I've had another really good fortnight with the list climbing to 886. All of the new species, except one, could be described as creepy-crawlies! They included a twin-lobed horsefly (chrysops relictus) which, with it's dark-banded wings and vivid green eyes, didn't look like your normal horsefly at all, but certainly acted like one!
Thanks to a young lad on one of my guided walks I was able to identify a lesser marsh grasshopper, partly by the white stripe on it's wing. The boy's mother then found me some sea slaters on the beach ruin. These are close relatives of woodlice, usually a dull sandy brown, but these were a mottled brown and grey - evidently they can change colour to suit their surroundings. They also act as nature's own bech cleaners, helping to keep things tidy by eating things washed up on the tide-line.
Most disgusting of the findings were the dozens of poecilochirus mites found on a couple of sexton beetles. I thought they were parasitic but it seems that they are only hitching a lift from one dead body to the next!
My real star was, of course, the buff-breasted sandpiper that paraded in front of the Parrinder Hide with dunlin and curlew sandpiper. It looked a bit like a very small, yellow-legged version of the juvenile ruff that was feeding nearby. When the sandpiper raised it's wings you could clearly see the diagnostic black marks towards the leading edge of the underwing.
The new species are all marked with # at the end of the list. Let's hope the autumn migration brings in a few more star birds!
Ray Kimber.