After my two visits to the birch trees with an abundance of shieldbugs on them that I wrote about in Part 1 of this blog I went across to the west coast of Scotland for a few days, so it was over a week later before I returned to have another look for them. I didn’t know whether they would still be there, or if they would have all metamorphosed into adults and dispersed already, so I approached the trees without any great expectations of what I would find.
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A shieldbug extravaganza, part 1
On 1st August 2020 I was making my monthly round of the Findhorn Hinterland area to check the series of 6 pitfall traps we’ve installed for an ongoing survey of spiders there. To reach the first couple of trap sites I had to pass a prominent cluster of three large, multi-trunked silver birch trees (Betula pendula) that have grown closely together, and I often stop to have a look at them, to see if there is anything of interest on their leaves.
[Read more…] about A shieldbug extravaganza, part 1Life on a spear thistle
For just over two years now I’ve been a trustee of the Findhorn Hinterland Trust, a local charity that manages about 35 hectares of land surrounding the Findhorn Community, where I live. The site includes sand dunes and dune heath rich in lichens, dune scrub consisting mostly of gorse, species-rich grassland and an old pine plantation that is gradually being restored to native woodland.
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