Message from Clive to FoSCP and Ian : Mon 15/07/2024 11:54
Quiet on the reserve today with heavy showers. But as I was walking through one of the cut-through paths. I noticed these flowers. It comes up as Enchanters Nightshade on my recogniser app. If that is so, I understand that it is common but I had not seen it here before.
Clive
On Tuesday, a member of FoSCP saw a waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus) in the copse at the bottom of Kestrel Field. He didn’t get a picture and there was nobody to confirm the sighting so it hasn’t been added to our species lists yet. If you have seen it, or photographed it, please contact us.
Continue reading “Waxwing”
This week’s work party began with an official heat warning from the Countryside Team:
Continue reading
Ian’s on a roll: two more insects for our invertebrates list, a marsh damsel bug (Nabis limbatus) and a dock bug (Coreus marginatus).
[1] marsh damsel bug [2] dock bug [header image] marsh damsel bug on fleabane by Ian Bushell
Message from Emma Kilroy-Grant to FoSCP 22/08/2023:
Walking in Southwick Country Park nature reserve this morning, I came across this mammoth caterpillar on the path. I re-located it into the hedge and Googled it to find it is an African Death’s Head Hawkmoth!!
After the triumph of the silver washed fritillary, Max is back with a possible sighting and a photograph of another new species for our lists: a female pied flycatcher.
Continue reading
Two new insect species from Clive Knight: a flesh fly identified by Ian Bushell, our entomologist, as Sarcophaga carnaria, and a day-flying moth, Camptogramma bilineata, called yellow shell for the beautful striped pattern on its wings.
Continue reading “Two new species”
An ashy mining bee (Andrena cineraria) seen yesterday in the reserve, and photographed by Clive Knight. This is a female with two distinct bands of grey hairs across her thorax and a black, shiny abdomen.
Continue reading
A marsh snipefly (Rhagio tringarius), a new species for our lists, spotted in the reserve on Wednesday by Ian Bushell.
Continue reading “Another new species”
Winter cress (Barbarea vulgaris) is another of the wildflowers first identified and recorded in the reserve by Country Recorder Richard Aisbitt when he visited last summer. It isn’t a rare species or even particularly unusual; it’s just one of those plants that are so commonplace that nobody bothers to look at it or ask what it is.
Continue reading
Here is another of the plants first identified in the reserve by County Recorder Richard Aisbitt when he visited us this summer: broad buckler-fern, Dryopteris dilatata.
Continue reading
In the summer, County Recorder Richard Aisbitt identified meadow foxtail (Alopecurus pratensis) in our fields, a tall grass with a furry flower head that looks like a fox’s brush: hence its name.
Continue reading
When the County Recorder for Flowering Plants, Richard Aisbitt, visited the reserve in May, he found two different species of ragwort: common ragwort (Jacobaea vulgaris) and hoary ragwort (Jacobaea erucifolia).
Continue reading “Extra ragwort”
Moschatel (Adoxa moschatellina) is a new addition to our species lists, reported in May this year by County Recorder, Richard Aisbitt.
Continue reading
by Simon Knight
The weekend of May 21st and 22nd was pretty special for me in the reserve.
Continue reading
Clive Knight has discovered and photographed a new species of fly in the reserve. He writes:
Continue reading “New species”
Anemone blanda…
…found and photographed in the reserve last week. Anemone blanda isn’t a native species so this is a garden escape but it naturalises easily in the partial shade of woodland edges and our bees will love it. Let’s make it welcome.
By Ian Bushell
This is a Great Pied Hoverfly (Volucella pellucens) so named for its black and white colouring. It is a new species for our lists, seen and photographed in the reserve on Tuesday, July 13th.
Continue reading “Great Pied Hoverfly”
Yesterday, while surveying pollinator networks in the reserve, Ian Bushell discovered a colony of bright pink pyramidal orchids (Anacamptis pyramidalis), an important new species for the reserve.
Continue reading
Jason Pickard photographed this specimen on Wednesday in The Race, in the south facing hedge among the tall grass there. Perhaps we have the makings of a colony.
Continue reading “and there’s more….”
A large colourful female wasp spider found yesterday by Ian Bushell in the set-aside at the top of Kestrel Field.
Continue reading
On the evening of July 16th, Ian Bushell and lepidopterist, Hugo Brooke set up moth traps at the top of Village Green. You may have seen them and wondered what they were doing.
Continue reading
Wed 15/07/2020 18:48; mail and pictures from Clive Knight
Walking round this afternoon spotted these. The first two pics are of a plant in Sleepers Field – no idea what it is and the bottom pic I found in the pathway through the woods at the top of Village Green. Both single plants.
Sent from my iPhone
A marmalade hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus) feeding on the nectar of a bramble flower. This is a new species for our lists, despite its ubiquity.
The marmalade fly gets its name from its colour, and its thin cut/thick cut dark stripes, just like marmalade.
Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 