Wildlife experts have uncovered a rare colony of insects, described as the 'find of the millennium' by a leading nature magazine.
Entomologists Mike Edwards, Peter Hodge, Graham Collins and the council's Nature Reserves officer Andy Phillips had been carrying out a number of wildlife surveys in the newly declared Hastings Country Park Nature Reserve when they made the amazing find.
This is the first time the sickle-bearing bush-cricket or Phaneroptera falcata, to give it its Latin title, has bred in this country. The find was considered to be hugely significant by British Wildlife magazine.
A change in the climate is thought to be the probable reason for an influx of new visitors, which also includes a new species of bumblebee called Bombus hypnorum and the ivy bee or Colletes hederae.
Our ivy bees are even being used in genetic research to find out from where they originated. Another species that bred regularly for the first time in Britain on the cliffs of Hastings Country Park in 1923, is the black redstart. Three to five pairs still nest on the cliffs and another two or three pairs nest on buildings and other cliff faces in Hastings. As the British population of this rare breeding bird number between 80 and 100 pairs, ours are of national importance.
Andy Phillips and council ecologist Murray Davidson are organising a comprehensive series of bird surveys as part of the Hastings Country Park Restoration Project to help us monitor the effects of new management on the wildlife in the nature reserve. This also includes a breeding bird survey of the cliffs and a black redstart project. This project involves a more detailed survey of their nest sites and breeding success as well as the ringing of the young by a licensed surveyor. Ringing enables us to find out where birds spend the winter and if they come back to breed at the same site.
To find out more about sickle-bearing bush-crickets, ivy bees and black redstarts and to keep in touch with all the latest nature conservation and wildlife news in Hastings visit www.wildhastings.org.uk.
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This page last updated: 06/02/2007