RXwildlife Sightings

Normally you just wouldn’t get a shingle cliff!  The smooth stones slip against each other and do not form a vertical face.  Add a little sand to the mix though and it sets like concrete.  This is what happens when coastal defence engineers use marine aggregate, either material dredged from offshore deposits, or shingle bulldozed up from below the high tide line.  It has sandy silt added to the mix.

What then happens is that when the sand-shingle mix comes under attack from waves chunks fall off the leading edge to form a vertical cliff like this.

All of which Read the rest of this entry »

An Osprey flew west over our garden in Pett at 4.30.
(Not much) more on RXbirdwalks.

Highlight this morning was the migrant micro Cydia amplana (though our recording software comes up with the wonderful English name of Vagrant Piercer). This is another one of those species that has turned up in Britain fairly recently, with the first record in Devon in 1990. Most records have been from south-west England, and as far as I can see this is the first for Rye Harbour, though it did turn up in Icklesham about the same time of year in 2006. The larvae feed inside various nuts such as walnut, hazelnut and acorns and can be something of a pest under certain circumstances.

Vagrant Piercer (Cydia amplana)