Showing posts with label Isle of Wight. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Isle of Wight. Show all posts

Song to the Siren

Posted by Graeme Lyons , Sunday, 6 April 2025 07:49

I just had a quick break on the Isle of Wight before my field season started and it's amazing how much things have changed for me in just two short years. For a start, I planned the entire trip to coincide with the big low spring tides. I could not pull myself away from the coast. I barely did any terrestrial recording and my hands were barely out of the water. Two years ago though, my back was so bad, I could not have coped with turning that many rocks day-after-day, or netted that much sea weed. That's all in the past now.

I have felt my attention being pulled away from the land to the sea over the course of the last year, writing the book played a part in this but the main culprit is the unrelenting lure of the nudibranchs! On this trip I found two more species for my list, bringing me up to 14 species for the British Isles. We spent a lot of time with Mark Telfer and family in the rock pools, and probably spent more time at Bembridge Ledges than anywhere else. I absolutely loved that site, so many turnable rocks! First up was Palio nothus, a a really small green nudibranch that I only found by sweeping Wireweed and then sorting through the contents in a tray. Close-focus binoculars really help here as these things are tiny.

You really can see how small this is next to a Pheasant Shell above. 

The other cracker was Amphorina farrani which I saw at Bembridge and Freshwater Bay, again by sweeping Wireweed and sorting through the material.


At Freshwater Bay, using the same method, I also found St. John's Jellyfish Calvadosia cruxmelitensis! This is only the second time I have seen a stalked jellyfish that I have got to species.


There's always so much going on in rock pools that I just don't have a clue about, I dismissed this thing as a barnacle scar but Mark looked at it under the hand lens and it's clearly alive. I needed some help on this one from the Porcupine Marine Natural History Society, as I would never have realised this was actually a bryozoan! Plagioecia patina.


And I figured this might have been some kind of a coral, but I was really surprised to find out that this is a young Deadman's Fingers Alcyonium digitatum! Look what this becomes (the second photo is from over a decade ago during a SxIFCA fish survey).


And I found this on the first night. A stoloniferan, a type of cnidarian. Amazingly just as I found this the marine biologist Roger Herbert appeared out of nowhere and helped me confirm this as Sarcodityon catenatum.

On the way back to the shore, we found a rock pool that was full of Aeolidiella alderi, there was five under one rock! This is the 3rd nudibranch of the trip.

And in the same rockpool was an adult Aeolidia philomenae. This was huge! Four or five times bigger than all the other ones I have seen. The fourth nudi of the trip.

Here is Bembridge Ledges itself at dawn...

Then for something really exciting; an entirely new habitat for me. Eel-grass or see-grass beds! We went to Seaview and met up with local expert Theo Vickers. I found a couple of new fish for me, Painted Goby and this Straight-nosed Pipefish, putting me at top fish lister on the PSL site! This green pipefish is a real eel-grass specialist. It's about 11 years since I was briefly joint top fish lister last — PSL is all about the long game.

Also there were these Peacock Fanworms Sabella pavonina, another lifer! Really common there.

And a few really large Hairy Hermit Crabs Pagurus cuanensis.

This absolute unit of a Sea Hare!

Loads of these King Scallops.

And the fifth nudibranch of the week, Acanthodoris pilosa. Found floating upside down in the incoming tide.

Look at this incredibly strange habitat! I absolutely loved it there.

And just because I can, here is some Tim Buckley. 

Don't panic though, although I am about to buy a wetsuit and get into snorkelling, I have not forsaken dry land and grown gills just yet. Just yesterday, I found a super rare spider at Graffham Common and a beetle new to Sussex but that is a story for another day...

Wight Light/Wight Heat

Posted by Graeme Lyons , Wednesday, 5 April 2023 07:06

As my field season hurtles towards me, I better get part 2 of the trip to Isle of Wight wrapped up before I lose the window. This is mainly inverts and plants and is mostly based on two fantastic days out in the field with Mark Telfer. On the second day, Mark and I met up with Iain Outlaw, and as we got to the undercliff target area, before they had even said "here we are", I shouted "OIL-BEETLE!" And that's basically how the two days went.

Thanks to Mark, it turns out this one was a lifer for me! Black Oil-beetle, Meloe proscarabaeus my fourth oil beetle! So pleased to finally connect with this species. This male was much bigger than I thought it would be and very mobile.


Soon after this I was looking at the target species, the bryophyte Philonotis marchica.

Yet despite how rare and restricted this is, it wasn't the bryophyte lifer on the cliff face I got most excited about. The cliff was covered in hornwort, and I have never seen a hornwort before! This is Phaeoceros laevis! Here is the female with the horns.

And the male plants.

Earlier that morning, Iain took us into Shanklin to see the incredible fungus Coccomyces delta that grows on the old leaves of Bay. Such weird triangular structures, spot the four-sided one doing its own thing. I salute it.

And a quick stop to a churchyard for a naturalised clubmoss tick, Krauss's Clubmoss.

I covered three quarries over the trip. A couple with Mark and Iain but also I had a look at a quarry down by the Needles with Karen and that was a great little spot. A new hectad record for Phaeocedus braccatus was a real find!

