June at New Ferry Butterfly Park

Almost every day, on the New Ferry Butterfly Park Facebook page, we feature amazing photographs taken by Roy Lowry on his regular visits.

We know that not everyone uses Facebook so we have selected some of the images he has taken and shared with us in June.

Here are two busy bumblebees photographed at the beginning of the month.

Red tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius)

Common carder bee (Bombus pascorum)

However life will be less easy if they are spotted by a ferruginous bee-grabber. This fly lives up to its name by grabbing hold of bumble and honey bees to lay an egg from which a larva emerges and proceeds to eat the host alive.

Ferruginous bee-grabber on a bramble flower

Close up of Sicus ferrugineus - the ferruginous bee-grabber

On most sunny day visits to the Butterfly Park Roy will photograph butterflies.

Common blue butterfly (Polyommatus icarus)

Green veined white (Pieris napi)

Both photographs show how the underside of the wings differs from the upper surface.

Recent star of the butterflies for Roy Lowry was a dingy skipper that posed on the lime waste. This was the first he had managed to photograph since 2023.

Say hello to the dingy skipper!

Dingy skipper (Erynnis tages)

Also present at the Butterfly Park this month - small coppers, speckled woods and brimstone caterpillars.

Small copper (Lycaena phlaeas)

Speckled wood (Pararge aegeria)

Caterpillar of the brimstone butterfly (Gonepteryx rhamni)

Day flying moths are good to build a story around. Roy reported “The narrow-bordered five-spot burnet moths were in a frisky mood in Saturday’s warm weather”.

Two's company for the narrow-bordered five-spot burnet moths

Three’s a crowd...

But four?????

The pond is a good place to find dragonflies and damselflies. Here are paired azure damselflies expertly photographed egg-laying in the pond.

Male and female azure damselflies (Coenagrion puella)

The male azure damselfly is blue and the female is green

Roy also photographed two male broad bodied chaser dragonflies on the pond.

They had distinctively different markings - one had much more brown colouration on the thorax and base of the abdomen, but this might change as it ages.

Broad bodied chaser dragonfly (Libellula depressa)

A Broad bodied chaser dragonfly with more brown colouration

Here’s a hairy shieldbug.

Dolycoris baccarum - or the hairy shieldbug

As the name suggests, they're covered in tiny hairs - though you may have to look closely to spot them! They are also known as sloe shieldbugs, because they're often found around blackthorns, where they use their piercing mouthparts to feed on the fruits - called sloes. They also feed on the leaves, seeds and fruits of a wide range of other plants.

Hairy shieldbugs spend the winter as an adult, emerging in spring to mate. Females lay clumps of brownish, barrel-shaped eggs that stick firmly to the chosen plant. The young, known as nymphs, are smaller and rounder than the adults, but still covered in pale hairs. They go through several stages of growth, before maturing into their adult form in late summer or early autumn.

Dock bugs - a northerly migrating species - are now very well established.

Dock bug (Coreus marginatus)

The trivial plant bug is a Mediterranean species that was introduced into the London area on imported plants and has now got this far north. Roy first saw them last year.

Trivial plant bug (Closterotomus trivialis)

This year they are joined by the cabbage bug which Roy had not seen on the Wirral before.

Cabbage bug (Eurydema oleracea)

Roy’s favourite subjects are hoverflies, especially Chrysotoxum festivum (hook-barred spearhorn).

These are specialists with larvae feeding on ant-attended root aphids. He noticed a couple of males - one had territory on the path to the lime waste and the other on the path about halfway along the lime waste, and both territories were being defended.

The territory along the lime waste was also defended last year.

Hook-barred spearhorn (Chrysotoxum festivum)

Here’s Melangyna sexguttata sensu lato which he doesn't see very often.

This name is much longer than the actual hoverfly!

Melangyna sexguttata sensu lato

These mating craneflies make an interesting image.

Cranefly courtship

Not everyone likes spiders but here’s a zebra jumping spider with its prey. 

Zebra jumping spider (Salticus scenicus)

Visitors to New Ferry Butterfly Park can also look out for beetles.

Roy photographed thick-legged flower beetles plus several spotted longhorn beetles. These were flying around the bramble flowers looking a bit like self-propelled aliens.

 Thick-legged flower beetle (Oedemera nobilis)

Spotted longhorn beetle (Rupeta maculata)

June is a good time to admire flowers at the Butterfly Park, with the red poppies and marsh orchids being particularly eye-catching.

Poppies in the wild flower strip

A marsh orchid in the limewaste

New Ferry Butterfly Park is extremely lucky to have someone of Roy’s photographic and identification skills creating a monthly visual record of its wildlife.

A Special Midsummer Walk at Roman Road Sandhills

One of the larger sandhills at the site off Roman Road in Meols

Roman Road Sandhills is 7 acre site in Meols which is managed by the Friends of Roman Road Sandhills. On Midsummer morning, Saturday 21st June, 32 people enjoyed our guided walk around the area. They saw the work done this year to remove invasive, non-native shrubs and restore the dune grasslands for pollinators.

