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W h i t e A d m i r a l Newsletter 89 Autumn 2014 Suffolk Naturalists’ Society C o n te n t s E d i t or i a l 1 Autumn Members Evening 2014 2 Logo Challenge Ben Heather 3 Black rat record for Ipswich Simone Bullion 4 A Fault: Nacton Shore Cliff Bob Markham 4 A n t li on s - a n E a s t - Suffolk speciality Joan Hardingham 6 The purse web spider Alan Thornhill 9 Species Records - Making a difference G e n B r oa d 10 Le a f - Cutter Bees Richard Stewart 14 My year (2014) Trevor Goodfellow 16 Voucher Specimens Neil Mahler 19 A New Suffolk Record for the large Adrian Chalkley 21 Pond Skater Confessions of a novice Moth - er P e t e r La c k 23 Stag Beetles 1868 – 2 0 1 4 Colin Hawes 26 Chemicals in our fields, water and Tom Langton 28 wi ld li f e Drosophila suzukii i n Su f f ol k Martin Cooper 30 Roman Snails Richard Fisk 31 Mammals of Essex - A New Atlas Darren Tansley 31 Shieldbugs at Play Rob P a r ke r 32 ISSN 0959-8537 Published by the Suffolk Naturalists’ Society c/o Ipswich Museum, High Street, Ipswich, Suffolk IP1 3QH Registered Charity No. 206084 © Suffolk Naturalists’ Society Front cover: Hoopoe taken at Framsden Suffolk on 1/11/2014 by Chris Upson http://chrisupson.zenfolio.com/ SuffolkThe Naturalists’ Society Newsletter 89 - Autumn 2014 Welcome to this packed issue of White Admiral newsletter. Thank you to all those who have sent me copy for this issue, it makes my job much easier! Please bear in mind that the next issue is Spring 2015, so please think about any ‘dates for the diary’ or 2015 events that you would like me to feature in the ‘what’s on’ section of this issue and send them to me before 1st February. I have had a very interesting year when it comes to natural history and have been able to get out and take lots of interesting photos of wildlife in Suffolk with one of my highlights being able to find the Wasp Spiders at Alton Water for a second year in a row. These spiders are great for anyone learning macro photography and are very well behaved subjects and do not shy away from having their photo taken, quite the opposite. Away from photography I have enjoyed my first couple of outings with the Suffolk Bat Group of which I joined earlier in the year. I was able to complete my Bat Conservation Trust ‘Waterways Survey’ training on my second attempt after a biblical thunderstorm put paid to my first attempt. I have also been able to take advantage of being a member of Suffolk Bat Group and borrow a heterodyne bat detector and have now spent many evenings trying to learn what is, to me, a different language. I have a lot to learn but it certainly is very fascinating. This winter I will be spending time re-developing the recording section of Suffolk Biological Records Centre’s website with some of our county recorders ready for the Spring, so keep a look out for updates. Please can I bring to your attention our Logo Challenge on page 3, we hope you will give it a go and also the notice of our Autumn members evening (page 2) which is on the 27th of November, we hope to see you there. Editor: Ben Heather Suffolk Biological Records Centre, c/o Ipswich Museum, High Street, Ipswich, IP1 3 Q H [email protected] White Admiral 89 1 Autumn Members Evening 2014 Thursday 27th November | 7.30pm Cedars Hotel, Needham Road, Stowmarket, IP14 2AJ Speakers and Talks: Colin Hawes | Stag beetles as fungivores “My 10 min talk will be about my collaboration with a researcher in Japan, which has led to us discovering a stag beetle-fungal relationship that helps the larvae digest wood.” Dennis Kell Investigating the distribution of flowering spikes of Purple Helleborine Epipactis purpurata in a deciduous Suffolk woodland in relation to adjacent ditches and differences in height, soil moisture and pH. Caroline Markham | Underground Heritage Suffolk’s geodiversity sites - landforms, geology and buildings. Gen Broad | SNS Taster Days A summary of SNS events from the last couple of years. Plus any updates from recorders present at the evening. Members are welcome to bring along short Powerpoint presentations or pictures they would like to share with the Society. Drinks from the bar on arrival and half -ti m e refreshment break (tea and coffee). 