June 2025 News Update

This spring has been vey dry and warm. A benefit to some species, but tough for others.

We have noticed three species that we have not before seen at Shandy’s Brook:

The Dragon Lilly (Dracunculus vulgaris), a Cinnabar Moth caterpillar (Tyria jacobaeae) and a Long Horned Grasshopper (Tettigonia), one of 8,000 species, which is actually a variety of bush cricket.

At forty centimetres long the bloom of the Dragon Lilly is very striking and smells of rotting flesh to attract flies and beetles to pollinate it. Its normal range is the Balkans, so how did this one get to Horsham? It is not the kind of plant that anyone would be likely to want in their garden, and we have never seen one before, so the only explanation we can come up with is that a seed was brought in by a bird.

The Cinnabar Moth is a beautiful moth, common in Britain, but as with so many of our species, is in decline. This is the first example we have seen at Shandy’s Brook, and we are very pleased with its arrival.

March 2025 News Update