Essex wildlife : 1st May 2016

Bank Holiday weekend, so visited Munnings Art Museum and Garden Cafe in Dedham, mainly for the Cafe and the Gardens, as we’ve visited the Art Museum before (all are very good and well worth a visit).
 
Settled onto an outside table at the cafe, daughter was most excited about seeing the ponies again:
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Entertained for a while by jackdaws picking up horse-hair for nest-lining:
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Then a buzzard flew over but I was too engrossed in stealing some of my daughter’s cream tea to catch even a half-decent photo.
 
Finally a mistle thrush started quartering the field, stopping, listening, digging, and generally collecting a goodly supply of worms for its nestlings:
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A wood pigeon feather caught my eye as we wandered round the gardens near the amazing lime tree:
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Then later, while driving over to SeaPets to buy Daphnia for our goldfish – Michael (Fish) and Sam – I spotted this distant anvil which was probably dumping rain on far-away Braintree, but it just sort of smeared and dissipated:
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The waste ground where I pulled over had a few nice things too – pale version of red campion, and bluebell (the bluebells are currently creating a gorgeous blue mist over the floor of High Woods, Colchester, the woods on the train line as it runs just to the west of Colchester, and the woods just to the east of Shenfield:
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Spring…!!!

Author: Richard Lindsay

Having worked for 20 years in the UK statutory nature conservation agencies as Peatland Specialist in the Chief Scientist Team, I then moved to the University of East London where I ran the nature conservation degrees for several years. Now I mainly undertake research and support peatland conservation activities, including the IUCN UK Peatland Programme, within UEL's Sustainability Research Institute. I also paint.

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