Welcome to the wilderness that is the Fenn’s, Whixall and Bettisfield Mosses National Nature Reserve, or at least the Whixall part of it. Thanks to Natural England we had permission to visit the site as a group and collect a small number of insects for identification purposes.
In the days leading up to the trip I paid great attention to the weather forecast as the moss is not a place to be if it is raining. You get very wet very quickly. On Sunday the prospects for Wednesday were very poor, solid rain. On Monday the dire forecast had eased a little and on Tuesday it was rain early moving east followed by brighter periods and showers. My pessimism of Sunday had changed to determination by Tuesday. As it turned out the weather was wonderful, breezy but that kept the temperature reasonable in almost unbroken sunshine. What a waste of time packing my waterproof and carrying it around all day!
Eight of us met at the National Nature Reserve (NNR) Base where ample car parking and toilets were available. Actually seven of us met there and one met no-one else at the Morris’s Bridge car park. I do not want to embarrass him (too much) but he received two calendar reminders, a group email and an acknowledgement from me all pointing out where we were meeting. Ah well, we all make mistakes and he joined us a little late. He was pleased with the two fungi that were given to him – wait a minute, didn’t he lose one of those, oops.
It is a fair walk from the NNR Base to the entrance to Whixall Moss and we managed it in record time. Clearly the potential delights of the moss outweighed our desires to explore every umbellifer, nettle bed, cypress, oak tree, etc. on the way.
We plunged off the main path into one of the compartments. [A compartment is a small numbered section of the moss and consists of a mixture of water filled ditches, damp ditches, heath, grassland, scrub and firmer ground on which you can walk safely.] The Shropshire Arachnologist had never seen the raft spider Dolomedes fimbriatus, so I beat a bit of the grassland and found one for him.
In fact just about everyone in the group found the spider within minutes of starting to look. They were everywhere! But they were all juveniles and not fully grown – not the real deal for an arachnologist. However he was so busy confirming our finds that he did not have time to look for one himself. We shall return to this spider later.
Another sweep turned up a lovely caterpillar that was later identified as the aptly named Beautiful Yellow Underwing Anarta myrtilli.
We returned to the main path and some decided to take a coffee break while others decided to have lunch, then those who decided to have a coffee break decided to also have lunch.
It was not quite that clear cut as while some sat down for the break of their choice two others were about 100 yards away peering at the ground. A toad had caught their attention. It showed no intention of moving and even posed for photographs.
All the while that this was happening the Shropshire Arachnologist had disappeared into another compartment.
Soon whoops of joy were heard as he came bursting back through the bracken with mega spy-pot in hand. [Note: the garden vac, or “Spider-vac” as it is known, that crops up occasionally in these ramblings is now recognised as a valuable piece of entomological equipment and is known within the community as a “Mega-pooter”. I thought you would be interested!]
“A fly went down my boot, I tried to remove it before it bit me, and there on the heather in front of me was this. Isn’t she a beauty!!!!” Well beauty is in the eye of the beholder but she was quite attractive (for a spider) and very large, the sort of spider you have nightmares about if you suffer from nightmares about spiders. The Shropshire Arachnologist was very pleased. An adult Dolomedes fimbriatus.
We wandered on after lunch and were treated to sights of various damsel and dragonflies, shieldbugs and other insects of interest.
Our senior member demonstrated for most of the afternoon how to attract the extremely attractive horsefly Chrysops relictus.
The netting of a Southern hawker allowed me to demonstrate my newly acquired skill of how to handle a dragonfly. Regrettably the dragonfly did not co-operate and flew off.
And finally, as we are helping to compile records for the Shropshire Long-horned beetle atlas, we even managed to record one of this family: Leptura quadrifasciata.
Our final “discovery” was a couple of extensive patches of the Round-leaved sundew Drosera rotundifolia. I never fail to be amazed by how small these plants are. Mindful of the permission condition we did not try to feed the sundew with any insects.
This brought to an end a very pleasant day in the wilderness. My thanks go to Natural England for allowing us to visit the site and do what we do.
Keith Fowler
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