RXwildlife Sightings

Emperor and Black-tailed Skimmer are now on the wing at Castle Water. Finding an Emperor female at an early stage of emergence was a bonus, as this species normally emerges during  night and takes its maiden flight at dawn. The ditch north of the hide provided lots of activity with ovipositing  Hairy Hawker and at least five patrolling males, Four-spotted Chaser were also present. Additional interest was finding another site for Parhelophilus versicolor ( pictured below) amonst the Typha stems, up untill last week there was only one record for the reserve in from 1985. 

Emerging Emperor at Castle water this morning

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Numbers of moths in the Lime Kiln trap are picking up slowly, but there were still only 16 species this morning. Looking back to this time last year, on the 3rd June 2009 I had 25 species, and 33 on the 4th, so there is still a bit of a way to go. Most of the catch today was made up of Common Swift (33), with Heart & dart (9) and Shears (3) lagging a long way behind. Highlights were a pristine Elephant Hawk-moth, still a species with the ‘ooh’ factor regardless of how many times I have seen it, a Peppered Moth and best of all in my eyes a Buff-tip, a species which does a pretty good job of mimicing a broken twig!

Buff-tip moth