Was reading about the big butterfly count for this year and was reminded I had a bit of butterfly hunting left over from last year.
The White Admiral is found in very few sites in Essex, until the mid-90s it was reputedly only to be found in one. This was where I was heading, Stour Wood. It is near the River Stour of couse, but not as close as Copperas Wood, which is close by.
Copperas Wood is worth a mention as the treeline goes right down to saltmarsh. I believe this is the only such instance in Essex. This is prime bird watching territory, which I guess will be on my list of things to know more about. (image of the destruction)
Back to the butterfly.
I have left it a bit late for seeing the white admiral, mid-June into July is primetime. Given the alternative was waiting till next year it seemed worth the effort.
The White Admiral is not a rare butterfly but numbers are declining and its a high priority for butterfly conservation. Spotting one in a rare location is more fun than spotting them where they comparatively abound.
Also breaking in a new pair of boots, so tree gazing and butterfly spotting seem suitable activities. Modern boots don't need the sort of breaking in period of old but it is still a good idea to not destroy your feet as they get used to boots.
Driving down I spotted a cherry tree with a lot of fruit laying underneath it. I made a mental note to visit my favourite cherry picking haunts.
Before I actually got to the wood, I stumbled on a small meadow which seemed to be filled with Holly Blue butterflies. So many one hung around obligingly to be photographed. Maybe they had just hatched out into the sunshine and getting their bearings. I marked it as a good omen.
The walk begins at Ramsey. There is a carpark at Stour Wood but the walking in is part of the deal.
Ramsey windmill blades loom from behind a bush which would never have existed when it was working. The mill has not ground flour for a long time, but it still looks out over the fields whose crops it must have once milled.
Image via Wikipedia
The windmill was moved from its original location in Woodbridge to its new location in 1842. A working mill till World War Two, it fell into dis-use and was saved by volunteers in 1974 at which point it was a collapsing derelict.
The signpost pointing out the long distance footpath, The Essex Way sported a new style of flash for the walk. Good to see if it represents an overall maintenance program of the walk but I cannot help thinking replacing everlasting plastic flashes is a regular waste.
Going off The Essex Way, heading west, the impressive chimneys of Roydon Hall come into view. It is marked in gothic script on the OS, non-roman. What stands there now is a late 16th century building but the site goes further back than that. It stands in isolation.
Onwards to Stour Wood which covers over 130 acres and is actively managed, it was coppiced until the 1970's and is being done so again. It enters the written record as being coppiced in the mid-1600s. As with all things there are people willing to say the Sweet Chestnuts date all the way back to their introduction by the Romans.
The fact the wood is named after the river rather than a landowner suggests age and sweet woodruff along with other plant indicators underline this. There do not seem to be trees of any massive age within it that I am aware of though, although coppice is not giving away its age easily..
There are a good many well defined footpaths through the wood along with many rather more ad-hoc looking affairs. The northern edge of the wood is bounded by the railway line which runs on an embankment at near canopy height. Very odd to hear a train go past high above your head. The river is a little beyond that.
On my walk I was pleased to see one of the few surviving small leaf limes which remain in the wood. Squirrels were having a field day among the Hazel trees. I eye the hazelnuts hoping a few will be left for me when they are ready.
One tree on the edge of the wood was bursting with activity and remained so when I went back to it a couple of hours later. The birdsong gave the hint and then i saw them silhouetted, tiny little birds smaller than the leaves with the distinctive long tail, the long tailed tit.
Good too see them, not rare, but I rarely see them because they are so damn small. These birds made it into the top 10 garden birds in 2009 but chilly winters can kill 90%, it was a cold winter, they did not make the top 10 in 2010.
Image via Wikipedia
Many trees lay where they had fallen in the great storm of 1987, shooting up new growth from their horizontal rest. In nearby Copperas Wood 25 of the 34 acres were flattened that night. It was a shocking destruction I remember well. Trees are not easily destroyed though as evidenced from the coppiced hornbeam sprouting from stumps cut to within a few inches from the ground. Apparently regularly coppicing gives a tree an almost limitless lifespan. This is not a wood tidied to within an inch of sterility, dead trees exist, lots gets to live in it.
Humanity was present in the wood but huddled around the car park for the most part, noisy. Within the wood it was easy enough to forget the world outside.
Butterflies were not exactly in abundance, I saw very few and was giving up hope of spotting the White Admiral when sitting in splendid isolation I saw exactly what I sort. Sure it was a bit ragged and somewhat dull but it was The White Admiral and I was very pleased to see it. I wondered if I might see another having seen one but I did not.
Image via Wikipedia
I explored happily for a few more hours and took a circular route back following The Essex Way back out to my start point, it leads me out of Stour Wood along the banks of the river itself and into Copperas Wood. The bushes along the riverbank had many sloes in them, testament to how vile they are to it. Some blackberries looked edible but barely were.
Copperas Wood had a last little surprise for me with a litter of small crab apples just as I was leaving it. They looked the very definition of bitter.
On walking back to the car at Ramsey unaccompanied singing was coming from the spartan Weslyn chapel by the footpath. Quite a congregation, it sounded tuneless and heartfelt and put a smile on my face, it was good to hear. The end of a pleasant five or six hours.
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