SPRING is starting to make itself felt across the district and many plants are coming out of their winter dormancy, spreading fresh green leaves to help brighten up the world. Insects are also starting to emerge.

Some insects will have spent the winter as adults hidden deep within leaf litter or burrowed into the depths of a rotting log, away from the worst of the frosts, whilst others will have also hidden away from frost but as more robust larval forms. Other species use more dormant stages of their lifecycle, to weather out the winter and will have spent the coldest months discreetly hidden away as either a pupa or as an egg. These latter species have the advantage of not having to feed their bodies during the bleak winter months where there is little food to be found but have the disadvantage that they are less able to quickly react to make the most of sudden upturns in the weather and the bounty these spring days present.

On my most resent bug hunting visit to Habberley Valley it was only the hardiest of insects that I could hope to encounter. I focused my search on the young birch woodlands where there was one animal in particular I was hoping to find and this was the terrestrial caddisfly.

This animal is exceptionally rare nationally but can occur in abundance in Habberley. At this time of year, it is the larva that will be at large and these are the most distinctive stage of this animal lifecycle. The lava, like their much commoner aquatic relatives, protect and camouflage themselves by covering their bodies in small pieces of debris.

They are also small, only 0.5cm in length. This makes them very hard to find but on warm days early in the year the lava make the effort to climb onto the trunks of young birch trees, where they get the benefits of some extra warmth from the sun.

Even so, they are still hard to find. It is always a nice reward to see these rare animals thriving at Habberley and sure enough after a few minutes searching I found a lone individual basking on the birch, with just its two small antenna waving to distinguish it from the multitude of inanimate woody debris found near by.

I have never to my knowledge defiantly seen an adult terrestrial caddisfly. I have looked them up in literature and they look much like any other caddisfly species and you would have to trap and kill one to microscopically examine it to tell which species it was.

I started to look forward to finding some other rare invertebrates as conditions further improve and more insects become active. I will be back at Habberley to look out for are the emergence of the queen hornets, the fantastic prehistoric looking Minator beetles and lovely yellow Brimstone butterflies, all due in the next few weeks. A little later I will be hunting for the increasingly rare white admiral butterflies and the lightning fast emerald green tiger beetles. Come high summer it will be the solitary wasps, including the fascinatingly named bee wolves that will fascinate me, and finally as autumn arrives it will be time to search for the large parasitic wasp species.

Habberley is just one of the nature reserves that we are so fortunate to have in Wyre Forest and each of these wonderful green areas will have its own miniature insect marvels to fuel the interest of all who spare a moment to look throughout the year ahead.