RXwildlife Sightings

A quick stop at Scotney Gravel Pit this afternoon to look for the 2 Buff-breasted Sandpipers that have been around for a while quickly found one on the East Sussex side, then two… then THREE. They gave great close views with a little bit of flying around.
Also there were 1500 Golden Plover and a Reeve. Offshore at Dungeness were several Little Gulls, Common, Sandwich, Arctic and Black Terns and a few distant Arctic Skua and Gannets. Back at East Guldeford there were at least 4 Whinchat. And the weather was warm, dry and sunny!

There were more unusual sightings today with two long-tailed skuas seen flying over the ARC pit this morning and an Arctic skua near Makepeace hide. The great white egret also put in a brief appearance on Burrowes pit before returning to Denge Marsh and the red-breasted mergansers were still on the ARC site. Ten black-tailed godwits, two greenshanks and three black terns were also at the ARC site, a few swallows passed through first thing and a hobby flew over mid-morning.

Just to show that the insect interest for the season is not over yet, this female Speckled Bush-cricket (Leptophyes punctatissima) was found outside Lime Kiln Cottage today. This is one of those species of bush-cricket where the adults are wingless (or at least reduced to a pair of small flaps behind the top of the thorax in this case). The blade-like structure at the end of the abdomen is an ovipositor, used for inserting eggs into crevices in tree-bark.

Female Speckled Bush-cricket