A select group of Naturetrekkers gathered at Wrabness for our now-traditional high summer amble around the southern shore of the Stour. The forecast was poor (no surprise, this IS 2024!) but the rain largely held off, and at times it was sunny, warm and humid, although with a brisk breeze away from the shelter of trees.

A look at the immediate weather prospects made me change my plans for the day around, so we started off at Stour Wood RSPB reserve. Long after the ‘best’ time for the woods (with spring flowers and birdsong), our primary target was summer woodland butterflies. It all started well along the first ride with half a dozen Silver-washed Fritillaries (although flitting and flirting high in the canopy) and a fleeting fly-past White Admiral. So no photos …

But after that, none. And indeed apart from a few Meadow Browns, a very few Gatekeepers and Ringlets, and single Red Admiral and Comma, that was just about it for butterflies. This summer’s abysmal dearth of butterflies continues.

In fact insects generally were sparse. Highlights included the Scare Forest Tubic micromoth and tiger-striped caterpillars of Cinnabar…

… a Forest Bug, with a plant bug Lygus pratensis on a Ragwort head.

The main tree in the wood, Sweet Chestnut, was really showing off, with cascades of catkins, each producing their characteristic mushroomy odour, and attracting at least a few passing flies.

Honeysuckle, the food plant for White Admiral, was festooning the edges of the coppices, and in full bloom:

Other trees and shrubs were indicators of the ancient origins of the woodland, probably continuously wooded since the retreat of the last Ice Age: Wild Service-tree and Butcher’s-broom.

And in the gloom of the summer wood, just a few flowers in evidence, including Rosebay Willowherb, Wood Sage, Enchanter’s-nightshade and Yellow Pimpernel. At least enough to demonstrate the approach used in our brand new WildGuide!

Few birds were in evidence, apart from ever-singing Wrens, seeping Treecreepers and several yaffling Green Woodpeckers.

A short walk around the adjacent fields took us past the remarkable House for Essex, the brainchild of Grayson Perry. Marmite to the community, but personally I love it, especially now that the lustre of its first decade has become muted and moulded it into its surrounding landscape.

Conservation field margins had plenty of Common Knapweed, Prickly Ox-tongue, Hogweed and Wild Carrot, but sadly few insects again, there was a bug Closterotomus norvegicus and rather a lot of Hogweed Bonking-beetles, doing what they say on the tin! And more Gatekeepers…

Swallows were twittering overhead, no doubt finding sustenance around the stables, while a Linnet, Goldfinch and Greenfinch sang side-by-side of a roof-ridge and just a few hundred metres the finch songscape was filled out with a Chaffinch.

Moving then to the Wrabness Nature Reserve (Essex Wildlife Trust), we entered a very natural-looking but essentially brownfield reserve. Patches of trees and scrub held at least three singing Turtle Doves. Once the sound of our summer, this is pretty much their last outpost in Essex… The trees and bushes also provided us with gall interest (Knopper Galls on acorns, and Robin’s Pincushions on Dog-rose) as well as leaf blemishes and spots, including Sycamore Tar-spot.

Being brownfield, the site showed a vast range of floral interest, including Agrimony (in flower and seed), Common Toadflax, many legumes including Meadow Vetchling and Broad-leaved Everlasting-pea, the latter in an array of colour shades …

… less frequent species locally, like Corky-fruited Water-dropwort,  Viper’s-bugloss, Dittander and Meadow Crane’s-bill…

… and everyone’s favourite, the shell-pink Common Centaury among a couple of parasitic plants, Red Bartsia and Common Eyebright.

There were a few more insects at this site, reflecting its floral diversity, with Essex and Small Skippers, single Six-spot Burnet and Shaded Broad-bar moths, nymphal Speckled Bush-crickets and several Footballer hoverflies.

As a grand finale, it was down to the mudflats of the Stour Estuary, where the tide had now receded. Midsummer is not the best time for estuary birds, off breeding elsewhere, but we saw a Curlew, a few Oystercatchers and Lesser Black-backed and Black-headed Gulls, as well as a Little Egret, all concentrated around a freshwater outflow.

