Not For The Faint Hearted.

On our regular Wednesday walk Nigel and I went to see if we could find any late Fen Raft Spiders at Pevensey Levels. It is now very late in the season so we went to a ditch where we had seen several spiders a few weeks ago. On scanning the surface foliage we both found an adult spider each as well as a single juvenile. The adults were certainly looking as if they were approaching the end of their life, but the juvenile looked to be in fine condition and ready to help the population of this extremely rare spider going next year!! This will almost certainly be the final sightings of these this year.

Juvenile Fen Raft Spider.

Adult Female Fen Raft Spider.

With just a couple of Red Admirals seen along with small numbers of Common Darter and Migrant Hawkers the only other insect of interest was a Hornet seen on ivy just before we got back to the cars.

Hornet on ivy.