Blue House Farm

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Blue House Farm was bought by Essex Wildlife Trust in 1998 with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund and many other donors. Most of the farm was originally saltmarsh until seawalls were constructed to capture land from the sea. It was then used as grazing pasture, this practice continuing today. Some of the higher, drier fields were used for crops but have now reverted to grassland.

Its wildlife is internationally important, particularly overwintering birds and also coastal plants and insects. It is a working farm, managed by maintaining high water levels and balancing good livestock farming with good conservation practice.

The flat fields between the farmhouse and the seawall are used in winter as a feeding ground by brent geese. Often more than 2,000 geese are seen, grazing on the short turf. Throughout the year brown hares are abundant across the farm but are most easily seen on these fields where cover is scarce. Skylarks also thrive here, particularly in the hay fields where they nest.

The deep water in the fleets attracts diving birds including tufted duck and little grebe. Our smallest duck, the teal, and our largest, the shelduck, are both commonly seen here. At high tide wading birds move in from the mudflats beyond the sea wall.

Most of the pasture has never been ploughed and retains the features of the original saltmarsh, such as winding creeks and countless hollows and bumps often topped with the large anthills of the meadow ant. The creeks and ditches are important habitats for rare water beetles and other insects like the hairy dragonfly and scarce emerald damselfly. Those with thick vegetation support water voles and may in time again give shelter to otters, known to have lived here until at least 1963.

The marshy fields attract wading birds such as redshank, curlew and snipe to feed. Fifty acres near the railway are flooded every winter, attracting overwintering wildfowl and waders and particularly wigeon and teal. As water levels drop in spring, bare mud rich in insects is exposed. Lapwing and redshank chicks eat insects and this has brought breeding lapwing and redshank back on to the farm.

The former arable is now grazed and supports breeding yellow wagtails and corn buntings, plus the occasional grey partridge.

The saltmarsh and intertidal mud between seawall and river provide abundant food for wading birds such as oystercatcher and black-tailed godwit. In the river itself you will often see red-breasted merganser and cormorant and occasionally common seal, feeding on the rich marine life of the estuary.