RXwildlife Sightings

Over the past week or two I have been recording numbers of bumblebees on timed walks at Dungeness (with Pete Akers), East Guldeford, Rye and Pett Level.  Dungeness has proved to be disappointing this year, with a dramatic decline in the numbers of these insects since last month, possibly because dry conditions have affected the quality of forage.  Highlights have been some of the field margins at Rye and Pett Level, with a strip of hybrid marsh/hedge woundwort producing very large numbers of bumblebees again this year.

This plant at Pett level proved to be particularly attractive to the garden bumblebee Bombus hortorum and the red-tailed bumblebee Bombus lapidarius, but a third specimen of the scarce Read the rest of this entry »

This insect, feeling rather like a limp saggy balloon with a pair of ferocious jaws, is not one of our most beautiful species, but it is probably one of the characteristic insects of the East Sussex/Kent grazing marshes.

It is the larva of a great silver beetle Hydrophilus piceus and was Read the rest of this entry »

The Orache Moth used to be a resident in the east of England until 1915 but is now a rare immigrant. The rather tatty specimen above was caught near Staplecross on the night of the 19th July, but to show what they can look like I have also shown a fresh specimen which was caught in SW France earlier this year. Read the rest of this entry »

This is developing into a good year for migrants on the south coast, with Rye Harbour no exception. The Sussex Emerald a few days ago was a probably a migrant, and today we had another with the capture of a Splendid Brocade (Lacanobia splendens). This is a species which comes from central and southern Europe and turns up occasionally on our shores. This year Phil Jones has had a few at Icklesham and it has been trapped at Portland and a few other south coast sites so having one turn up here was not completely unexpected.

Splendid Brocade