A Good Day for Grasshoppers

It was my turn to be on site on Saturday again and after dealing with some office work I took advantage of the good weather to have a look for some insects. I used to get out occasionally to do a bit of wildlife recording like this, adding to the reserve species list, but somehow time to do this has ebbed away over the years. It was a real treat to spend a while just looking at things.

I was rewarded with a good selection of grasshoppers including lots of the tiny mottled grasshopper.

mottled grasshopper

I then had a real stroke of luck and found a new species for the reserve, perhaps not an entirely unexpected one, as it is common in the New Forest, but something I had looked for previously and failed to find. It was a very smart woodland grasshopper, one of my favourite species, with a black and red body and brilliant white palps, which unfortunately this picture does not show.

woodland grasshopper

The lichen heath used to have a string population of the bee wolf, a species of wasp that preys on bees as large as itself. As the heath has slowly vegetated there are fewer sandy patches, where they make their burrows, so now there are many fewer, but they are not all gone.

bee wolf lair

Other species I came across included another tumbling flower beetle, although I have yet to identify this one, there were several of them on this one tansy plant.

tumbling flower beetle on tansy

Apart from a good showing of insects the reserve was quiet, despite being warm there was a distinctly autumnal feel to things. I could find no little ringed plover around the shores of Ibsley Water, so perhaps they have started their trip south. The swift have certainly done so, I saw only two all day. The common tern have also almost all gone, just one family seems to remain.

I will end with one last insect, my first southern hawker of the year, not a great picture, despite getting quite close to it.

southern hawker

Advertisement