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| Goat's Rue |
My local RSPB Group were off to Chafford Gorges Nature Reserve - run by the Essex Wildlife Trust - for our latest Tuesday walk. We did a recce of the area earlier in the year and had a rather damp day, so we hoped for better on this occasion. As a former chalk quarry, the meadow areas are incredibly diverse, and the lakes and woodland provide important habitats for a wide range of animals and birds.
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| Purple Loosestrife |
Today Malcolm and Sally were guiding us around Warren Gorge, the main area near the visitor centre. Several months after our first visit, we were met with a completely different scene with masses of Goat's-Rue covering both the base of the reclaimed pit and the banks around the side of it. An species originally native of the middle east it has spread widely across Europe. We were advised that the sap caused upset stomachs, but on doing some research on the internet, apparently it has been used to stimulate the production of milk in cattle and is also used as a herbal treatment to help stimulate the adrenal glands as a diuretic and to help some diabetics.
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| Sputnik Gall |
As Andrew, the warden explained the history of the reserve hundreds of house martins were feeding in the gorge, taking advantage of the shelter from the breeze where presumably they could find a higher concentration of insects to feed on. Collared dove, blue tit, mute swan, greylag geese, canada geese, coot, great crested grebe, cormorant and mallard were our first few birds.
In the meadows we found purple loosestrife, birds-foot trefoil, docks, and several butterflies, although every time we decided to do a 15 minute count they all disappeared! Ringlet, meadow brown, holly blue and red admiral were those I spotted. We also saw brown hawker, black-tailed skimmer, and emperor dragonfly, with a hobby deciding to join in occasionally.
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| Gray's Gorge |
Swallow and sand martin were in the huge group of house martin, but it took a while to get everyone on to them. In the more wooded area we found whitethroat, blackcap, greenfinch, magpie, two great spotted woodpecker, robin, kestrel, sparrowhawk, grey heron, song thrush and a pheasant.
We took our time carrying out a circuit of the gorge, and ended up back at the visitor centre in time for lunch. Their homemade sponge cake was scrummy.
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| Sarsen Stone |
In the afternoon Malcolm, Sally and I decided to try one of the other gorges and moved on to Grays Gorge a SSSI. Our main hope here was to find Sarsen stones - the large sandstone blocks found on Salisbury Plain and other areas of England and used to make Stonehenge (try Wikipedia for more information) and some orchids. We had a great time trying to find the Sarsen, lying down in the long grass it was beautifully camouflaged.
The orchids also gave us a challenge but we eventually found large numbers of pyramidal and common spotted orchid, round-leaved wintergreen and yellow bird's-nest - a strange plant which is a saprophyte, ie. drawing its nutrients from a tangled root system (said to resemble a bird’s nest) that feeds on decaying vegetable matter in the soil.
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| Yellow Bird's-nest |
Just to complete our list we found a shaded broad-bar moth near the end of the walk.
