Insects of Nailsea

The rural town of Nailsea lies on the south side of the Yeo Valley in North Somerset, about 10 km west of Bristol and 5 km east of the coastal town of Clevedon on the Severn Estuary (OS Ref. ST 475 705, elevation above mean sea level approx. 25-100 m).

The Nailsea locality has many different wildlife habitats, including pasture and arable farmland, deciduous and coniferous woodland, hedgerows, rough grassland and scrub, marshland, ponds, streams and other water courses. In the town itself there are remnants of old woodland, together with substantial areas of parkland, playing fields, allotments and private gardens, as well as flower-beds and shrubberies in the shopping centre and car-parks, all of which support a diverse and fascinating assemblage of plants, insects and other wildlife (see References: Smith, 2007).

Nailsea has been an agricultural community for much of its history, but the town also has a rich industrial heritage from stone quarrying, coal mining and glass making. Farming and the industrial activities of the past have all left there mark on the landscape and account for much of the present-day habitat diversity of the area. There are links at the bottom of this page which give more information on the local history of Nailsea and the various wildlife conservation activities in and around the town.

Keeping records of the animals and plants found in a particular locality is a fundamental part of wildlife conservation. Over a period of time, such records can provide a measure of changes in the size and distribution of wildlife populations, from which the need or success of conservation can be judged. I have kept records of insects found in Nailsea and its surroundings (as well as other regions of the UK) for several years. Beetles (Coleoptera) are my own particular interest but I also record many species belonging to other insect groups. The records are assigned to OS 100 m squares with dates precise to day, and include development stage, numbers of insects seen, methods, comments and other details. I use MapMate biological recording software to store this information.

For ease of presentation, I have extracted my MapMate records as simple distribution maps. The Nailsea base map currently installed in MapMate, on which records are plotted, is a slightly outdated OS map of the Nailsea area which pre-dates the Elm Farm and Yeo Valley housing developments on the east side of Lodge Lane at the East End of Nailsea (cf., the reference map, Fig. 3, which includes these developments). A typical record distribution map is shown in Fig. 1. Each red circle on the map indicates the presence (i.e., one or more records) of the insect species in the corresponding OS 100 m square. There remain, of course, many areas in and around the town for which I have no insect records. Furthermore, my existing records are somewhat biased towards the East End of Nailsea (see Fig. 2), since this is where I live and naturally spend most of my spare time. The simple mapping I have used takes no account of 'missing' sites or bias in recording frequency. Consequently, the absence of records at particular sites or areas on a map does not mean that the insect species is necessarily absent from those areas.

The following links provide thumbnail images of most of the recorded insects, each with its scientific name in standard binomial form of genus and species (shown in italics) and its vernacular or common name if one exists. Where an insect species has no recognised common name, I have given the common name of the family or group to which it belongs (enclosed in square brackets). I have also included body-length (b.) or wing-span (w.), in mm, as a guide to size. All photographs are adult insects unless stated otherwise. A larger image of an insect can be displayed in a pop-up window by clicking the thumbnail; its record distribution map can be viewed in a separate pop-up window by clicking the associated  button.

For the beetles (Coleoptera), an image and description within a red border indicates a species which is becoming increasingly rare in Britain and classified by Hyman & Parsons (1992) as Nationally Notable (Scarce) Category A or Nationally Notable (Scarce) Category B: denoted under the image by Na (= Notable A) or Nb (= Notable B).