am totally ignorant. The next day my husband
Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 60, September 2009 5