Field Recording Days 2012. Worcestershire Recorders and Worcestershire Biological Records Centre

Harry Green

Three special field recording days were arranged for the summer of 2012:

Saturday 9^th June 2012. The Red House and environs, Pillows Green Lane, near Staunton SO793301. A site with a good variety of habitats including new and old herb-rich grasslands, garden and orchard, and part of an ancient green lane. By kind permission of owner Keith Turner.

Saturday 7th July 2012. Slade Wood, Goom’s Hill, Abbots Morton, central grid reference SP023537. An ancient broad-leaved woodland. By kind permission of the owner, Lady Walker.

Saturday 4th August 2012 Ipsley Alders Nature Reserve in Redditch, central grid reference SP078676. Marshland, grassland, scrub, stream and woodland. By kind permission of Worcestershire Wildlife Trust.

The most striking feature of the 2012 recording days was cold wet weather. For the visit to The Red House the weather was comparatively good, merely cloudy and wet underfoot. Slade Wood was incredibly wet underfoot after days of very heavy rain: it also rained during the visit but there were occasional short bright periods when the sun shone very briefly. It was cool and quite dry at Ipsley Alders although wet underfoot. The poor weather may have reduced attendance as between 20 and 25 people booked for each visit but, in date order, only 16, 15 and 14 attended. Several of our regular recorders could not attend so we are shorter than usual on Coleoptera and Diptera records, and on invertebrate records generally.

Nevertheless there were highlights. The Red House turned out to be a very good site for bumblebees with nine species recorded including the two Worcestershire rarities Bombus humilis and Bombus ruderarius indicating the importance of extensive flowery grasslands, We had hoped to return later in the year for the bad weather prevented another visit (Figs. 1-4). Slade Wood was so wet that recording was difficult. Nevertheless a good number of moths (including leaf miners) were found largely because county moth recorder Tony Simpson was with us, and an abundance of frogs and toads. We hope for a return visit to do justice to this interesting wood (Figs. 5-9). Ipsley Alders Marsh is a well-known site for both Long-winged Conocephalus fuscus (discolor) and Short-winged Coneheads Conocephalus dorsalis. We found the first but not the second which is only known from two Worcestershire sites. However the development through nymphal stages of both these two species was slow in summer 2012 and adult C. dorsalis appeared several weeks later than usual and were later found at Ipsley Alders by Gary Farmer. Finding the curious bug Ledra aurita and Eyed Ladybird Anatis ocellata were interesting bonuses (Figs.10-13).

The lists that follow contain all the records received by WBRC by December 2012. Outstanding records are still very welcome and should be sent to Simon Wood, WBRC Manager, at records@wbrc.org.uk or to the address on the back of Worcestershire Record. The aim of these recording days is to obtain a snapshot of the species on the site for the visit day. The lists may be more interesting to people in one hundred years time than now!

The separate lists of Vascular Plants were compiled by John Day and Bert Reid. All other records extracted from the WBRC database by Simon Wood.

Recorders initials used in the lists:

Alan Lawson	AL
Tony Simpson	AS
Brett Westwood	BW
Denzil Devos	DD
Dave Scott	DS
Gary Farmer	GAF
Harry Green	GHG
Geoff Trevis	GHT
John Bingham	JB
John Day	JJD
Jane Scott	JS
John Meiklejohn	JWM
Mike Averill	MA
Martin Skirrow	MS
Rosemary Winnall	RAW