NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

Another one of those end of year round-ups, part celebration, part blog filler. Today’s post features four invertebrate highlights, all of them either new colonists or species making a comeback.  First up is Striped Shieldbug (Graphosoma italicum). In mid-June I’d been tipped off that a specimen had been found close to Banstead Downs, so armed with a grid reference I went in search. My first attempt drew a blank (although see below), but seeing that the site was close to home I went back again on 20th July  - managing to find a singleton before I even arrived at my destination, on Hogweed, on Banstead Downs itself. I was destined to see this species again, in the same general area, on two more occasions, with one being a nymph, (in the company of Graeme Lyons), on 31st August. This shieldbug, found in the Mediterranean region, has been sparingly recorded in the UK. This species appears to be spreading north from its core range. On my initial failed hunt for Striped Shieldbug I...

I was chuffed to find this is the garden MV this morning, Lyonetia prunifoliella, which has an interesting history in the UK. Here's what the excellent UK Moths website says about it: "Formerly locally resident in parts of southern and central England, this moth seemed to have died out as a British species, and had not been reliably encountered since around 1900. The first recent record appears to be in 2007, since when it has been encountered with increasing frequency in a number of counties including Dorset, Norfolk and on the Isle of Wight, Hampshire." My photograph is not up to scratch, being taken under dark skies and a slight drizzle, and this moth is tiny. Still, it gets across the delicate markings that clinched the identification.