Time flies

Rough Park, Wednesday 1st August 2018

Time flies at this time of the year. It is over a week since we visited Rough Park so I had better get on with the report.

A short trip for most of us. So short that some of the group walked to the site although one took a rather circuitous route to get there.

The grass had been cut where we met at the entrance to the site which made me think that we may be visiting the site too late in the year if the whole site had been given the same treatment. But as we made our way on to the site I was reassured to find the grass was still intact. Very dry, but uncut and interspersed with plenty of other vegetation.

We set about investigating.

The youngest member of our party with almost his first sweep with his net found one of the target species for the day - a tortoise shieldbug.

Photograph: David Williams

Last year as we returned from a visit to the neighbouring Dale Coppice we did a speculative sweep of some of the grass in Rough Park and to our great surprise and delight found a tortoise bug nymph. 

This is one of Shropshire rarest shieldbugs having until recently only been found in Wyre Forest and for some reason at the opposite corner of the county in Dolgoch Quarry. Last year further populations were found at Cramer Gutter and Rough Park. So it was good news to find one today to confirm that the Telford colony had survived for another year. Where will it turn up next?

Other inhabitants of the long grass that we found around the same time were a common blue butterfly.

Photograph: Bob Kemp

The hoverfly Sphaerophoria scripta

Photograph: Bob Kemp

And a Sloe bug nymph (also known as a Hairy shieldbug for the reason that can be seen in this photograph).

Photograph: Bob Kemp

The nymph is a bit of an "ugly duckling" as it will grow up into this:

Photograph: Bob Kemp

We left this grassy area and climbed a small hill that was a reclaimed spoil heap. On top the vegetation was still grassland but dominated by taller vegetation. There was a splendid view from here which is not done justice by the following photograph.

The vacuum sampler came into its own here as it was used to get to any beast that lurked at the base of the vegetation.

One unlucky character that was captured by the device was the attractively marked Labyrinth spider:

Photograph: Bob Kemp

Another good "shieldbug" find was a Small grass shieldbug nymph:

Photograph: David Williams

This is another shieldbug that is found infrequently in Shropshire so its presence at Rough Park is to be celebrated.

We descended the far side of the hill. We went down and down, then down still further as we moved from the summit of the hill into a pit that was about as deep as the hill was high.

Lunch beckoned so we climbed out of the pit and found a couple of seats to rest on and take on refreshments. As we lunched we saw two air ambulances fly over and land behind some trees about a mile away. We later learnt that there had been a road collision involving a car and a van. Two children from the car were seriously injured and had to be airlifted to hospital whilst three other injured adults were taken in road ambulances. A stark reminder of how easy it is for things to go wrong extremely quickly.

The pit and the area where we lunched were grassland similar to the area where we started and the vacuum sampler was re-employed to aid our searching. It turned up a couple of moths - the rather scruffy looking Ochsenheimeria taurella:

Photograph: David Williams

And the more sleek but, in this case rather worn, Ancylis badiana:

Photograph: David Williams

It also captured several tiny shieldbug nymphs which we believe are early instar nymphs of Small grass shieldbugs.

Photograph: David Williams

You can gauge how small they were from the finger-tip behind the bug.

Time to move on. We started the return journey walking along a path through the main area of grassland, pausing periodically to search for things of interest.

Along the way we found a Meadow grasshopper:

Photograph: David Williams

And a common green grasshopper:

Photograph: David Williams

Although you often find grasshoppers and their allies just passing the time of day in the grass they can often be very tricky to find. The males can be heard singing by some, generally younger people; but as you get older and your range of hearing shrinks then artificial means are required.

Help comes in the form of a hand held bat detector which can be used to pick up the calls. Then by careful stalking the grasshopper can be located and, if it poses long enough, photographed.

Other things of interest that we found as we meandered our way back to our starting point were:

A tortoise beetle - Cassida vibex

Photograph: David Williams

A magnificent Vapourer moth larva:

Photograph: David Williams

A spider - Enoplognatha ovata (I think!).

Photograph: Bob Kemp

And my favourite shieldbug - Bishop's Mitre

Photograph: David Williams

So, another lovely day on an excellent site came to a close.

My thanks to Telford and Wrekin Council for giving us permission to do what we enjoy doing and to the photographers Bob Kemp and David Williams for allowing me to use their excellent photographs.