Part Two: Out and About

When lockdown restrictions were more fully relaxed, people began getting back out into the countryside for walks and wildlife and a much needed sense of space and fresh air after so much confinement. 

There were still constraints on public transport and we had no wish to use it anyway so we were looking for places to visit that we could feasibly get to. While we are capable of cycling 50 miles in a day, it isn’t really possible to go off on a long walk in search of wildlife in the middle of it and be back home in time for tea, so we were feeling very much restricted while others were off all over the place understandably making hay while the sun shone.

Into the breach stepped a friend who very generously offered to take us out in her car so we formed a mask-wearing, nature-watching bubble. In return for a lift, we gave our expertise on seeking out and identifying as many creatures as we could find. In this way, we were able to safely visit places in Norfolk that would normally be out of bounds to us. Ironically, we probably got around more in the summer of 2020 than in previous years.

One such trip was to Redgrave and Lopham Fen, a Suffolk Wildlife Trust reserve near Diss, straddling the Norfolk/Suffolk border, with most of it in Norfolk. It is a place of near mythic status being the home of the incredibly rare Fen Raft Spider (Dolomedes plantarius). It is almost impossible to get to from Norwich without a car. We visited it in 2018 by getting a train to Diss and arranging to be picked up by a taxi and then collected again. Unfortunately it was rather late in the year and after a very dry summer when the accessible pools had all dried up, so we missed out on seeing the spider.

For me, the two Fen Raft Spiders we saw were upstaged by a much smaller jumping spider, Marpissa radiata. This is another wetland specialist which is only found in reedbeds. We were fortunate to find several individuals who posed rather well for us.

The reserve has lots more to offer other than its adorable arachnids. We finally found our first ever Blue Shieldbug (Zicrona caerulea), a species that had eluded us for a long time and has been a glaring/embarrassing omission on our shieldbug list. It is a predatory species, feeding mostly on Altica spp flea beetles which are also metallic blue. This is sometimes called aggressive mimicry as the predator looks rather similar to its prey.

While it is all very nice to see new species, it is also great to see ones that you don’t often get a chance to see because of where they occur. Winterton and Horsey are wonderful places to visit and spend time at, something that isn’t that easy by bicycle so it was a real treat to get the chance to spend a day at each site. We did find some brilliant new species but it was great to see more of the usual coastal invertebrates that we rarely get the chance to see, including solitary bees and butterflies.

Horsey was a superb day out with a great variety of invertebrates including several very nice flies which could easily make a top twenty all by themselves! On top of unusual flies, beetles and wasps, for me finding a diminutive pseudoscorpion was the absolute icing on the cake. These tiny creatures are related to spiders. There are 27 species in the UK but they are seldom seen because of their tiny size.

Titchwell RSPB reserve is somewhere we have occasionally visited over the years but usually in order to see birds, especially in autumn or winter. In the summer though, it is the place to go if you want to see a Dune Tiger Beetle (Cicindela maritima). There are plenty of good dune systems around the coast of Norfolk but for some reason these lovely ground beetles only seem to like the ones around Titchwell. Like the much commoner Green Tiger Beetle (Cicindela campestris), the Dune Tiger Beetle is an agile, fast moving, ferocious predator with large eyes and powerful jaws. They are most active on warm sunny days throughout the summer but apparently will bury themselves out of sight in the sand if it gets too hot so pick your time of day carefully if you want to find one.

Good field-craft is all very well but sooner or later the enthusiastic invertebrate hunter is bound to turn to more underhand tactics to find their quarry, the sweep net and the beating tray. I have prided myself in being able to spot my target species by eye when knowing where and how to look for them but I am only too well aware that there are a lot of species I probably just won’t find this way. Martin Collier (the Norfolk Beetle Recorder) introduced me to the gentle art of beating when he turned up several species in our garden that I had no idea resided there. So I rigged up a homemade beating net for my next outing.

My beating net was given its first outing at Buxton Heath where it proved its worth by delivering up several new species including my first Striped Ladybird. This is a Pine tree specialist which had eluded me for several years. Beating isolated trees on heathland (pine and oak) was extremely rewarding, not only for ladybirds but also some nice bugs were found. But by far the most interesting thing to drop into the net though was a Dusky Cockroach (Ectobius lapponicus). There are only three species of cockroach native to Britain, none of which ever pose a problem as pests. They are all rather localised in their distributions, requiring warm conditions and are not commonly encountered.

My invertebrate hunting season really tails off once it gets to October. It is still possible to find things by beating or sweep netting, especially on warmer, sunny days. Another option is to collect and sieve leaf litter, which is easier done at home but then I would want to return my finds afterwards which probably wouldn’t be possible. Trips out in the autumn then generally focus on looking at fungi, something that Jeremy is particularly keen on. I often go along in the hope of turning up something with legs on instead! 

A visit to Ashwellthorpe Woods was the first fungi trip of the season and it yielded a long hoped for beetle – the False Ladybird (Endomychus coccineus). And not just one but three, all snacking on Silverleaf fungus on a fallen tree. This is a fitting species to end on as November was fast approaching along with Lockdown 2, our trips out were abruptly curtailed.

All in all, 2020 ended up with some wonderful wildlife moments. I now have lots of records to write up and submit over the winter months along with a wealth of sketches that could be worked up into paintings or linocuts. I don’t know if our postponed trip to look for rare bees on the south coast will be back on the itinery in 2021 but if not there are plenty of local places to visit. In the meantime, there is leaf litter and plant debris in the garden to sift through on the hunt for more species if I get bored, not to mention some un-beaten bushes…

Happy invertebrate hunting!