The Roman Road Sandhills is fortunate to be one of the 15 sites across Wirral to receive funding for grassland restoration, as part of Wirral Council’s Pollinator Strategy. Earlier this year, four areas of invasive shrub were scraped and reseeded with a coastal wildflower mix. Volunteers also planted 1,300 dune wildflower plugs in a depleted grassland area.

An area where invasive scrub had been removed and the soil scraped away to reveal the underlying sand, before seeding with a wild flower mix

A large number of butterflies and other invertebrates have been recorded at the Sandhills and many depend on the dune grassland flora.

Highlights seen during the walk included mating Small White butterflies, Small Skipper and Large Skipper butterflies and the first sighting on this site of a Ringlet butterfly, bringing the total butterfly species seen on site to 20.

Ringlet butterfly sighted at Roman Road Sandhills for the first time

The hole of a Sandpit Mining Bee (zoom in and you might just be able to see the bee's behind!) 

Many plants were flowering.

Lady's Bedstraw

Fumitory

Sea Rocket

Mallow

Evening Primrose

Some plants, like the tree lupin, were covered in aphids - but that was a feast for the ladybirds.

One of the many ladybirds attracted to the aphid buffet on this tree lupin

Thank you to the committee members of Friends of Roman Road Sandhills who showed us around the site!

Poplar

If you would like to visit and explore Roman Road Sandhills yourself, start at the lectern alongside Roman Road, Meols (halfway down Roman Road, CH47 6AG)

What3Words: ///result.cheeks.donor

For more information see the Friends of Roman Road Facebook page

Or email romanroadsandhills@btinternet.com

(Photos by David and Laura Higginbottom)

New Ferry Butterfly Park Photo Recording 2023

In this blog post, Roy Lowry reviews his photo recording visits to the Butterfly Park in 2023.

I started photo-recording wildlife in New Ferry Butterfly Park back in 2014 making 2-3 visits a year when the reserve was open. Then in 2022 I was entrusted with a key and the number of visits rose to 23. In 2023, it increased to 28 between March and December. On each visit I wander around photographing anything that attracts my attention. Back home the images are converted into wildlife observations on either iRecord or iNaturalist. Inevitably, there is a bias towards pollinating insects because these are the most accessible and also interest me the most. it is also a long way from scientifically rigorous systematic biodiversity surveying, but it provides some evidence on how well the reserve management is working.

During the year I logged a total of 628 observations, which I have now compiled in a spreadsheet to provide an overview. I classified them into 22 categories (ants, bees, other beetles, birds, bugs, butterflies, damselfies, dragonflies, other flies, grasshoppers, hoverflies, isopods, ladybirds, mammals, moths, plants, sawflies, slugs, snails, soldier flies, spiders, spittlebugs, and wasps). Over half of the observations belonged to just three groups, namely bees (81), butterflies (114) and hoverflies (171), so I will concentrate on these for the rest of this summary.

I find bees the most difficult of these groups to record because of the lack of accessible identification support. Bee records submitted to iRecord are very rarely verified and whilst the community approach of iNaturalist can be helpful it can also be disruptive, especially when identifiers fail to take account of differences between bee populations in the UK and elsewhere in the world. Consequently, I am trying to develop my bee identification skills with excellent support from the Cheshire Bee Group and the Tanyptera Project who also help with identifications should I come across anything particularly interesting. Recording hoverflies and butterflies is much easier because all records submitted to iRecord are verified within a couple of weeks or even a couple of days.

Because of the identification uncertainties I can't precisely report the bee species diversity, but it is possible to give an overview based on genus-level identification. During the year I recorded six 'types' of solitary bee in addition to the social honeybees and bumblebees. In early spring there were flower bees (Anthophora) and mining bees (Andrena), followed by mason bees (Osmia), plasterer bees (Colletes), leaf-cutter bees (Megachile) and furrow bees (Lasioglossum). In addition there were cuckoo bees (Melicta, Nomada, Coelioxys and Sphecodes) whose host preferences covered most of the solitary bees seen.

The highlight of the bee recording was the sighting of a male red-girdled mining bee (Andrena labiata) in April. This is quite a rarity with only five records for the Cheshire recording area (which includes Wirral) in iRecord and no other records north of Birmingham in INaturalist. As it was so unusual I had the ID checked and confirmed. I kept a careful lookout after this for any other sightings, preferably of a female, but to no avail. I'll continue the search in 2024 as this species is documented as one of many increasing its range northwards.

