Summer, What Summer?

 Wednesday 2nd September 2026, Stiperstones

A wet day. Much overnight rain meant that everything was already soaked, with the forecast offering only very limited grounds for optimism of an improvement. And sure enough, as we arrived in the upper car park the heavens opened again, soaking us before we started. We noted that the Bog Visitor Centre, somewhere below us in the murk, didn’t open until midday, so we couldn’t retreat to that – yet. We plodded off along a surfaced path at the same level as the car park instead, not feeling that an ascent to the ridge was very appealing in the circumstances.

To our right a Buzzard hung motionless in the gloom, two others wheeling around it.

Expectations for finds were low, but as is so often the case, the vacuums managed to extract some interesting creatures, though photo quality suffered somewhat in the circumstances:
Small Grass Shieldbug

photo: John Martin

16-spot Ladybird

Meadow Ladybird, Rhyzobius litura

Anthicus antherinus. We found this beetle at Abbey Manor last week, only the second county record, and here it was again!

photo: John Martin

 Other finds did not rely on the vacuums. This gall is on Sallow and is caused by Iteomyia major, a fly of the family Cecidomyiidae. A second county record, previously recorded from the southeast of the county, near the Staffs border.

photo: John Lyden

Also on Sallow were these galls, caused by Euura pedunculi, a sawfly.

photo: John Lyden

Phylocptes goniothorax (a mite) on Hawthorn.

photo: John Lyden

And finally (for the galls) a spectacular example of an Alder Tongue Gall, caused by the fungus Taphrina alni.

photo: John Lyden

 We had been blessed with an hour or so of dryness. But now the rain arrived again, this time with no obvious prospect of it relenting. It was near enough to midday for us to escape to the visitor centre, piling into cars in our soaking clothes as best we could. We arrived to find it in a state of controlled crisis, there being only one volunteer heroically trying to hold the fort. A whole series of mishaps had stopped others from joining her. Thankfully, reinforcements arrived before she was forced by health & safety rules to shut up shop and eject everyone back into the rain.
An hour or more passed. The rain refused to stop completely, but eventually reduced to a fine drizzle. We headed back out, but not back up to the summit, limiting our ambitions instead to the grounds immediately adjacent to the visitor centre. Here, in the drought-stricken but now soaked heather, were a few finds:

Small Heath

Common Blue

photo: John Martin

Mottled Grasshopper (a female)

As if the conditions weren’t miserable enough for the grasshopper already, more bad news appeared in the form of this fly, a female Dark-tailed Grasshopper Fly Blaesoxipha plumicornis. The larvae of this species are internal parasitoids of a range of common grasshopper species. Only the second county record, and to quote our Dipterist “This one pushes the western limit in the Midlands a fair way west – so it is nearly in Wales now. Our previous record was from Beckbury in the east of the county”.

photo: Nigel Jones

But there was better – a county first. A Sepsid fly, Sepsis thoracica. There seem to be no previous records from the Midlands at all, it being a largely coastal species. An excellent find, though sadly I don’t have a photo of it from the day.
 A couple of non-native trees were recorded before the encroaching damp finally defeated us:
Patagonian Oak (it must have felt quite at home in the circumstances)

photo: John Martin

Swedish Whitebeam (ditto)

photo: John Martin

And finally… the last find of the day, a species which is always a crowd pleaser: a Devil’s Coach-horse rove beetle.

With that, we gave up and went home to dry out and warm up, though after weeks on end of heat and drought, we could hardly complain!
Thanks to Natural England for allowing us to survey in this National Nature Reserve.
 
 
Photographs © the author except as noted.