Below a random selection of 'stuff' during late spring and the start of a (so far) very hot summer, with a dearth of bees, wasps, diptera, butterflies etc.
My mothing so far this year is summarised as 2/78/28 with highlights of NfG/T Cream-spot Tiger and Green Oak Tortrix; the later being caught by their dozens in better placed coastal trapping sites.
And so it was a nice surprise to arrive early at PB yesterday in an attempt to avoid the worst of the heat to find Paula starting to clear a trap for a visiting school party. Most of the moths (100-200 of 50+ species) were, unsurprisingly, new for the year with the usual favourites of Elephant ( first of the big Es) Hawkmoth, Small Elephant and Poplar Hawkmoths, Buff-tip, Pebble Prominent, Cinnabar, Pale Tussock etc etc.
The temperature by now ensured that moths were wide awake and pinging out of the trap; micros were left unidentified. Being there four hours earlier would have been nice!!
Further out on the reserve a long gabfest with the Wednesday crew whilst watching a Great White Egret and one of the eagles (big Es two and three!); the latter trying to rob a kite. Once again I managed to miss one or two of the 'plastic' storks by about a minute!!
Nightingales were good value greeting me on arrival in the road as I crossed the speed hump and later, presumably the same bird, attending to a recently fledged juvenile adjacent to the art trail signage. Hobby was the only other notable species.
This Large Skipper was only the second this summer and only Meadow Browns amongst a handful of butterfly species being in double digit figures.
A Downy Emerald, sadly not MJ's Brilliant Emerald from a few weeks back, was patrolling the dipping ponds.
Apart from audible Field Crickets, lots of Little Flower Bees and several Cerceris rybiensis other inverts were hard to come by.
So, below:-
Large Skipper, Great White Egret, Dark Arches, Green Oak Tortix, Fairy-ring Longhorn Beetle (Pseudovodinia livida), Five-spot Burnet Moth, Bee Orchid, Wasp Beetle (Clytus arietis), Volucella zonaria, Cardinal Beetle (Pyrochroa serraticornis), Ornate Brigadier (Odontomyia ornata), Volucella bombylans, Briony Mining Bee (Andrena florea), Rhagium bifasciatum, Grass Snake, Dotted Beefly (Bombylius discolor), White Helleborine, Shelduck with five of ten ducklings on a very flat sea at Hill Head, Rutpela maculata, Nightingale by Art Trail signage.
And a further random list of stuff.
Plants
Common Spotted Orchid
Southern March Orchid
Early Purple Orchid
Pyramidal Orchid
Rosy garlic
Mouse-ear Hawkweed
Viper's Bugloss
Hedge Mustard
Red Clover
Wild Privet
Hairy Plantain
Bird's Foot Trefoil
Diptera
Tachina fera, Gymnosoma rotundatum, Musca autumnalis, Phania funesta
Bees
Grey-backed Mining Bee (Andrena vaga), Andrena chrysosceles,
Nomada goodeniana, Nomada fabricius, Nomada flava
Osmia bicolor, Osmia caerulescens, Osmia bicornis
Sphecodes spp
Wasps
Ectemnius app, Ancistroceros app, Cerceris rybiensis, Ammophila spp
Birds
Grasshopper Warbler
Ring-necked Duck
Sparrowhawk