2 White Admiral 89 Logo Challenge Help us design a new logo for SNS Now that the nights are drawing in, and the days are becoming shorter, SNS council has decided to challenge its members, over the winter, to help design a new graphical logo for the society. SNS council has decided that a new logo is well overdue and would like something that is both creative and simple to represent the society on publications, websites and social media etc… our letter head (below). The brief is fairly simple; what is Please send your ideas and designs needed is a graphic design that to the editor using the contact depicts what the Suffolk details on page 1. If sending Naturalists’ Society is, does or images via email please do not what it stands for to you. To get send items over 10mb. the creative juices flowing I have created a very quick photoshop based graphic (top right) depicting a record being made of a butterfly. You do not need any skills at using photoshop or design programs, all As long as we get a good response we need from you is an idea. This we will publish any sketches in the could be a quick sketch or detailed next White Admiral with our new drawing and these designs will be logo. voted on by the council and then It will be great to have a new eye transformed into a computer based catching logo that will take SNS graphic by the society. forward and I hope many of you Designs need to be graphic based take part. and contain no text. Designs will Ben Heather be digitised into a suite of logo layouts of which some will contain Editor: White Admiral White Admiral 89 3 Black rat record for Ipswich On 30th June 2014 I was contacted another interloper, the common or by Peter Woolley of Alpha ‘brown’ rat. Remaining populations Fumigation concerning an unusual in the UK are thought to be looking young rat that had been restricted to a very few dockside found dead at the Ipswich Grain seed and flour mills, which is also Terminal. His suspicions were that linked to its habit of being a more this was a black or ship rat, rather indoor-living rat. than a brown or common rat. Further correspondence with Peter Colour is not a reliable feature in Woolley on 16th September 2014 telling the two apart, rather the indicated that a number of animals relatively larger ears and longer, have been now recorded, including thinner tail (up to 120% of the three dead juveniles and a live head and body length) should be female with a litter of babies. The used. As this specimen bore all the absence of a record from Ipswich characteristics of a ‘black rat’, I for many years implies that double-checked this with national animals may have arrived via mammal expert Dr Pat Morris, shipping, becoming established who confirmed the record. during the last year or so. The The black rat, Rattus rattus, is need for rodent control at this now a very scarce British Mammal location means that this and there have been no records in population may be short-lived, Suffolk for decades. This species although the more arboreal habits reached Britain in early Roman of black rats makes them more times and was associated with difficult to eliminate than common transmission of the Plague in the rats. Middle Ages. Since the 18th Simone Bullion Century, it has been replaced by Suffolk Mammal Recorder A Fault: Nacton Shore Cliff The photograph (on the next page) between Nacton Shores and shows a section in the Harwich Levington Creek. Within the clay Formation London Clay (c.53 may be seen a tabular band of hard million years old) in the river cliff rock and above, two bands of thin 4 White Admiral 89 A Fault at Nacton Shore Cliff rusty layers. Look at the left side cuts the soft clay cleanly but the and right side – the same strata hard rock band is bent and broken are at noticeably different heights. into angular fragments at the From the central area of the hard fault. rock follow up and to the left to see The relationship of the fault to the a clearly defined inclined plane overlying younger strata is not (c.40o to the vertical) – a fault – seen, and how deep does it go? which here displaces the strata How far into the cliff and in which downwards on the right with a direction? vertical component of over half a Bob Markham metre movement. The fault plane For more information on the London Clay at this site see the article by Roger Dixon in the Transactions 2012. White Admiral 89 5 A n tl i o n s - a n E a s t -Suffolk speciality Antlion pits Those with long memories will recall Michael Kirby and his enthusiasm for Antlions Euroleon nostras; (see the account of his studies in SNS Transactions: Kirby, E.