RXwildlife Sightings

If you have been growing Marshmallow plants from seed collected at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve it is now time to be thinking of returning them so that they can be planted out… There will be 2 collection times at Rye Harbour car park - Tuesday 7th Sept 9-10am or Saturday 11th Sept 10-11am, or you can bring them to Lime Kiln Cottage by arrangement. We have already recieved about 300 plants and we took the opportunity of some wet weather to get them planted. A big thank-you to all who have tried.

Desite the cold weather overnight, the good run on migrant moths continued this morning with The Vestal (Rhodometra sacraria). This species breeds in southern Europe and North Africa, and turns up irregularly in Britain as a migrant, sometimes in large numbers (the last one at Lime Kiln was in 2006).

Vestal (Rhodometra sacraria)

Two weeks ago I found a shrill carder bee Bombus sylvarum on the Dungeness RSPB reserve, and as it was the first British specimen of this bee I have seen I took a voucher specimen.  This might seem an odd practice for someone always banging on about bee conservation, and I admit to feeling guilty afterwards.  I’m glad I did though, for two reasons.

The following week several similar, though rather worn looking bees were observed in the same area.  Closer examination with Geoff Allen and Nikki Gamans revealed that they were a different species, a type of flower bee Anthophora furcata (thanks to Dave Walker for the following photo).

These insects were confusing Read the rest of this entry »

Sunday 22nd August 2010. Arrived around 7am,and went to Pett Pools, but not much to be seen there, so I never took much time to head off to Carter Flood, where I spent the rest of the morning, sheltering from the heavy rain showers and bird watching of course! The water level was a bit low but the waders seem to like it with 4 Wood Sand,6Green Sand,12 Greenshank,5 L.R.Plover,1 Ruff, 6 Snipe. Not much else apart from 2 Little Owl, 1 Barn Owl and 1 Spotted Flycatcher and a Treecreeper. Good bird watching Pete.

While I was in Whitstable last week, I saw this KWT Shoresearch leaflet.

It surprised me because I had in fact found a Top Shell for the first time at Pett Level a week or so previously.
I hadn’t been thinking straight however and because
a)I’d seen them mostly in collections brought back by children from W Country holidays and
b) it was at the top of the beach, I unthinkingly dismissed it as part of a discarded collection.
I didn’t even keep it to check the exact species.

A cautionary tale………….

For the last month the Treasury has been asking the public for their views on how the UK Government spends its money. They will now continue to review the budgets of each department right up until the final announcement on 20 October. There is still have time to prevent cuts that may cause permanent damage to our wildlife and countryside. Click here to follow the RSPB campaign.
For background information read RSPB’s Mark Avery’s blog.

A great taste of early autumn weather this morning, grey, low cloud, drizzle and a strong wind, (= no people), and I must say I enjoyed every bit of it. Avian highlights were not thin on the ground either, a group of 62 Knot most in summer plumage feeding along the shore was a nice find as was 23 Grey Plover again in summer plumage. Additional interest was provided by a Great Skua lingering around the low water tide line and 2 Arctic Skua roosting on the higher sand banks further up the shore, a group of 25 Sand Martins were also there flying low across the sand against the wind, but getting nowhere. 

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)