Early lunch was taken

Snailbeach Mine and Rigmoreoak, Pennerley, Wednesday 31st July 2019

Let me start by reassuring you that for this trip I remembered my socks. Even though I was given a lift and, therefore, did not have access to my emergency pair my feet were suitably clothed for the outing.

The final day of July did not provide us with glorious weather. It was dull and overcast. At least it was not raining.

A good number turned out for this event including some visitors from Bedfordshire. How does the word get around?

The plan was to spend the morning at Snailbeach mine, lunch about 1am then travel the few miles to the Natural England offices at Rigmoreoak arriving there about 1.30pm.

We entered the Snailbeach site and immediately found a Yarrow plume moth.

Photograph: Graham Wenman

Encouraged we made a few exploratory sweeps and beats of the vegetation at the entrance before managing to move about 10 yards into the site. Our spiderman did a vacuum sample of the grassland and was rewarded with finding a Six-belted clearwing moth.

Finding such a moth is quite rare and it happily sat on a clover leaf as a frenzy of photographers satisfied their desire for a photograph.

And here is one of their efforts:

Photograph: David Williams

A stunning moth.

After such an early excellent find it is easy for rest of the day to be an anti-climax, but we tried our best not to let this happen.

Around the same time we found a tortoise beetle - Cassida rubignosa. Tortoise beetle get their name from their extended wing cases and thorax which hides the head and legs rather like a tortoise's shell.

Photograph: John Martin

Other finds of the vacuum sampler were the nymph of a Small grass shieldbug:

Photograph David Williams

And the nymph of a Bishop's Mitre shieldbug.

Photograph: David Williams

These were not the last bug nymphs we found. Sweeping the vegetation caught this cute individual.

Photograph: David Williams

We believe this is probably an early instar of a Denticulate leatherbug.

Our final photograph from Snailbeach is of a micro-moth Dichrorampha petiverella.

Photograph: Graham Wenman

It started to rain. Not heavily, but enough to send everyone scuttling back to their cars,

As the Ashes cricket series between England and Australia has started I will use a cricketing term in saying "Lunch was taken early".

If rain intervenes in a test match just before the scheduled lunch break often they will bring lunch forward in order to restart the game earlier than planned.

And that is what happened.

We lunched and the rain stopped enabling us to have a further half hour looking around the Snailbeach site before moving on to Rigmoreoak.

Rigmoreoak is the site of the Natural England Office in Pennerley. Opposite the office was a conifer plantation which was clear-felled recently. This was where we spent the afternoon.

Photograph: David Williams

 On entering the site a stone was turned over and underneath we found a Devil's coach-horse.

Photograph: David Williams

The devil's coach-horse is the largest of the thousand or so Rove or Staphylid beetles. When disturbed it often raises and curls its abdomen like a scorpion.

There was a lot of gorse on the site,

And on one of the gorse bushes we found the larva of a Green hairstreak butterfly.

Photograph: David Williams

Our searches took us to the site borders where there were a few hedgerow trees and ditches. Close by there were a lot of dead tree stumps.

The bark of a few of the stumps was peeled back to see what was making its living in that habitat. There were a lot of woodlice and a few spiders plus a couple of large violet tinged ground beetles. This one is Carabus problematicus.

Photograph: David Williams

The day was drawing to a close. We said our good-byes and made our way home.

My thanks to Shropshire County Council and Natural England for giving us permission to do what we enjoy doing and toe the photographers David Williams, Graham Wenman and John Martin for providing photographs for me to use.