RXwildlife Sightings

Stinking hawk’s-beards were introduced to the garden of a property on Dungeness in 2007, sowing them on a lawn growing on soil-capped shingle. The following notes are based on observations by Dave Bunney and Owen Leyshon, with a few observations of my own. The photo below shows the first generation of self sown plants, which germinated in 2008, and flowered this summer. 34 plants were recorded here this year. The photograph shows the seed heads, some closed, with dense white seed heads, others open showing the “dandelion clock” and two thirds of the way down the right-hand edge of the picture a star-shaped seed-head that has lost most of it’s seed-heads.

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There were plenty of migrants passing through today including sand martins, yellow wagtails, wheatears and whinchats. The great white egret and red-backed shrike, however, show no signs of moving on, much to the delight of our human visitors! Garganey, hobby, wood sandpiper, black-tailed godwit and kingfisher were also of note. photos by David Featherbe

Western Conifer Seed Bugs are starting to turn up again, interestingly around the same time as last year.

One was found in a garden in Hastings on the 24th August and Derek Crawley had three in his moth trap last night in Bexhill. Also 2 were found at Dungeness Observatory, 1 at Tenterden in a moth trap, 1 at Hastings and 1 at Pagham on Tuesday.

This insect is native to north america and was introduced into Italy within timber. It has since colonised and spread throughout Europe reaching the south coast in numbers last year. Last year the first was recorded on the 30th August and records continued until the end of October. The records last year were considered to be due to natural immigration from the population that has colonised Europe.

So keep your eye out for this impressive insect!

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