Bee Orchids

Yesterday, a nice sunny day at last, I had my first look for White Letter Hairstreak butterflies at Torfield. The bramble flowers are just coming out and this is a real sun-trap, but there were no Hairstreaks, or indeed any butterflies of any kind. [In fact I was out and about all day and saw only I butterfly: a distant White at the Stade]

After that I dropped into Hastings Country Park Nature Reserve, to see if I could find the Bee Orchids at Horseshoe Car Park , not far from the Visitor Centre., as posted by Andy Phillips on June 10. In amongst a spectacular carpet of Birds Foot Trefoil- how nice it is to see some colour  in our grass dominated landscapes- I found several spikes of this impressive Orchid.

I was particularly pleased to see these as the only local ones I knew of , at Cliff End, have been buried under  spoil generated by the construction of  two houses…

There were also several flower spikes of Yellow Rattle, just “going over ”

 

Bee Orchids at Hastings Country Park NR

 

The Big Butterfly Count

Speckled Wood HCPNR

Butterfly Conservation are running the “Big Butterfly Count” again this year-see their website. The counts run till July 31 and are easy to do, requiring 15 minutes of observation in one place , then on-line data entry. You can view all the results for any area on a map on-line.
On doing this yesterday, we noticed there were no entries for Hastings Country Park, just some for Fairlight, Torfield and Hastings. It being quite a nice day, we decided to do a series of these 15 minute counts between the Visitor Centre and Ecclesbourne Meadow; 5 in all.
You can see the results on-line by clicking on the butterfly symbols, but we recorded 10 species, of which the commonest was Gatekeeper, with 43 counted, 30 of these at one site by Ecclesbourne Meadow. This sampling method recorded all of the butterfly species that we saw on our walk.
Why not have a go and put more symbols on the map from our area- as I write this 8178 counts have been submitted

Some Recent Records

Here are some superb photos from C.Rayz flickr stream. Crystal does so much natural history she has very little time to post on wildhastings so I thought I would catch you all up with some of the wildlife she has recorded recently.

Golden-ringed dragonfly is very rarely recorded in Hastings. An excellent find.

Purple hairstreaks are probably widespread and common throughout Hastings but are hard to track down. Seems to be a good year for them with other records coming from Summerfields Wood Nature Reserve.

Scarlet tiger a new species for Hastings.

Sitticus pubescens (8-spot Jumping Spider). A jumping spider found in similar habitat to the more familiar zebra jumping Spider Salticus scenicus, but a lot more scarce.

To see more of Crystals photos go to C.Rayz flickr stream.

Butterflies at Torfield

White Letter Hairstreak Torfield

Following Sharon’s recent sighting of White Letter Hairstreaks, I paid another visit to Torfield yesterday morning. It was a calm and sunny morning, I arrived at 9.30 and after about 30 minutes searching the brambles, found one Hairstreak. This was feeding on bramble flowers, and I was pleased to find 2 more, 1 on bramble and 1 on ragwort.
This was of special significance to me as in a previous life I managed the RSPB reserve at Northward Hill, where there was a large colony of these butterflies-I saw up to 300 a day at their peak in the 1980’s. Remarkably, Torfield becomes only the second place on the planet I have seen this species !
Also present were a few Holly Blues, Speckled Woods, Red Admirals and Meadow Browns, a Gatekeeper and a Tree Bumblebee.
I also checked the area of elm/bramble behind All Saints church, no Hairstreaks but a similar range of species, plus a Comma.

Butterfly checklist for Hastings

By popular demand I’ve added a butterfly checklist for Hastings. I will add links to photographs at a later date. If you would like to add any species to any wildhastings species list please include a comment with links to photographs, records and supporting information.

Butterfly checklist for Hastings & St. Leonards

Rambling through the park

An early morning walk from Fairlight to Hastings yesterday, primarily in search of birds, turned into a general nature ramble, with a great deal of interest encountered.

Birds were in fact pretty good, with 9 Crossbills dropping into Warren Glen, a close circling Peregrine. a singing male Dartford Warbler accompanied by another bird, looking good for a nesting pair, and again a singing Cettis Warbler in Ecclesbourne Glan, apparently a territorial male.

The early morning sun shines nicely on Brakey Bank [west side of Warren Glen] and I usually linger here, looking for interesting insects. The photos show a selection of these: A “Wood Wasp” which I havent as yet been able to identify [the long prong is an ovipositor used for laying eggs in wood, not a sting !], the common beetle Cantharis fusca which is abundant in the  Country park at present, it is related to the familiar Soldier Beetle; and the very smart bug Miris striatus, which I first encountered near Fairlight a couple of weeks ago. 

Easier to identify were butterflies, a couple of very fresh Red Admirals, a Small Tortoiseshell and a bright Painted Lady.  But the highlight of the walk for me was an Adder sunning itself on the steps in Ecclesbourne Glen. I know these are seen in the Country Park, but this was a first for me, in fact the first I’ve seen anywhere for 5 years.