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Quail fail
Posted by Graeme Lyons , Sunday, 22 May 2011 19:36
I shot up to Frog Firle by High and Over with Michael Blencowe and Bob Eade this evening to look for the Quails that were recorded there yesterday. It was VERY windy though and they were very hard to hear. We heard two or three but there was no chance of being able to see them though. How many more years will go by before I finally see this bird? Grrrrrr!
On the way back to the car I spotted this plant which was a nice surprise. I have only ever seen it once before at Therfield Heath in Hertfordshire and never before in Sussex. It's the unusually named Bastard-toadflax and it's not all that common. There were at least four plants growing in the middle of the path and I am sure there would have been more if I had looked harder. Not a bad booby prize! I have a well earned day off tomorrow after working all weekend and I am off to Rye Harbour for a day of natural history.
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There is a blue shield-bug Canthophorus impressus on Bastard-toadflax but I think it only occurs where the foodplant grows in big patches, e.g. on Salisbury Plain. Always worth grubbing around though whenever you see the foodplant.