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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The reserve’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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A recent study has found that the best kind of camouflage, out there in the wildwood, is pretending to be an inanimate object.
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By the end of the summer, the workers in a wasp nest will have finished raising and feeding the new queen larvae. The larvae have spun caps over their cells and begun the process of pupation. This indicates a change for the nest.
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Unlike common wasps, honey bees (Apis mellifera) don’t die at the end of the summer. The hive stores enough food for the queen and the workers to survive through the winter.
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Clive Knight has finally found the European hornets’ nest we always knew was somewhere in the reserve and sent us this charming picture.
Although we haven’t yet found a nest, there are always European hornets working somewhere in the reserve. Here is an astonishing video of hornets in flight.
Video by nature photographer, Lothar Lenz, published by Caters Clips.
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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Another new identification for the reserve; a green nettle weevil (Phyllobius pomaceus) reported in May this year by Charles Land.
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Occasionally, we delve into our species lists for a closer look at some of the reserve’s more unobtrusive and less fluffy residents. Today it’s the turn of the golden-bloomed longhorn beetle (Agapanthia villosoviridescens), first identified and photographed by our wildlife photographer, Simon Knight, in the summer of 2020.
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This fluffy bee is Bombas hypnorum, a tree bumblebee, photographed yesterday in the reserve by Clive Knight.
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This is an ichneumon wasp feeding on hogweed near Lambrok Stream.
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This post was first published in July 2018
This is a garden bumble bee (Bombus hortorum) collecting nectar in a spear thistle flower at the edge of the large pond.
These photographs were taken by the late DKG in July of 2018
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According the the Countryside Charity CPRE, light pollution is falling, dropping sharply during the pandemic lockdowns and continuing to fall as the cost of electricity soars. This is good news!
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This post was first published in June 2019
A queen wasp (Vespula vulgaris) in the hedge in Sleepers Field.
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by Simon Knight
The weekend of May 21st and 22nd was pretty special for me in the reserve.
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This is a fig gall on an elm leaf in the hedge between Sleepers and Cornfield. It is caused by Tetraneura ulmi, an elm-grass root aphid with a very complicated and quite astonishing life cycle.
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The female small tortoiseshell butterfly lays her eggs on nettles. Every year there are small tortoiseshell caterpillars somewhere among the nettles next to the path as you walk up the hill through Simpson’s Field.
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The warm weather has woken up the reserve’s invertebrate inhabitants and set them about their business. Here are half a dozen that the Friends have met and photographed this week.
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Clive Knight has discovered and photographed a new species of fly in the reserve. He writes:
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by Simon Knight
There’s not a huge amount of easy-to-spot insect life at the moment. There will be the odd butterfly or two about: speckled wood, peacock, brimstone, small white, comma, green-veined white and holly blue. I managed to photograph this perfect male green-veined white in the picnic area whilst deliberating over whether to continue to feed the birds in the picnic area.
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Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 