The saltmarshes shone purple under mounds of Common Sea-lavender, and a good day was brought to a fitting end sitting among a Sand Martin colony. At least 150 on the wing included some juveniles, as the adults busied with starting second broods, a twittering, trilling cloud that ebbed and flowed with action, until a late afternoon squally shower sent them all indoors. The end!

Essex is a large county, and over here on the eastern seaboard, the chalklands of the west are really a step too far away … unless one has to pass through on the way elsewhere.  Earlier this year was one of those, but as a late spring it wasn’t hugely productive (except for Pasque Flowers), so I decided to drop in for more summery fare on my way to and from Birdfair, near Rutland Water.

At the juxtaposition of Essex, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire, the mid-Anglian Chilterns Chalk is best seen perhaps at Therfield Heath (Herts) and here the chalk grassland flora was just outstanding.

Taller species like Clustered Bellflower, Yellow-wort, Dropwort, Hairy Hawkbit and Hawkweed Ox-tongue…

… mingled with shorter ones like Small Scabious, Common Rock-rose and the simply delightful candy-striped Squinancywort.

Marbled Whites flew away at every footfall, and of those that did settle a good proportion had passengers in the form of hitch-hiking mites. A species called Trombidium breei, this normally attaches to the thorax or legs of the host and seems to be particularly prevalent on Marbled Whites.

A final point of interest was from the Beech trees that abut the grassland. Just a few leaves showed a line of galls running down the midrib. These belong to a gall midge Hartigiola annulipes. Although widely distibuted across the country, it doesn’t seem to have been recorded before from or near to this locality, at least according to the National Biodversity Network Atlas.

Elsewhere, the low rolling landscape, mostly clad in intensive arable and a few hedges, the realm of singing Yellowhammers and Corn Buntings, the only real clue to the underlying geology is the remnant chalk flora in some of the grass verges, with Field Scabious and Greater Knapweed being especially good indicators. The narrow, often single-track roads don’t lend themselves to easy stopping, but with my long history of working in the counties, I have come to know a few good spots with reasonable access. And so yes, I took the opportunity to drop in on a few old friends.

Near Thriplow (Cambs) in a field margin prone to winter-wet is an accessibly colony of a very rare, small but attractive plant, Grass-poly.

As an annual of often ephemeral waters, its population waxes and wanes; seeds are probably moved around on the feet of ducks, as well as remaining dormant in soil for long periods during adverse conditions.

I have seen it here maybe four times in the past two decades and my feeling is that this year will not be particularly successful for it. The surrounding vegetation is so lush from earlier rains that the flowering patches are reduced to little more than a few square centimetres in extent, a far cry from the sheets I have seen before. But it will no doubt be able to bounce back, through natural immigration on ducks and from the germination of buried seed.

Moving into Essex, the final location near Saffron Walden is somewhere I have known for even longer, perhaps 40 years. It is a road verge, and one that is protected as it holds good population of Crested Cow-wheat.

This magnificent plant has a very good claim to be the botanical icon of Essex. Pretty much restricted to the chalk and chalky boulder clays of north-west Essex, south-west Suffolk and eastern Cambridgeshire, it has a very similar national distribution to our other iconic plant, Oxlip.

Although like Grass-poly it is in annual, this population of Crested Cow-wheat seems to fluctuate less markedly. With little or no seed bank and no obvious vectors of long-distance immigration, it should therefore be regarded as vulnerable to environmental change. Gratifying therefore to see this year that plants are distributed pretty much as I have seen them before over the years.

Interestingly, there was also a flurry of butterfly activity, welcome after such a deep June chasm. Ringlets were everywhere with lots of Large Skippers and a Brimstone (my first of the summer brood), along with something that would not have been part of the scene 40 years ago, or even 20 years ago, Silver-washed Fritillaries patrolling the wood edge in abundance and seeking newly opened Bramble flowers. Times change, and sometimes for the better!

Old friends is old places, there is something both reassuring and instructive about returning again and again to see them!

