I found this little sand and shell cliff habitat near the Campsite and I was there for hours there was so much bee and wasp life on there. Several voucher specimens taken so I will keep you posted about when other finds I found there.
This wall is a great habitat, the limestone mortar is a soft material and is often dug out by some types of bee as you can see by the holes in the photo. Red and blue mason bees would nest here along with other bees and wasps.
I saw Blue mason bees , a queen hornet looking for a nesting site , the Pompilidae type of wasp looking and catching its prey and a Sapyga-quinquepunctata wasp which uses Mason bees as their host.
Status (in Britain only)
Not listed in Shirt ( 1987) or in Falk (1991). The scarcity of modern records from some areas suggests there may be a decline at inland localities in England and Wales.
Found in a wide variety of habitats: moorland, sandy areas including low land heaths, clay and sandy woodlands, parkland, limestone and sandstone quarries, limestone grassland, urban areas (gardens), coastal cliffs and heaths, marshes, sand dunes and shingle areas.
Probably univoltine; mainly June to August, sometimes during May and September, and rarely in April.
Small Lepidoptera caterpillars, but also some chrysomelid beetle larvae.
According to Blüthgen (1961) this wasp normally builds its clay cells in hollow spaces (crevices in rocks, cracks in bridges, holes in pebbles and slag at a mine, among the bark of pine trees, dead stems such as elder and in reeds). In the alpine region of Switzerland, Julliard (1950) found that the female can burrow into flat bare soil to form its oval cells, made mainly of clay. The openings of the cells are flush with the surface of the ground and cells may be grouped together.
Sea-holly, bramble, hogweed and thistles…BWARS
Kinver Edge is a remnant of the Mercian forest, although much planting dates from post-1945. There are two Iron Age hillforts on Kinver Edge the larger one Kinver Edge Hillfort, is at the northern end, while the other is at the southern end, on a promontory known as Drakelow Hill.
There were 100’s of Mellinus arvensis digger wasps and it was great to watch them doing what they do, filling their burrows with flies.
My neighbour who is also interested in insects came around and I was showing him what I was doing with the garden and I noticed a little hole with fine deposits around and said it was a miner bee of some sort. So later i sat and watched it and it is a Andrena flavipes nest .. I waited for a full body shot but by the time it left the hole my camera had gone to stand bye and i missed it , Ill keep an eye out though and try again.
Not a insect I know but a common visitor to my garden.
A familiar and unmistakable spiny, mainly nocturnal, mammal. When threatened it will roll itself into a ball, using its spines for protection. They are quite noisy and can often be heard snuffling and grunting during their activities. The Hedgehog is about 20 to 30 cm in length.
The European Hedgehog lives in woodland, farmland, and suburban areas. It is often seen as a road casualty.
When to see it
Most of the year but the European Hedgehog hibernates in the winter and emerges around Easter the following year.
Hedgehogs are born in the spring, usually with four in a litter. Their spines are soft at first but they quickly harden. In the autumn the mother will bring her family to a place with lots of food and then abandon them. The Hedgehog spends the rest of its life as a solitary animal, meeting other Hedgehogs only occasionally to mate. It feeds on a wide range of invertebrates but preferring slugs, earthworms, beetles and other insects. It will also eat any dead birds that it finds. It has become a serious pest in the Western Isles of Scotland where introduced Hedgehogs eat the eggs of ground-nesting birds…. Nature spot
Seen again but this time in day light which isn’t always a good sign but apart form the tick which you can clearly see by its ear it looked healthy enough.