And the ridiculously common Agyneta mollis. Two new hectads for this on the island brings the post 1992 hectads for this spider to at least 98, it's hurtling towards not even being Nationally Scarce at this rate (I had it in a playing field by my house this week).

And a Scotina, but unfortunately I lost the specimen. All are rare on the island and given I was in a chalk pit, this is quite likely to have been Scotina palliardii. I will have to go back! I got a couple of money spiders new to the island at various locations over the week, Micrargus laudatus and Parapelecopsis nemoralioides.

Rewind to a few days earlier when I went to visit Mark and his magnificent new garden. He got me four new bryophytes, really by hammering some of the really small acrocarps. But it was a new pseudoscorpion that was most exciting for me, Pselaphochernes scorpioides.

And a new fungus! This is Xylaria cinerea.

Then on to Ventnor Botanic Gardens. Mark had found this ant new to Britain sometime before my visit, it's Tapinoma ibericum. It's so numerous there that I spotted it on the first evening when Karen and I walked up to the gardens only to find them closing and I noticed it on the walls by the toilet block without realising the significance. They form impressive long lines.

A millipede that's only found here is, this one is particularly pale, Cylindroiulus apenninorum.

But Mark breaths first for Britain, so it didn't take long before he found one in the form of this weevil, under a rock. Likely to be associated with Cork Oak, Mark says it's in the genus Echinodera.

And another lifer in the car park for me. The rather odd looking reticulated slug, Tandonia cristata.

Karen and I went back to the gardens on a rainy day, when I discovered this fenced-off tunnel and just how good at light gathering the camera is on my new phone (I upgraded after nearly seven years). This was pitch black to the naked eye. The open end apparently comes out half way up a cliff, so no spidering in the for me.

And I turned a couple of stones and got the shelled slug we missed first time, Mark says it's most likely. Ear Shelled Slug Testacella haliotidea.

And no trip to the Isle of Wight is complete without visiting the Needles. I love the soils here.

So that's it for the part 2. What a week. It was a really great pan-species listing holiday, that was also in part research for the book on pan-species listing I am now 50,000 words into. A HUGE thanks to Mark for giving me so much of his time and knowledge, it was so much fun! 

Yet my field season has started and I didn't quite get this out in time before I hit this period of high pressure (today is day four of a straight run of field work and I've already walked 19 miles since Sunday). I have made over 1000 records in the last three days and have just hit 200,000 records. So I think my next post will be a celebration of biological recording. I will leave you with my 2nd favourite photo of the week, a Carrion Crow that joined the ferry about a fifth of the way across and stayed with the boat all the way to the island!

Red, Wight and Purple

Posted by Graeme Lyons , Monday, 27 March 2023 16:08

On a clear day, you can just about see the eastern end of the Isle of Wight from the higher parts of Brighton. Tantalisingly close. I have only ever been once before on a day trip in 2011. This time though, Karen and I had a week out there and, as Mark Telfer has recently moved to the island, I spent a couple of days in the field with him (and one day with Iain Outlaw). Where to begin? Nothing, quite competes with the moment you realise a wild Red Squirrel is about to run up and feed right out of your hand! So I'll start there. I was so excited to see them! Here are some more shots and a very cute video.


This all started at a place called Alverstone Mead when I was struck by how tame the Great Tits were, I put my hand out to show the nearest tit that I didn't have anything and I was gobsmacked when it instantly landed on my hand. I tried again and it did it again, we rushed back to the car for some nuts. 

When tits attack!

Enough of that. Rock-pooling was pretty awesome actually. I saw four Solar-powered Sea Slugs Elysia viridis (at both Castle Cove and Freshwater Bay). I'm quite taken with these beauties, they seem to be quite common on the island. Purple is so well represented in rock pool life!

Castle Cove was pretty cool, Mark said his favourite thing to see in a rock pool would be a sea spider. I rarely see them, so wasn't expecting to find one under the next rock I turned. More Snakelocks Anemones than I have seen before, too.

The west side of Freshwater Bay has wonderful rock pools. Found this huge Painted Topshell there.

And this was a lifer. A Four-horned Spider Crab.

A few Small-headed(?) Clingfish. The overall fish count was low, with Rock Goby the commonest species, Worm Pipefish and a Ballan Wrasse were the only other fish. I didn't actually see a Shanny!

A White Tortoiseshell Limpet was nice. 

But what I really wanted was a nudibranch! There were a few Yellow-plumed Sea Slugs and my back was getting very sore from turning rocks, when I noticed a very bright orange and purple blob on the underside of a rock. Could it be a nudibranch? Yes! And it was an awesome one I hadn't seen before! I am pretty sure this can be nothing other than Edmundsella pedata. Just look at it (try Googling the name too)! It was only about 5 mm long and was firmly stuck to the underside of a very deep rock, so I couldn't properly submerge it for a decent photo. The only way I could take photos of it unfurled was by pouring water on it continuously with my Ferrero Rocher container. This is my 7th nudibranch. 


This is what it looks like out of the water. So be prepared when looking for these to really scour the underside of the rocks with your eyes - they're often smaller than you think. I might have to leave the plants and inverts for another post, with nearly 800 records made, we sure did get around the island. This is an amazing place for wildlife and a great place for a holiday.

To be continued...

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