As a prelude to my walks in Hockley Woods, I took the opportunity while in south Essex to reacquaint myself with some of the sites and botanical sights of my now quite distant past, going back to the 1980s.

Canvey Wick, a remarkable brownfield wildlife site on a former oil refinery has appeared in these blogs before, as one of the greatest success stories of my conservation career. I have described it an an ‘accidental nature reserve’ that has now transformed into a real nature reserve, owned by the Land Trust, and managed by Buglife (the charity of choice of #WildEssex) and RSPB.

A site of such resonance to me, one I have been associated with for more than 25 years since we discovered its remarkable biodiversity, I was thrilled to be asked to lead a wildflower walk around it for Buglife last week. It has always been seen as a reserve especially for invertebrates. When we discovered it it was believed to have almost the greatest concentration of rare and scarce invertebrates of any site in the country, second only to the much larger Dungeness. It helped to put brownfield nature on the conservation map.

The reasons for that diversity are manyfold, mostly relating to its use (and abuse) by humans over the last eighty years. But another factor is the diversity of wild plants it holds. As with all brownfield sites, the plants are a wonderful multicultural mix from across the world, native species including many Essex coastal specialities and non-natives derived from gardens and port activities etc.

So an ideal area to look at wild flowers and in doing so to introduce people to our newly published book, which makes no distinction between natives and aliens. If a plant is found in the wild, irrespective of its status, in more than  third of the 10km squares of the National Grid, it is in the book.

While conservationists may despair about the spread of non-natives, in many cases they are not aggressive, and often they perform useful ecological functions, as any gardener knows. So we looked at Narrow-leaved Ragwort, which has a nearly year-round flowering season, so providing nectar and pollen for insects even at seasons when natives are not up to the job.

Other non-natives included Goat’s-rue, Broad-leaved Everlasting Pea and Hybrid Bladder-senna, all loved by bumblebees, plus Rose Campion and many others.

Then there are the non-native natives! Sea-buckthorn, a natural plant of sand dunes elsewhere but not in Essex, is very useful in autumn for birds that feed on its orange berries. However it is also a very aggressive species that shades out other plants, native and non-native alike, reducing biodiversity. Other less contentious native coastal specialities included Narrow-leaved Bird’s-foot-trefoil, Sea Club-rush, Wild Carrot and Grass Vetchling (a real favourite of mine).

The beauty of brownfields is that they contain plants (and, by extension, insects) from a wide range of natural habitats, including here a mix of drought-tolerant succulents (eg Biting Stonecrop) and chalkland specialities, like Dogwood and Yellow-wort, alongside Tufted Vetch and Perforate St. John’s-wort, characteristic of clayland soils..

And on top of all of these there are the orchids, good colonisers of bare and grassy habitats by virtue of their dust-like seeds. Common Spotted, Pyramidal and Bee Orchids were all in flower, although the latter were going over. Since I first knew Canvey Wick nearly 30 years ago (before we even coined its name) the Pyramidal Orchids have certainly increased, while Southern Marsh-orchids have declined hugely … once the commonest species, last week we saw none.

Of course things always change, especially on developing habitats such as here, so this is not surprising. But changes do need to be managed: while this site has rewilded itself over the past half-century, that wilding now needs to be tempered in the absence of agents of disturbance – Wild Boar, Beavers, Bison or boys on bikes. Thus, aggressive Sea-buckthorn needs removing and indeed the developing Birch woodland needs to be broken up to allow light in again. Fortunately the reserve managers are aware and undertaking these essential tasks.

Aside from the plants, there were Cuckoos calling and Cetti’s Warblers singing, while a Fox trotted along one of the relict roadways; too breezy for many invertebrates but they did include a Vapourer Moth caterpillar,  a bumblebee-mimicking Furry Drone-fly and my first Scarce Emerald damselfly of the year.

While visiting Canvey also took the opportunity to search out and photograph some of the scarce plants of southern Essex that are not in the  new book, for the forthcoming three-volume set covering all wild plants of Britain & Ireland. Some were easy as they are locally frequent: for example on Belton Hills, Leigh-on-Sea, it was Bithynian Vetch. This is a generally uncommon plant of cliff-slope grassland, as here, and although not fully in flower, there was plenty of scope to capture its key features such as the large stipules with jagged lobes.

