Really enjoyed the first summer in my new house & the garden was a big hit with #Megachileligniseca (the Wood-carving Leafcutter bee) 😍 I'm missing them now, but the girls graced my bee hotels with many completed nest tubes & I can't wait to meet their offspring next year 🥹

Bonkers Busway Cambs Guardian Environment Patrick Barkham The British planning system is supposed to be a level playing field, fairly & transparently applied & suitably informed with Colchester City Council & Natural England overseeing that process. Delayed SSSI notification weakens the planning system & severely undermines nature conservation.

Just adding some 2023-2024 wasp images to Flickr and tidying up some species accounts. Here is the new feature for the scarce mason wasp Symmorphus crassicornis with species account, photos of males, females, prey, cuckoo & some known locations. flickr.com/photos/6307520…

Today, we remember all those who lost their lives in the Aberfan disaster. Around 9.15am on the 21 October 1966, Merthyr Vale Colliery tip collapsed and slid onto the village of Aberfan. 116 children and 28 adults were killed.

It’s spooky season, but let’s not make it scary for wildlife! 🎃👻 Fake web decorations can trap and injure our garden wildlife. Stick to sustainable, indoor decorations—and let real spiders do the work outdoors! Share these tips & help spread awareness 👇

Few spaces left for our free Autumnal Woodland Walk led by Ai-Lin at Cosmeston this Mon 28 Oct Celebrate the changing colours of Autumn and learn about the importance of our native trees, how to identify them and collect seeds to plant your own! Book: eventbrite.co.uk/e/autumnal-woo…

Two new additions to the garden today - Winter Semi-slug (Vitrina pellucida) and the ground bug Drymus brunneus. Both common species but very welcome 🙂 Pontyrhyl, Bridgend, VC41

Join The Natur Am Byth project at Newport Wetlands for a free event: Bee's Eye view: soundscapes, imagery and poetry, exploring Wales' rarest bumblebee the Shrill Carder bee delivered by the talented artstation.org.uk #naturambyth #rspb book via: tinyurl.com/beeseyeview

Megachile pluto has been officially listed as an endangered and protected species in Indonesia! This is an important step, and those of you who know me you will understand this is near and dear to my heart. 💪

It's that time of year.....its adult Rugged Oil Beetle (Meloe rugosus) season 🥳 We've received a few reports of sightings over the past few weeks, such as this individual seen by Rob Nixon in his Salisbury garden. Please add any sightings to iRecord. #OilBeetleHunt

Suck-cess! Our medicinal leech breeding programme with Royal Zoological Society of Scotland has produced 20 baby leeches! Only found at 3 sites in Scotland, the rare leech is at risk of extinction due to historic overharvesting for bloodletting & now pollution & habitat loss. So we're giving them some help🧵

Free webinar with Dave Goulson investigating the effectiveness of different bee hotels for UK bees. BENHS Royal Entomological Society Buglife @the_buzz_club UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology AES - amentsoc.org #wildlifegardening #citizenscience #beehotel #bees eventbrite.co.uk/e/1015313920267

Great to be in North Wiltshire today delivering a Rugged Oil Beetle workshop for Wilts Wildlife Trust. After our indoor session, we headed to Morgan's Hill to search of the nocturnal beetles. It was colder than expected and we only found, but one is certainly better than none!

The distinctive egg cocoon of the comb-footed spider Paidiscura pallens, found in leaf litter in the garden today. A common species in Britain but a new species for my garden list. Pontyrhyl, Bridgend, VC41 #spiders #Paidiscurapallens

We've decided to follow the many naturalists on their move from X to bluesky - check us out at collieryspoil.bsky.social. Thanks to all of our Twitter/X followers over the past 9 years who have supported us and helped spread word about the amazing biodiversity of colliery spoil.

After almost a decade, its time to leave X/Twitter and move to bluesky. If you fancy giving me a follow on bluesky, my handle is liamolds.bsky.social. I'll leave you with just some of my favourite invertebrates, all photographed in my home region of South Wales.

🪲✨Free webinar with @timgardiner3 on the 75% decline of glow-worms in Essex. Learn about the causes & solutions to save these iconic beetles! 🪲✨ 📅 24 Feb 2025 | Online 🎟️ Register now: eventbrite.co.uk/e/804017065687 BENHS Royal Entomological Society Coleopterists Society of Britain and Ireland Buglife AES - amentsoc.org

The orange harvestman Scotolemon doriae was first discovered in the UK in Plymouth in 2017. I found it in Bristol in 2023 and it seems to be popping up in different places in the city now. Checking under rocks in wet winter weather seems to be a great way of finding them.

Pet owners accidentally poisoning garden birds! Our latest research finds pet flea treatments (fipronil and imidacloprid) in 100% of blue tit and great tit nests, with nestling mortality higher in the more contaminated nest. SongBird Survival University of Sussex Cannelle Tassin de Montaigu

"100% of the nests contained fipronil, banned in the UK and EU for agricultural use, and 89% contained imidacloprid, banned in the EU as a plant protection product. Both are still widely used in pet flea treatments..." #cats #dogs #birds #pesticides theguardian.com/environment/20….