RXwildlife Sightings

A RXwildlife Flickr Group has been set-up to provide a pool of wildlife and landscape photos & video clips taken within the RXwildlife area. Please join the RXwildlife Photos & Videos Group if you are a Flickr* member and want to include some of your wildlife and landscape pictures of the coast and countryside from Hastings to Dungeness and Romney Marsh.

Some of the best photos in the group will be showcased on the website (with the photographers permission of course).

*(Flickr.com is one of the most popular photo sharing websites on the internet and is acclaimed for the quality of the photographers and photographs on the site, which includes some of the most stunning wildlife and landscape photography you are likely to find on the internet.)

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

A peregrine falcon is being cared for in a wildlife centre after being found shot in East Sussex. The RSPCA said that the young male bird was found by a member of the public near Rye. More on BBC News website.

Despite the gloomy weather today a number of birds have been spotted by some hardy visitors.
The common cranes are still with us and a white winged blacked tern has been spotted over Burrowes pit. Also on the reserve wood sandpiper, ruff and black necked grebes have been sighted.

On most days since late August we have had two cranes visit the Dungeness RSPB reserve, often spending time on islands viewable from the ARC/Hanson hide. A lucky few observers have even witnessed their graceful courtship dances as captured yesterday in this photo by Bob Gomes.

A miserable morning but there were a few wader highlights out from the hide and on the Bittern excavations, 6 Green Sandpiper, 2 Black-tailed Godwit, 2 Greenshank, 7 Snipe and 3 Common Sandpiper. Yesterdays highlights from the same locations included, 3 Ruff, 2 Knot, 12 Dunlin, 7 Green Sandpiper, Greenshank and 2 Little Ringed plover.

In late July 2004 a female Mason wasp, Ancistrocerus parietum repeatedly visited Purple Toadflax plants growing in my small garden in Ore.  I took a series of photographs with my Pentax SLR and have just scanned them. The wasp spent a lot of time ‘malaxating’ the flowers of the Purple toadflax as shown. I wondered whether the insect was making a kind of meat samosa with caterpillar wrapped in petal!  Otherwise the possibility exists that the wasp was extracting some kind of essential oil or other material for lining the nest.  Perhaps I should have collected one or two of the flower stems to study… Whatever the purpose, I am amazed by the complexity and variety of behaviours shown by the hymenoptera.

Andrew Grace by e-mail

While cutting willow at Castle Water yesterday at least two Goat Moth larvae were found in one of the stumps that was cut at ground level. The larval stage of this species can take up to five years, feeding internally on the solid wood of various trees, willow being one of them. When the larva are ready to pupate they leave the host tree in late summer to find a pupation site in soil or rotten wood. It is at this time that they can be found wandering around sometimes across footpaths. This species has only been recorded twice on the reserve as an adult, and the find yesterday is the first evidence of breeding on the reserve.

My garden at Westfield, a few km inland from the sea, has been visited by a female Toadflax Brocade.  This is a Red Data book species that in Britain became virtually confined to the coasts of Sussex and Kent, although it is now doing well again in our area, especially at Hastings.  I first found the single larva on 14th August when it was quite small, feeding on Common Toadflax grown for many years especially to try and attract the moth.  In the photo taken on 1st September, it is now nearly full grown.  Searching for the distinctive larva on either of its two foodplants Purple and Common Toadflax growing near the sea, is one of the best ways of recording the presence of this species. 

Ralph Hobbs by e-mail