Central European mixed forests

European Mantis was observed six times around Szczerbice and Przyszowice between September 15 and 26, most recently on September 26. September marks the start of mating season when females feed heavily and lay their eggs before dying with the first hard frost, making this observation a sign of the species' reproductive window in the region.

Eurasian Hummingbird Hawkmoth was observed on 2026-09-27 in Trynek Cichociemnych, Gliwice. This late-season record marks the tail end of autumn migration into Central Europe before the species withdraws southward for winter.

Japanese knotweed was recorded on 2026-09-15 near Katowice and on 2026-09-12 in multiple sites including Tarnowskie Góry and Katowice. The plant produces white flowers in late summer and early autumn, the phenological window during which fragmenting rhizomes present peak dispersal risk, particularly along riverbanks where human activity may carry root segments downstream.

Giant goldenrod, a North American invasive species, was recorded on September 20 in Piekary Śląskie, one of four goldenrod sightings around Gliwice and Tarnowskie Góry between September 12 and 20. Like Canada goldenrod also present in the region, it flowers in late summer and competes aggressively with native vegetation through both rhizomal spread and seed production.

Pallid Harrier was reported on 2026-09-20 at Katowice--Brynów, confirmed as notable by eBird reviewers. The species breeds in eastern Europe and migrates from August to September toward Africa and India, with Central Europe lying along its migration route, making early-to-mid September sightings consistent with southbound passage.

Hen Harrier was reported on 2026-09-23 at Księży Las--pola, confirmed as notable by eBird reviewers. Hen Harriers range across Central European mixed forests as migratory residents, appearing on autumn surveys as birds move along their continental distribution.

A Green Snaketail (*Ophiogomphus cecilia*) was recorded twice on August 27 in the Bolina valley in Katowice, the two sightings a few hundred metres apart on the stretch of stream and old mine ponds between Giszowiec and Janów-Nikiszowiec. It is a dragonfly of sandy lowland rivers, and the ground it was seen over is about as far from that as Upper Silesia gets. The adult is hard to mistake once seen well. It is a large dragonfly, 50 to 60 millimetres long, with an apple-green face, green eyes and a green thorax marked with thin black lines. The abdomen is black with a broken run of yellow triangles down the top and widens slightly toward the tip into a modest club. The eyes do not meet on top of the head; a small ridge sits between them, which is the mark of the clubtail family. Freshly emerged animals show no green at all and take on the colour only as they mature. Males hold perches on sunlit stones, sandbanks and bare branches over shallow, fast water and patrol short beats low over the surface. They avoid shaded banks. The larva is where the species' needs are set. It is a burrower, built with a flat, shovel-like lower lip and digging front legs, and it spends two to four years buried in the sand or fine gravel of a flowing river bed, taking whatever small invertebrates pass. It digs in almost the moment it touches bottom, at any current speed. That is why the species drops out of rivers that are straightened, dredged, lined with concrete or smothered in silt: whatever the water chemistry, there is nothing left to burrow into. The EU protects it under the Habitats Directive, and the loss of sandy river beds is the main threat named in its accounts. The Bolina is a regulated and polluted stream for most of its length. The ponds strung along it, Staw Bolina among them, formed out of mining, and the greatest variety of life on the stream is found at its headwaters and around those ponds, which is where both records sit. Whether a river dragonfly is breeding anywhere in that system is a question two sightings cannot answer. Adults of this species regularly wander several kilometres from the river they emerged in, into sunny clearings and along heated paths, before returning to water to breed. August 27 sits inside the normal June-to-September flight season, a few weeks past the late-July to mid-August peak. So a dragonfly whose whole early life depends on clean, loose river sand was flying over a valley that mining shaped. Anyone walking the paths around the Bolina ponds on a sunny September afternoon can still look for a green-fronted dragonfly the length of a finger, sitting flat on bare ground or a stone, and know what it takes to make one.