Wrekin Forest Volunteers: The Hem

30 Jun 2013

The Hem - Keith Fowler

After a week off ICT meanders, moonlighting on Long Mynd, with the usual results – no Shieldbugs, normal service was resumed when we visited an ancient woodland in Telford called the Hem. The wood, situated on the edge of Halesfield, is owned by the council but they have recently agreed to it being managed by our friend and occasional colleague Mark Ecclestone.

Mark has started a coppicing cycle and is removing the wood for firewood and the other items that he likes to produce. And as Mark extended his hospitality to us I think it only fair that I give his website a plug – www.picsandsticks.co.uk.

Anyone who has visited Halesfield will know that it is a bit of a rabbit warren so we met Mark at one of the landmarks – the Recycling Centre. He gave us instructions of how to get to the car park. The instructions seemed straightforward – “follow the road left then right then take the third left into the car park” ... or so it seemed. We were in three cars and each of the cars ended up in a different car park. Eventually we all met up at the correct spot and headed for the wood.

Our host has built a woodman’s camp and the comforts it provided made us act like children in a sweet shop, we could not keep away. Any excuse and we were there lounging on the seats and logs. We had elevenses, lunch, early afternoon tea and somehow we were unable to identify any insect without resorting to its comforts.

We did explore the wood and found no shieldbugs but we did find lots of other things including three species of long-horn beetles, several micro-moths and lots of craneflies in addition to macro moths, beetles, spiders and bugs. On the downside we also suffered attacks by insect repellent resistant mosquitos.

Our star find was a huge long-horn beetle Stenocorus meridianus which had us staring at identification books for a while. Eventually, with some outside help, we were able to settle on what it was. The other long-horn beetles were the distinctively and aptly named Wasp beetle (Clytus arietus) and the commoner Gramoptera ruficornis, which can usually, but not always, be dislodged from Hawthorn.