And this was on the marsh... Thaumatomyia notata a funky fruit fly I think! image by Chris Lowe

A better Green Sandpiper film than the one I published before. Having a nice preen outside the Ken Barrett Hide in the rain

We seem to have fewer egrets this summer than in previous years and look unlikely to get past the 20 mark at this rate. Perhaps we are just too dry for them? Too much competition for Aveley Pools as the only water source?

Anyway, Dave Cornwell got some great shots on Monday of one fishing in front of the Ken Barrett hide (guessing here but it looks right!).

Still plenty of butterfly action around with the odd Painted Lady appearing and Holly Blues and Small Coppers on the wing a again. The Wall Browns are still along the river wall and are best looked for along the concrete and metal section.

Gatekeeper (Chris Lowe)

Holly Blue (Chris Lowe)

Painted Lady (Dave McGough)

Wall Brown (Mark Hart)

A

image by Dave Cornwell

Our Wasp Spiders are getting even bigger and I have put out some mini signs to show where one or two of them are! One of the characteristics of a Wasp Spider web is the stabilimentum; a curious zig-zag of thicker silk that runs above and below the spider in the web. No one is quite sure of its purpose but I have never seen one creating any other pattern than the vertical one. This beauty has however added a complete circle…

While out in our woodland area you may come across the leaves of willow or bramble that have had neat holes taken out of the sides. If you are really lucky you may even see the culprit... an industrious Leaf Cutter Bee!

Rolling the leaf... (Chris Lowe)

Filling the nest cavity (John Yearley)

Just spent five minutes talking to visitors around the wildlife pond with dozens of Buff-tailed and Carder Bumblebees buzzaing around us when this rather worn Comma came to visit and landed on the outstretched finger of a very appreciative Elsie Peto! She even had a butterfly on her t-shirt!

Comma (me)

Three Red admirals were feeding on the Hemp Agrimony and a freshly emerged Southern Hawker dragonfly buzzed the pond…

This is the time of year when the Marsh Froglets start to emerge. You can often see them loafing around on the emergent vegetation with various numbers of legs and enormous tails. Funnily enough, when they have absorbed the tail and grown their legs properly they actually leaf the water smaller than they are as tadpoles at the moment!

Brian Churches actually manged to video them! Enjoy!

www.youtube.com/watch

www.youtube…

Afternoon all...

If you do one thing today on a pc follow the link below to the RSPB Rye Meads reserve blog.

Simply fantastic!

RSPB Rye Meads blog post

Enjoy!

With all the blackberries fruiting on the site at the moment, there is quite a bit of berry-filled fox poo around and needlesstosay this attract flies! Yesterday we spent an engrossing five minutes watching these three species extracting nutrients! Kids thought it was great!

After the rain clouds cleared and the air warmed up it became a perfect afternoon to get out bugging and over the next few hours we managed to find a fantastic array of critters for those attending the event.

Darters and Migrant Hawkers zoomed up and down the paths.

A female Ruddy Darter with a dented eye! (Me)

Male Ruddy Darter note the pinched body and jet black legs (Matthew Foakes)

and there were many types…

Grasshoppers go through various stages of growing up. These are called instars and just like spiders and snakes, they shed their skin so that they can grow! I have never ever seen this in a grasshopper and so, was very pleased when Mark Hart sent me this image of a newly emerged, fully winged final stage adult Lesser Marsh taken here on the reserve!

Whimbrel is a regular passage migrant in both the spring and autumn and they spend their time either feeding along the foreshore in amongst the seaweed or sometimes out on the meadows looking for worms. However at high tide, regradless of the time of year, they will fight for a high tide perch on one of the riverside posts that can viewed from the visitor centre.

Visitors are always amazed when myself or one of my volunteers…

Well... perhaps not in the lounge but certainly lounging around on the boardwalks! Common Lizards are especially obvious along the Northern Trail at the moment with up to 30 being visible on a warm weather walk. If you look closely you will see that they look flattened out, almost like they have been squashed! to gather more warmth they spread their ribs out and to create a greater surface area to capture them rays!

As you may have noticed in recent years nearly every Horse Chestnut tree has been badly affected (if not killed) but a blight that stops the leaves growing to full size before drying up and going all crispy by late June making autumn come early. Well the culprit is a tiny little moth called a Horse Chestnut Leaf-miner  (Cameraria ohridella). It is only about 4mm long so you can imagine just how minute the catarpillers…

Sorry for the lack of postings this week... been one of those!

Anyway, what has been going on? Autumn passage is still creeping up on us with an increase in duck numbers on the marsh including upwards of 100 Teal and single Garganey that was still present yesterday. There is currently very little in the way of exposed mud on Aveley Pool but yesterday four each of Green Sandpiper and Greenshank and a single Wood Sandpiper…

With a new colony of Sand Martins just a short distance from the reserve, we have been blessed with almost continuous flocks of Sand Martins throughout the season. Now that the second brood have just feldged they can be seen perched on wires around the marsh waiting for their parents to bring in some tasty morsels.

On these two shots you can still see the yellow gape edges and pale tipped upperparts characteristic of…

Lots of young warblers around again at the moment including these very sharp looking Sedge Warblers. All stripes and beady eyes!

by Russ Sherriff

by Les Harrison

Just a quick plug for some up and coming events...

There are four more Teddy Bear's Picnics this month on Sunday 14, Saturday 20, Friday 26, Wednesday 31 all from 11am to 1pm. There are still places available on these and the Insect Afternoon Walk (Sat Aug 13) and Annual Bug Hunt on Sunday 21 August.

Check out the events page or give us a ring on 01708 899840 for more details

Look forward to seeing some of you there…

Perhaps I am the only one who remembers the film with Dan Akyroyd and his pointy headed alien family but it always makes me chuckle to imagine these little green crickets with the same name...

We have both Long-winged and Short-winged species here and the former was quite scarce until a few years ago. Other than the obvious named differences the best way of separting the females is by looking at the shape of their ovipositer…

Our contractors have been back on Purfleet Scrape over the last two days realigning the spoil heaps and bund left over from the works in the early spring to build the hide. All we need now is some more tweaking of the habitat to provide some nice shallow pools, some rain (like we have at the moment!) and then some birds to come and visit!

All images by Brenda Clayton

Brenda managed to snap some shots of our hastily departing juvenile Cuckoo on Monday. From these images you can clearly see the heavily barred chestnut plumage and hawk-like profile. You can see why they keep people second guessing about their identity!

With huge Marsh Frog tadpoles starting to lounge on the surface of the ditches it is little wonder that the Grass Snakes have been becoming quite obvious. Alex Blackman got this fab shot of an adult last week as it stalked dinner in the weed.