RXwildlife Sightings

While walking the other day, a light emerald moth flew past and landed in the grass nearby. They seem to be quite a restless species, often about in daytime. Why, I wondered, are they such an obvious colour when most of their bretheren are so cryptic. Some lichens, I suppose, do approach this rather aniline colour, but the moth, so far as I know, makes no attempt to find such refuges. Maybe it is a ‘keep away’ signal, but red or yellow usually mean ’stop’ rather than a curious sea geen. Perhaps they hide away under silvery green leaves.
Whatever the reason, it is common enough, so it must be a ’safe’ colour.

Today’s highlight was a black-necked grebe and a pintail at the ARC pits; a good variety of waders including: eight black-tailed godwit, curlew, three grey plover and a little stint were also seen there. 
Denge marsh hide provided good views of greenshank, dunlin and green sandpiper. A turtle dove and a hobby were also reported.

During the last few days the white webs of the Brown-tail Moth have reappeared in bushes of Bramble, Hawthorn and Sea Buckthorn. These webs are made by the very tiny caterpillars that have just hatched and the web will serve as protection during the winter. Now the tiny caterpillars are eating just the surface of the leaves, but in the spring, when the webs warm up and the caterpillars get larger they will eat the whole leaf.

For a close-up of the army of tiny caterpillars on the left leaf… Read the rest of this entry »

I came across two Vapourer moth caterpillars (Orgyia antiqua) on my walk the other day. One of them was in Sedlescombe at TQ785179, and was sitting on a blackthorn leaf. The other was in Battle Great Wood at TQ767162, and was sitting on a bramble leaf. Sometimes the caterpillars are more beautiful than the moths they turn into. The male moths are day flying, while the females are virtually wingless.

Dave Monk

There were 5,404 unique visitors to this website last month.