Hi everyone, back again with the first of two updates.
Hunting for hoverflies in Killbrony Forest Park
As you already know this year I am undertaking a pollinator study of Portstewart Strand focusing on bees, butterflies, hoverflies and day flying moths, so I have been attending pollinator training events and doing background reading on the subject. I attended a Bumblebee training day in Silent Valley Park just outside of Kilkeel in County Down to become more confident in bee identification, both for the project and for my monthly bumblebee transect. I also attended a Hoverfly training day in Killbrony Forest Park County Down to improve my hoverfly identification, as I had found this to be a difficult group. I had my first site visit to Portstewart on the 13th to meet with Gill McIlmoyle who is the National Trust ranger for the site to discuss the project. I have since been out surveying at the strand quite a few times however as the weather has been so poor there hasn’t been a great pollinator count. I have come across some other interesting species including some very tiny metallic wasps that I am also hoping to identify. I am looking forward to seeing what species the strand turns up in the coming months.
A beautiful wasp from Portstewart Strand that I have yet to ID.
I had previously mentioned about setting up demonstration tanks to assist me when doing outreach events and I am pleased to say that they are now all up and running. I had attended a training day at Clandeboye estate on “Invertebrates and larval host plants” that was delivered by the entomologist Paul Moore and I talked to him about using demonstration tanks in upcoming outreach events; he not only gave me great advice (as this is something that he does as part of his job) but offered to give me some insects to use in the events. I have added lots of native species in my new minibeast outreach team from woodlice to puss moths, snails to garden tiger caterpillars. I have also set up tropical species tanks that can be used for comparison including stick insects, flower beetles, a giant African millipede and land snail. The puss moths have bred successfully and I have quite a few tiny caterpillars to look after! Fingers crossed all goes well 🙂
My first official event with my team was assisting Simon Gray with an insect event at an after schools club that is managed by a community group called the Devenish Partnership Forum in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh. As part of the event we took the children on a butterfly walk and got them to do a minibeast ID quiz. I had taken all of my demonstration tanks along to this event and used these to teach the children about invertebrates. This proved to be very popular with everyone and I am looking forward to doing more events of this type in the future.
Showing children “Elvis” the Giant African Land snail 🙂
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