On Saturday 27/7/24 I gave a guided walk around Raw Nook LNR to members of the Bradford Urban Wildlife Group.
These member hadn’t been to the reserve before so it was nice to explained about the site and how it became a local nature reserve in 2008.
We started in the meadow area looking at various plants as well as Ringlets and Meadow brown butterflies which were out in reasonable numbers
Whilst explaining about the meadow area I noticed a group of caterpillars on a Silver Birch leaf which I was unfamiliar with.
The caterpillars turned out to be from the Buff-tip moth.
Excellent news in that it was a site first and a breeding record too…
Thankfully the weather was warm and sunny which brought out a reasonable selection of butterflies. A total of 9 species were recorded with good numbers of Gatekeeper newly emerged.
We then made our way to the sandy path at the top of the reserve where I wanted to show the group the Ashy mining bees. Sadly none where found but some smaller holes in the ground were seen.
Eagle eyed Harry, one of the group spotted a tiny wasp/bee coming out of one of these holes and quickly took a photo!. Both myself and Harry have tried to ID the wasp without success so I have sent his photo to IRecords for an expert to look at it.
In the meantime I took some photo’s of another different digger wasp which was nearby.
This turned out to be an Ornate tailed digger wasp Cerceris rybyensis which is a new species for the reserve.
So all in all it was an excellent day with some lovely people and to top it all 2 new records for the reserve!
