RXwildlife Sightings

A number of plants have the suffix bane at the end of their name.  I wrote about henbane last week, this week it is another unrelated species, fleabane Pulicaria dysenterica. In the past I was used to seeing this species on ditch banks bordering arable fields.  It is a species that does not thrive with regular grazing, and currently it is abundant in some of the fields on the RSPB reserve that have been left ungrazed over the past 10 summers to favour bumblebees.

The fields look pretty with this bright yellow flower.  A few years back however, Read the rest of this entry »

Last week saw the completion of the 10th annual round of monitoring of bumblebee numbers on timed walks, a long data set that started when we were experimenting with raising numbers of Biodiversity Action Plan bumblebees.  This may be the end of this monitoring for reasons I reveal in a later post.

 As ever the data need interpreting with care, but they do seem to show that 2011 was a lousy summer for bumblebees at Dungeness.

This does not mean there is anything wrong with the management on the RSPB reserve however, rather I think the climate was to blame.  Many of the Read the rest of this entry »