I popped down to Shrewsbury Park today – my first visit, despite living just over 30mins away! I’m currently a columnist for the 10,000-circular SEnine magazine, writing monthly articles based on local wildlife – birds, mammals, wildflowers and insects – my first natural history love is amateur entomology. This formed the focus of my visit today …

The first area I visited today was the good standing of Thistles on the margin of the large open area containing the fallen tree. One great invertebrate I came across was the Parasitic Fly, Gymnosoma rotundatum. Quite a nice rarity, only really found in Kent, Surrey, Sussex and sometimes London – though it is spreading North now. Please find the image below.

Elsewhere, plenty of beetles such as the Common Red Soldier-beetle Rhagonycha fulva and Thick-kneed Flower Beetle Oedemera nobilis, Hoverflies such as Eupeodes corollae, Merodon equestris and Volucella pellucens and bees such as the White-tailed Bumblebee Bombus lucorum, Red-tailed Bumblebee Bombus lapidarius (I think – it needs catching for certainty) and Common Carder-bee Bombus pascuorum, as well as a White-faced Bee called Hylaeus communis.