1913-2001: A lifetime of difference
nowadays. The distinctive 'wet-my-lips wet-my-lips' call of the latter had been accompanying me
for several minutes, without seeming to get any closer, when suddenly the vocalist emerged from the
thick tangle of Cut-leaved Cranesbill Geranium dissectum on the edge of the field and dashed along
one of the grassy wheel-ruts a few yards in front of me - the kind of good fortune most birdwatchers
can only dream about when trying to track down this neurotically secretive species.
What attracted the birds to this field, of course, were the weeds - lots and lots and lots and lots of
lovely weeds! Parts of it resembled a snowfield - created by the tightly -packed flowerheads of Scentless
Mayweed Tripleurospermum inodorum - but a simple transect through them yielded a rich diversity
of other species including Round-leaved Fluellen Kickxia elatine. Dwarf Spurge Euphorbia exigua,
Henbit Lamium amplexicaule & Cut-leaved Deadnettles L. hybridum, Thyme-leaved Sandwort
Arenaria serpyllifolia, Small Toadflax Chaenorhinum minus, Long-headed Poppy Papaver dubium.
Common Fumitory Fumaria officinalis, Red Goosefoot Chenopodium rubrum, Fool's Parsley Aethusa
cynapium. Green Field-speedwell Veronica agrestis, Weld Reseda luteola, a solitary Musk Thistle
Carduus nutans and - the best find of the day - several Broad-leaved Spurge Euphorbia platyphyllos,
a species which I had found in the area previously, during the BSBI survey.
In the distance, an old car tyre dump was spectacularly adorned with several hundred Cotton Thistles
Onopordum acanthium. There was no sign of the Heartsease Viola tricolor and Corn Spurrey Spergula
arvensis found by my predecessors, though. In my experience, the benefits such fields bring to
wildlife are the norm rather than the exception; indeed, a few days later, at Margaretting Tye, a
similarly unsprayed field yielded another rich crop of cornfield flowers - Borage Borago officinalis,
Alsike Clover Trifolium hybridum, Sharp-leaved Fluellen Kickxia spuria, Dwarf Spurge and over
250 clumps of Shepherd's-needle Scandix pecten-veneris among them - while the insects drawn to
these had attracted, in their turn, several hunting Emperor Dragonflies Anax imperator, Black-tailed
Skimmers Orthetrum cancellatum and Brown Hawkers Aeshna grandis from nearby ponds and the
songs of the numerous Skylarks were almost drowned out by the squeaking contact calls of hundreds
of Swifts Apus apus as they hawked low over the field. Many conservationist groups are, of course,
struggling to restore some kind of balance between the needs of agriculture and those of wildlife and
there are promising signs that the various farming stewardship schemes are beginning to have a
beneficial effect. Individual landowners are also doing their best and there has been much good
work in the vicinity on the airfield in recent years, including a lot of tree planting and also the
construction of a large farm reservoir which, thanks to sympathetic management, provides an excellent
habitat for wildlife. Inoneofthe newly planted areas on my route I found good numbers of both Bee
Ophrys apifera and Pyramidal Orchids Anacamptis pyramidalis, although both had gone over by
this late date.
The final part of my walk took me from the beautifully maintained grounds of Norton Hall along a
narrow lane to the Heath. In 1913, the group had been conducted by Miss Skinner to "a low hedge
bank between two fields ...[ where] two glorious masses of the Fyfield Pea (Lathyrus tuberosus)
were met with, clambering wildly over the bank and even invading the ploughed land. Its pretty
sweet scented flowers of pinky-purple made a bright patch even on this dull day, and when seen on
a bright sunny morning they are even more beautiful''. I could find no sign of them at Fyfield during
my walk but the species does still survive in the lane - albeit only just - on a bank that has steadily
deteriorated from a flower-rich sward to a jungle of Cleavers and rank grass during the twenty or so
years that I have known it. Another plant they looked for near Fyfield was Elecampane Inula helenium
and this too survives on the Heath. The area's rarest inhabitant, Sickle-leaved Hare's-ear Bupleurum
falcatum they had the good fortune to see in its original site whereas, nowadays, it is necessary to
brave the thunderous traffic on the nearby A414 in order to enjoy "its yellow umbels [which] looked
Essex Naturalist (New Series) 19 (2002)
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