This is our fourth year of recording the wildlife seen in a small local area.  We chose different times of day for the visits and in order to see waders aimed for a time when the tide left mud exposed in the river.  We recorded each month except that December’s outing was done in early January 2019.  We were lucky on all of our outings to have dry weather except for patches of light drizzle on a couple of occasions. The lake at Creeksea still hasn’t attracted much wildlife and the water crowfoot that flowered there in May & June that we hoped would be an attraction, was cleared. In November 2017 we did see a pair of Mute Swans on it so possibly they remained nearby and are the pair we saw with their 7 cygnets late in 2018.  The extensive tree planting is maturing well.

It was a good year with plenty of birds sighted each month; February saw the second sighting of a Kingfisher and the only month for Teal, the first Cuckoo was heard April, we heard Reed Warblers from April to June but the Cetti’s Warbler was absent, Linnets appeared in May and were present until September, the Brent Geese returned in November and we thought this year the numbers were low.  In all we identified 53 bird species.  This year we recorded 10 species of butterfly, 7 less than last year; they arrived in May and were last seen in August, compared to April & September last year.

Once again it is the identification of flowers that makes our progress slow, as we spend a lot of time discussing them and consulting our books.  85 flower varieties were identified.

Diane Caulkett