‘Guess what’. ‘What?’ ‘I left the pheromones in the freezer. We need to go back’. ‘Haha, very funny.’ ‘No, really…’ So started the South Cheshire Rare Moths Project (or SCRaM to its friends). Our… Read more »
North West Invertebrates Blog
Unaspis euonymi (a scale insect) – A New Find For Merseyside
On the 4th December 2019, Susan Marley and I visited Stanley Park, Liverpool to record for the Greenspace Challenge project running under the Year of the Environment initiative. One of the plants found in the… Read more »
Nezara viridula (Southern Green Shieldbug) in Manchester city centre
On the afternoon of 12th September 2019 I was delivering print jobs to customers in the Northern Quarter of Manchester city centre and, having recently joined the Hoverfly Recording Scheme, thought I would take a… Read more »
Andrena tibialis – a mining bee new to Cheshire in 2019
On 20th May 2019 whilst assisting volunteers with a bumblebee transect at Dunham Massey, our route took us through farmland managed by the National Trust a few hundred metres west of the deer park to… Read more »
Colletes hederae (Ivy Bee) in North Merseyside
One of the most recent additions to the north Merseyside fauna is Colletes hederae, the Ivy Bee (Fig. 1). The first UK sightings of this distinctive solitary bee were in Dorset in 2001. Within the… Read more »
Vagrant Emperor (Anax ephippiger) new to the Sefton Coast and North Merseyside
During the afternoon of the 27th June 2019, Pete Kinsella and Mark Nightingale visited Ainsdale NNR, Merseyside, primarily to search for insects, in particular hoverflies and Odonata. While walking along a firebreak in the extensive… Read more »
Speckled Bush-cricket still in Sefton
Returning to Falklands Way dunes, Ainsdale, in August 2019, I easily located male, female and immature Speckled Bush-crickets (Leptophyes punctatissima) close to where they were first noted in 2018. Trevor Davenport also found them again… Read more »
First records of Purseweb Spider (Atypus affinis) in Cheshire for almost 40 years confirms the presence of Wirral colonies
Britain’s spider fauna is comprised of some 670 species from the infra-order Araneomorphae and one species from the infra-order Mygalomorphae. Our single mygalomorph is the Purseweb Spider, Atypus affinis. Although this striking and enigmatic spider… Read more »
Three interesting Picture-winged flies from the North Lancashire area in 2018
On 21st November 2018 I found a dead picture-winged fly on the kitchen windowsill in Bolton le Sands (VC60). It was quickly identified as a male Tephritis praecox (Tephritidae). There are very few UK records… Read more »
Speckled Bush-cricket: 2nd Sefton Coast Locality Discovered
On 24th August 2018 while sweep-netting for shieldbugs at Falklands Way, Ainsdale, Phil Smith netted two male Speckled Bush-crickets (Leptophyes punctatissima) from a Wild Privet bush near to back gardens at SD303116. According to Phil,… Read more »
Day of the Limnephilids
Most large insects are inactive over winter. An exception are larvae of the caddis family Limnephilidae. They eat dead leaves that fall into freshwaters and that resource is at its peak over winter; many also… Read more »
Survey for one rare spider on NW mosses turns up four even rarer arachnids
The Nationally Rare and Near Threatened Sphagnum bog jumping spider, Sitticus floricola has been the subject of a Tanyptera Project commissioned survey to better understand its current status and distribution in a UK stronghold, the… Read more »
‘Possibly Extinct’ UK dung beetle rediscovered on the Sefton Coast after 21 years
After two decades with no records, experts had feared that a rare diminutive scarab beetle Aphodius brevis had become extinct from our shores (Lane & Mann, 2016). In the UK, it’s only ever been known… Read more »