Alongside there was growing more Grass Vetchling and Common Agrimony, together with a very interesting Tragopogon that I am still not sure of. With purplish flowers it should be Salsify, but the colour is a little too pink for comfort and there is that sunset-yellow suffusion in the centre of the flowerhead. A hybrid between Salsify and Goat’s-beard is therefore one option. But what about those yellow tips to the ‘petals’? That reminds me of the southern European plant I am so familiar with from Mediterranean travels Tragopogon crocifolius, except that has a more chocolate-brown hue overall…. So my mental jury is still out: any ideas anyone?

A little to the west along the London Clay former cliff-line is Hadleigh Castle Country Park, the South Benfleet section of which is also renowned for unusual plants, as well as regular fly-pasts of squawking Mediterranean Gulls. That site provided me with yet more Grass Vetchling (seems to be having a fantastic year – or have I just caught its magical three-weeks of cerise apparency in full flow?)…

… together with Nipplewort, Tree Mallow, Corky-fruited Water-dropwort (a very rare plant when I used to work these parts, now on every nature reserve, probably spread on shared mowing kit) and Hairy Buttercup, another speciality of coastal grassland…

… and a glorious array of flowering grasses, here Crested Dog’s-tail and Italian Rye-grass.

That just leaves the local star that is Hairy Vetchling. Generally considered not to be native in Britain, it does have some claim to that status at least at this site having been known here for at least three centuries. Again this seems much more frequent than when I worked in the area: the park managers are clearly doing something right!

But you cannot win them all. There is another plant with a similar tenuous claim to native status from these slopes, the umbellifer Hartwort. I knew it well in past times, but could find no trace on this occasion.

Then finally it was back onto Canvey Island to try and hunt down a plant that was first found in Essex as recently as June 2023. I had a precise location (above), and found several other unusual species such as Knotted Hedge-parsley and Water Bent, but it took a long while to find the weakly scrambling, mini-Cleavers that is Galium murale, or Yellow Bedstraw or Small Goose-grass….

It is a native of the Mediterranean, first found here a year ago, then subsequently in Rayleigh and probably Bardfield. Indeed it is almost certainly overlooked elsewhere, with its diminutive stature and, even when you have found it, the tiny, unassuming pale yellow flowers. But under a lens those flowers and the long, hairy sausage-shaped fruits are unmistakeable. Honestly!

Mid-June, and you are likely to find me migrating to south Essex, to Hockley Woods in particular. The largest contiguous ancient woodland block in East Anglia, Hockley Woods sit astride the ‘southern Essex Alps’, a ridge of London Clay capped with sands and gravels, and have become a traditional fixture for Naturetrek day walks at this time of year, searching especially for one of our rarest butterflies, the Heath Fritillary. But this year one of the two days failed to attract interest, so I offered a shorter two-hour session on the first day to our #WildEssex contingent.

I am always worried by this trip. Given the butterflies have a short flying season of only three weeks or so, and that they can start as early as mid-May and as late as mid-June, there is no date that can guarantee sightings. Having said that I have never failed, but with this year’s anomalous spring weather I was almost expecting the worst…

No need to worry!. The #WildEssex afternoon stroll was in dull, breezy conditions (not ideal) but after a bit of searching we managed to locate about 40 pristine specimens. And because of the lack of sunlight they were remarkably docile!

So pressure off for the Naturetrek day, one with similarly variable weather, from cloud and wind, to heavy rain (fortunately every time we were in easy reach of a closed, sheltering tree canopy, thanks to the Met Office app!), and in the afternoon one or two decent spells of hot sunshine. The morning produced more than the previous day, all pristine and many having apparently very recently emerged from pupa, but in the sun later on it was clear we were in the middle of a major event…

A conservative estimate was of 600 or more of the wonderful wood-sprites, frantically flittering, feeding and flirting in little swirling clouds around the wide rides. Absolutely amazing! And remarkably, quite by chance we seem to have hit upon peak fritillary twice in the four years we have been offering the walk.

