Beetle survey and more Monday 29th May 2017

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Whitsun bank holiday Monday, great weather, overcast breezy with drizzle !!

With a high tide around 09:00 it seemed a good idea to make more of an effort to survey for Strandline Beetle, It was well worth the effort with EIGHT found today, under a mixture of natural debris, drift wood, pallet and planks and a couple under old tyres and plastic lids, and yes, a beetle was under one of the new refugia..


Strandline Beetle

A learning I think is that generally if the object cannot be moved with one hand because its buried in the sand then its unlikely there will be Strandline Beetles there either.

With the high tide the birds were concentrated with c2500 Oystercatchers, c300 Sanderling, many in summer plumage, and c10 Dunlin, all in summer plumage; at the eastern end of the beach.

Sanderling

I also found another DUNE TIGER BEETLE,  and a PAINTED LADY butterfly, as well as the spider, Arctosa perita a cute little thing complete with egg sac in a burrow under a piece of wood.

Arctosa perita

I bumped into fungi legend Dr Philip Jones and his wife who then kindly left a note on the van to say that the Lead coloured Puffball Bovista plumbea was making an appearance on the dunes.


Bovista plumbea, (photo from Wikipedia)

When I returned to the car park at CE53 I was greeted with a family happily loading two very large pieces of driftwood into their car, I engaged and educated, they were doubly embarrassed because the drift wood was part of a project set by the daughters school!!!!! I gave them a leaflet to take to the school.....

With the onset of a spell of drizzle I went and checked refugia No4, usually never anything to be seen until last Wednesday when a small Grass Snake was found, well today a much larger Grass Snake was lying curled up.. it soon made for cover though.

Grass Snake, Natrix natrix


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