The reserve’s’s ivy flowers between September and November; each plant’s flowering season is quite short but a succession of plants flowers all through the autumn. The flowers are small, green and yellow, and so insignificant-looking that many people don’t realise that that they are flowers at all.
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As its name implies, the speckled wood (Pararge aegeriais) is a woodland species.
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Most of our swifts have already left for their long winter sojourn in warmer climates.
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In the UK, the populations of our more common butterflies have fallen by 46% in the last 50 years while the rarer species have declined by 77%. We have lost 60% of our flying insects in just 20 years. We have entirely lost 13 species of our native bees since the 1970s and fully expect more to follow.
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ONE: crab apples trees are an ancient symbol of fertility, associated with love and marriage.
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There are six species of social wasp that are native to Britain and this is a good time of year to identify them.
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Only eleven of our fifty seven native species of butterfly overwinter as a chrysalis and we have six of them on our species lists.
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Small coppers (Lycaena phlaeas) are one of the reserve’s late summer regulars. They favour ragwort and creeping thistles, of which we have plenty: keep an eye open for this bright and colourful butterfly.
Header image taken in the reserve by Clive Knight
After the breeding season is over, the reserve’s birds, like this untidy robin. moult.
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Ian has sent this beautiful photograph of a male emperor dragonfly (Anax imperator) perching among vegetation bordering one of the wetland scrapes in Lambrok Meadow.
While we have known for several years that emperors visit the reserve, we haven’t been sure that they were breeding here. But below is another of Ian’s pictures, this time of a female emperor laying eggs in one of our ponds.
Images taken in the reserve by Ian Bushell
Coal tits (Periparus ater) are shy, fast-moving, acrobatic little birds that weigh hardly more than a 50p piece. They don’t sit still for long, which makes them hard to identify among the reserve’s busy population of similar Paridae.
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We have European hornets (Vespa crabro), common wasps (Vespa vulgaris) and German wasps (Vespa Germanica), all resident in the reserve. Here is a fascinating video of European hornets preying on wasps.
The clouded yellow (Colias croceus) is an infrequent visitor to the reserve, seen only twice in the last decade.
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Somebody asks this every year in the school holidays, as they wave wasps away from their picnic or soothe a painful sting with a vinegar poultice.
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Cinnabar moth
Have you found striped yellow and black caterpillars feeding on ragwort? These are the larvae of a cinnabar moth (Tyria jacobaeae), and their striped football jerseys are a danger signal.
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We are already a week into 2024’s Big Butterfly Count, Butterfly Conservation‘s annual call for citizen scientists to help them survey the UK’s butterflies.
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Bees buzz in two different ways.
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The distinctive marbled white (Melanargia galathea) is common and widespread in southern England. At this time of year it chooses unimproved meadow grassland, showing a preference for purple flowers such as wild marjoram, thistles, knapweeds and red clover. The caterpillars feed on grasses particularly red fescue.
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Above is a picture is of Caltha palustris flowering in Lambrok Stream, a plant I have always called marsh marigold but that Ian calls kingcup. Who is right?
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In July, our song thrushes are still singing, usually from a high perch and often after rain.
Nobody tells a tale quite as well as David Attenborough:
Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 