One reason why this site is so important for Heath Fritillary is the abundance of its larval food plant Common Cow-wheat in the coppices and rides. But apart from this, there are relatively few other plants in flower, the spring flush having now faded. Honeysuckle is just emerging…

… while there was a sparse showing of Enchanter’s-nightshade, Wood Avens, Hedge Woundwort, Brooklime and Wood Speedwell …

… along with a few plants of Common Figwort. And where there is figwort, a sharp-eyed member of the group spotted the Figwort Weevil, living up to its name.

Thank goodness for the Bramble! Lining every ride-side and filling every gap in the leaf canopy, Bramble flowers were bursting forth and feeding all manner of insects, with bumblebees and Honeybees, and especially numerous hoverfly mimics of these two groups:

Deeper in the shade of the trees, birds were singing, especially Stock Doves, Blackcaps, Wrens, Chiffchaffs and Robins, calling Treecreepers and Nuthatches, and bands of fledgling Great, Blue and Long-tailed Tits. A few fungi were evident, most noticeably nasally the Stinkhorn whose spore-mass had slipped down its shaft, but was still an enticing prospect for a range of scavenger/disperser flies…

… and the fungus-like (albeit not closely related) Dog-sick Slim-mould.

At the other end of the light/shade spectrum, a walk along the woodland edge produced arable plants like Scarlet Pimpernel, Brown-tail moth caterpillars, at least five singing Skylarks (even in the strong winds) and foraging Buzzards.

But these were walks filled mostly with the wonderful variety of invertebrate life. Starting with the lepidoptera, we found Vapourer caterpillar, bagworms Psyche casta, and adult Gold-barred Longhorn, Green Oak-roller and White Ermine. But apart from the fantastic fritillaries, only half-a-dozen Holly Blues and a couple of Speckled Woods.

Large Wood Ants’ nests are a real feature of the wood: it is unwise to stand too still for too long! The ants are everywhere, heaving, hauling and searching, as well as tending and milking the blackfly colonies on many a dock shoot.

And on both days we found a single example of one of the specialities of this wood, Four-spotted Leaf-beetle. This is a myrmicophilous species, inhabiting the ants’ nests, and known in Essex only from one other wood apart from the Hockley complex.

Cucumber Spider was a diversion from the insects, while a wild Honeybee nest in a hole high up a dead tree raised our sights temporarily away from the ride-sides in front of us!

Hoverflies were among the most readily encountered insects, some of the more recognizable being Batman and Large Pied Hoverfly …

It was especially good to find several Orange-belted Hoverflies Volucella inflata: nationally scarce and very scattered in Essex, this is associated with the best ancient woods, but seems not to have been recorded here before.

A Stripe-legged Robber-fly enjoyed its lunch as we watched…

Moving onto the true bugs, Box-bugs and Closterotomus trivialis have both colonised Essex on the past two decades …

… and in response to the leader’s challenge to the Naturetrek group, the sharpest of sharp eyes evetually came across something I have always wanted to see, Cow-wheat Shield-bug. Sorry for the awful photo (put it down to the deep gloom, stair-rod rain at the time, and my disbelief and excitement), but its white border and central wing-spot can clearly be seen. Again nationally scarce, this has been recorded in Essex only from this woodland complex, since 2009, and only rather sporadically. A great find!

And finally to beetles, including a typical motley selection …

… but what for me was possibly the sighting of the day, better than 600 wood-sprites or a long-awaited shield-bug first, a Hazel Leaf-roller Weevil. Not only is this rare in Essex (the Essex Field Club map shows only a couple of spots, both in the extreme south, neither at Hockley – although it seems to omit a record we made in Wivenhoe a few years ago, so that might be out of date) it was also doing what it says on the tin – she was perforating the Hazel leaf in order to roll it up as protection for her eggs. Sometimes I feel we spend too much time looking at the bigger picture, chasing after bigger and better, that we overlook the wonderful intricacies of the natural world right in front of a our very noses.