The advantage of walking around a habitat with a group of keen naturalists is that there are more eyes to spot life down in the undergrowth and to look up, this morning to see red kite circling, hobby soaring and kestrel hovering. On a brief flypast, a Spitfire roars over the ridge.
Without the group and our guide Les Driffield, I’d miss at least half of the species we see today.
Les wonders if we’re mainly birders as he’s the one who gets more excited about a small blue butterfly, his first record this year for the site. He’s got an eye for any rolled leaf or plant gall. He invites us to sniff a small tuft of fungus on a hawthorn twig. It smells of hawthorn blossom so any insect attracted to it could potentially spread the spores.
It’s all part of the biodiversity on this slope of grassland, woodland and artfully managed scrub, a contrast to the acres of oilseed rape and winter wheat in the arable landscape all around us.
We’re on a Wakefield Naturalists’ Society field meeting at Les’s private nature reserve on the magnesian limestone ridge near Wentbridge. The limestone outcrops only at the top of the ridge: the lower slope consists of the upper beds of the coal measures.
The Swollen-thighed Beetle
Only the males of this metallic-green flower beetle, also known as the the thick-legged flower beetle, Oedemera nobilis, have those bulging, oversize hind femurs. The larvae feed on rotting wood and on the stems and roots of herbaceous plants.
Red-and-black Froghopper
A centimetre-long red-and-black froghopper, Cercopsis vulnerata, rests amongst the path-side herbage. Unlike other species of froghopper, where the plant-sucking nymphal stage protects itself with a froth of ‘cuckoo-spit’ on the stems of plants, the nymphs of the red-and-black froghopper feed underground on roots.
Variable Longhorn Beetle
On the south-facing edge of the strip of woodland at the foot of the slope, someone spots a variable longhorn beetle, Stenocorus meridianus: body length an inch, antennae almost as long again.
Longhorn Moth
Another longhorn but this one is a moth, a ‘micro-moth’, the green longhorn, Adela reaumurella. This is a female: the males have antennae twice this length, three times the length of their bodies. The larvae live in the leaf litter and, like caddis-fly larvae, they make a case from small fragments.
Brimstone Moth
Les, who is a member of the Yorkshire Branch of Butterfly Conservation, set up a moth trap overnight. The catch includes a brimstone but it’s not the brimstone butterfly, this is the brimstone moth, Opithograptis luteolata, which has been attracted to the UV lamp overnight but which will also fly by day. The larvae feed on hawthorn and other shrubs.