RXwildlife Sightings

No sign of any Cattle Egrets leaving the Little Egret roost at Castle Water this morning although 46 Little Egrets left the roost. Highlights from the Beach Reserve included a Barn Owl Hunting at the back of Ternery Pool, Merlin at the River Mouth, 12 Barnacle Geese (presumed feral) in flight over Harbour Farm and 9 Brent Geese on Flat Beach. And finally a rather frosty Wasp Spider was found clinging to the gate post at Lime Kiln Cottage, the picture was taken as it started to thaw out.

Following yesterday’s False Widow sighting, the BBC have also noticed that Exotic species of spiders are making their homes in the UK.… Click Here

I’ve taken to wandering around Lime Kiln at night looking for spiders with a torch, and while this does get some funny looks it also turns up some good things. Last night I found this male False Widow (Steatoda nobilis) near the shop door. Like the Western Conifer Seed Bug mentioned below, this species is an introduction to Britain, arriving from Madeira and the Canaries in shipments of bananas (you may hear this and similar species referred to as ‘Banana spiders’ as a consequence). Andy Philips tells me that this species has spread along the coast from Brighton in recent years, with the first record from Hastings only a couple of weeks ago.

Misty mornings are the time to see just how many spiders are living all around us. A walk around Castle Water this morning showed how every Gorse bush (below) has thriving colonies of spiders as does the grassland and the marshes - everywhere seemed draped in strings of water droplets. Then when the sun burnt through the mist the spiders were at it again, drifting past on their long lengths of silk - ballooning (see here). I came home covered in silk!

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Despite the still cold wind, a search of sheltered spots at Lime Kiln found a range of active invertebrates. The door and window frames and wood piles held several immature Zebra Jumping Spider (below) cruising for prey, while the longer grass held numerous Nursery Web Spider and one or two Crab Spiders, the latter presenting quite a sinister aspect with their long spiny fore legs spead wide in anticipation of some hapless fly. Several hoverflies are on the wing at the moment including the familiar Drone Fly and Marmalade Hoverfly, while something of a surprise was a Common Bee-fly feeding on Polyanthus. As the name suggests, this is the commonest species of Bee-fly in Britain as a whole, though in the Rye Harbour area records of this species are outnumbered by those of the Dotted Bee-fly (see here), nationally a much rarer species.

Further to Chris’s posting about the large jumping spider Marpissa muscosa, I found 7 of them on one gatepost at Castle Water today and was able to watch them closely and get a few photos of their amazing eyes…

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The amazing Wasp Spiders are still showing well in the grass around Lime Kiln Cottage… ask the volunteers if you are passing, but be careful not to damage the webs, or the egg sacs that are now appearing. The egg sacs are within a papery sphere about 25mm diameter.

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While carrying out the regular butterfly and dragonfly counts at Castle Water I came across this large (8mm), rather furry looking jumping spider on a gate post. It is a male Marpissa muscosa, a rare species which has never been recorded from the reserve before. This species is often found on either tree trunks or fence posts, and while it is not obvious from this image, is somewhat flattened allowing it to squeeze into cracks (this particular individual was coaxed out of the crack on the left to take the pic)
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Male Marpissa muscosa

Yesterday while checking out flowers in the Lime Kiln garden, I noticed a very interesting looking soldier-fly feeding on Ox-eye Daisy. My excitement increased when I realised it was probably a Black Colonel (Odontomyia tigrina), a rather rare species which had never been recorded on the reserve before. However, when I looked more closely I realised that it had fallen prey to a crab-spider (Xysticus cristatus), a notorious flower-head ambusher of flies.

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The vegetation in the Lime Kiln Garden is thronging with wolf-spiders carrying their egg-sacs at the moment. The females carry the sacs attached to their spinnerets, moving them from place to place to keep the enclosed eggs at their optimum temperature for development (about 30 centigrade). The urge to carry something is so strong that females will fight over detached sacs and can even be persuaded to carry things like pellets of paper or snail shells if their sac is lost!

Female Pardosa wolf-spider with egg-sac…
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