Male red-girdled mining bee Andrena labiata

The hoverfly records were both numerous and diverse with 45 different taxa (species or genus not identifiable to species) logged. These included the four of the five large and spectacular members of the Volucella genus: two variants of the bumblebee hoverfly (Volucella bombylans), two species of hornet mimic (Volucella zonaria and Volucella inanis) and the black and white (almost transparent) pellucid Hoverfly (Volucella pellucens). This last species is a very noticeable resident of the Butterfly Park because the males are very territorial and spend their flight season (June and July) defending their territories against all comers, including people. There was one particularly aggressive specimen on the path between the pond and the lime waste who seemed to have a particular dislike for photographers with telephoto lenses.

 Female yellow-girdled fleckwing hoverfly (Dasysyrphus tricinctus)

My favourite hoverfly sightings of the year were a yellow-girdled fleckwing (Dasysyrphus tricinctus) in May and a gorgeous superb ant-hill hoverfly (Xanthogramma pedissequum) in September. I thought the fleckwing (called the yellow-girdled brusheye in iNaturalist) was a rarity. I hadn't seen one before but during the year I found them at Burton Mere and the Liverpool Festival Gardens so maybe they are just under-recorded. The superb ant-hill hoverfly is fairly uncommon (15 Cheshire records in iRecord), but the Butterfly Park is just the place to attract them with its large number of meadow ant nests. The larvae of this hoverfly develop in these nests feeding on the ants' fungus gardens.

Female superb ant-hill hoverfly (Xanthogramma pedissequum)

Butterfly records were also pleasingly diverse with 20 species recorded (14 on a single day - July 19th), which was up from 16 in 2022. The four species added were the brimstone (Gonepteryx rhamni), Essex skipper (Thymelicus lineola), painted lady (Vanessa cardui), and small tortoiseshell (Aglias urticae). The first two of these were artefacts of my modus operandi because although I saw brimstones in flight and what I was convinced were Essex skippers I couldn't get the necessary photographic proof. This year the brimstones co-operated by landing in camera range and I managed to get Essex skipper pictures clearly showing the black antenna nudum. This verified the species and got New Ferry Butterfly Park formally recognised as an Essex skipper site.

Male brimstone butterfly (Gonepteryx rhamni)

Male Essex skipper butterfly (Thymelicus lineola)

The small tortoiseshell and painted lady were different stories. The former have been noticeably absent in the past couple of years so it was delightful to see one. I hope I will see more in 2024. The latter are migrants, arriving in the UK when favourable winds carry them from Africa and Spain. There were about half a dozen present on a single day and I also saw significant numbers in Mayer Park around the same time so I guess this was a migratory fall.

Possibly the most satisfying butterfly sighting was catching a couple of dingy skippers egg laying on patches of birds' foot trefoil, which means that this butterfly not seen in the area for 20 years until last year is now listed as a breeding species for the site.

Female dingy skipper butterfly (Erynnis tages) laying eggs

New Ferry Butterfly Park has provided me with a most interesting year of invertebrate observation in both 2022 and 2023. I can't wait to see what 2024 brings.

Late Summer Activity at Cleaver Heath

The main heather panel at Cleaver Heath

During late August and early September two volunteer task days were organized at Cleaver Heath to deal with the annual problem of bracken re-growth within the upper heather panel. Bracken fronds were removed by stem pulling - rewarding work but laborious, especially in the recent very warm weather! After the main panel was cleared, we concentrated on clearing bracken and pruning overhanging trees along the edge of the Eastern woodland to allow more light to fall onto the nearby heather and encourage fresh growth.

The woodland edge after bracken pulling

While working we took the opportunity to look out for any interesting wildlife especially as the weather was warm and sunny.

Gall wasps had been busy during the year and young oaks along the woodland edge displayed a variety of galls.

Galls on oak trees.
Clockwise from top left:
Marble Gall, Artichoke Gall, Cola-nut Gall, Spangle Gall, Knopper Gall

The young oaks were also providing shelter and home to some spiders.

Lesser Garden spider (Metellina sp.)

The 'Sputnik spider' (Paidiscura pallens)
so-called because of the spiky shape of its eggsac
which is attached to the underside of an oak leaf

By far the most interesting 'find' during the day was the Heather Ladybird (Chilocorus bipustulatus).

Heather Ladybird (Chilocorus bipustulatus)

This very small ladybird was found on mature heather close to where we were working along the woodland edge. It is black and shiny with two or three red spots, sometimes fused, running in a line across the body. It is more likely to be found on mature heather on heathland as at Cleaver, but has been occasionally recorded on coastal dunes. It was recorded in the Wallasey sand dunes in 1991. Nationally it is classed as local and declining so we are very fortunate to have it with us! It feeds on aphids and scale insects and overwinters in litter at the base of heather and gorse.

Future work at Cleaver before the end of the year includes the regeneration project next month, birch cutting and stump treatment with Graham from Cheshire Wildlife Trust and coppicing within the managed scrub area. A lot to keep us busy.


John McGaw
Volunteer Warden, Cleaver Heath