The Lyons Share

Last Saturday I ran a course for the Freshwater Habitats Trust's PondNet project up at Chailey Common. I've just got around to identifying everything. We only really had time to sample four ponds in detail but we also managed a quick diversion to a number of other sites around the common. We started with a couple of small man-made ponds full of Bog Pondweed, Floating Club-rush and Marsh St. John's-wort. These ponds are very acidic, with dark peaty water so we expected to find the more specialist aquatic invertebrates. I told everyone we would see the distinctive Notonecta obliqua, the most distinctive of our four backswimmers and it was indeed the commonest bug in the pools. We actually recorded all four of our backswimmers in these four pools. In the above image one of our (around 40) species of water boatman (this one of two species of Hesperocorixia recorded in this one pond) can be seen in the background. Most backswimmers are much bigger than water-boatmen, it helps to be bigger than things that you eat!

Nice to see some Marsh St. John's-wort and Floating Club-rush.

The first pool had two species of Dytiscus in and it was nice to be able to key these out in the field. Thanks to Fran Southgate for this photo of the commoner Dytiscus marginalis on the left and Dytiscus semisulcatus on the right. However the nationally scarce Hydrochus angustatus was perhaps the most interesting being a species I have not recorded before.

One pool had an adult 13-spot Ladybird in it and I'm pretty sure that this is also the larva but it looks a little bedraggled.

This is the most Floating Crystalwort Riccia fluitans (one of  our few aquatic liverworts) I have ever seen. You usually see a few little plants floating on the surface, not a huge mass like this!

We called in and had a look at the Marsh Gentians on Romany Ridge that have responded to the grazing there. A great success.

But the highlight for me has to be a diversion to Lane End to look for the Mud Snails that were relocated there last year after not being recorded for many years. The dried up woodland pool they were found in looked quite unsuitable for anything else. In fact next to nothing else was found in there but we did see two Mud Snails! This is typical for this scarce species. It was very dark and dingy in the woods by this time so apologies for the photo. Note to self: next time look for this first. Look at the state of the kit!

A big thank you to everyone who attended. a full species list will be send to the Freshwater Habitats Trust and the records synced with the SxBRC as always (I've nearly entered 10,000 records already this year!)

So, here is the full list which includes 14 aquatic bugs, 15 aquatic beetles but only two molluscs (acid sites are not so good for shell building). Here are my records for the day including a few random things like Devil's Fingers that are nothing to do with aquatic life.

A couple of weeks ago at the annual Sussex Biological Recorder's Seminar I was approached by Brad Scott (above) during lunch who said "thanks ever so much for that course on Grasses, Sedges and Rushes that you ran several years ago, it really kick-started my interest in natural history." Now if I tell you that since this course, Brad has been on my Common Woodland Bryophytes course and has almost seen more mosses and liverworts than me now (have a look at the PSL rankings for bryophytes) it starts to put things in perspective. Yet this is just the start of Brad's natural history adventures!

It's exactly this kind of inspiration that I always hope my courses will provide. It's certainly not going to be everyone that gets the bug like this but even if we reach one or two people a year in this way we are making a difference. So, I asked Brad if he would mind writing a few words about his experience with the Trust's courses and this is what he put together...

So why not book on one of the many fantastic courses Sussex Wildlife Trust has to offer? I can't promise that you'll become a Ghostbuster but you will certainly learn something about the amazing wildlife of Sussex and have a great time in the process. Call 01273 497561 for more info (I resisted saying it!).

Here we have the liverwort, Scapania undulata, one of many scarce bryophytes I saw yesterday in a ghyll in Long Wood near Wakehurst Place. I think it looks a bit like mushy peas. Here is the same liverwort with the striking cranefly Tipula vittata.

Perhaps the rarest moss we saw yesterday was the strange and tiny Tetradontium bownianum but it is so small and grows in such shade that a photo wasn't an option. Second rarest was this tiny liverwort growing on a rock in a ghyll stream Jungermannia pumila, another species with a very north western distribution.

This a great big patch of the pleurocarp Hyocomium armoricum, another species of moss I have never seen before. Opposite-leaved Golden Saxifrage can be seen flowering along the ghyll too.

I finally connected with Hay-scented Buckler-fern!

Finally, not rare but one of the few common shield bugs I didn't have a photo of. This is the Bronze Shield Bug Troilus luridus.

Is one way of describing this bizarre looking creature. As for the four men who discovered it today up at Ditchling Beacon, carved from root vegetables might be more appropriate. Looking somewhere between the A-Team and Boyz II Men, we hit the site with all the natural history knowledge we had and we hit it hard. I got the bryophytes out of the way first and everyone else got lots of new species. I've featured these many times before and as I anticipate Steve Gale writing a blog with lots of photos in, I have left space for a link here. It was nice to show people lots of new species though, Ditchling Beacon is great for chalk-grassland bryophytes.

Things started getting exciting for me when we went sieving moss though. We hooked up with another of the bizarre harvestman Anelasmocephalus cambridgei shown above. This one was much paler, exactly the same colour of the chalky soil. I recorded four new species, all from sieving. Two ground bugs being Cymus claviculus and Drymus ryei. We also found this Drymus brunneus which seems to have fungus bursting out of every orifice. Ouch.

Just when I thought I had ran out of interesting specimens I recorded a male Walckaenaeria antica (my fourth in the genus and 213th spider). Finally, what I thought was a Bembidion tuned out to be a carabid tick. Syntomus truncatellus! A cracking day out, more of this please! Sadly though I was hugely gripped by the size of Steve's club sandwich and that is not a euphemism for anything, there is just nothing worse than ordering the wrong meal.

More mosses I'm afraid. Another day out on reserves with Tom Ottley. This time at Ditchling Beacon and again we get a thumbs up for our management in terms of bryophytes. I added six new mosses to my list and a lichen. This first one wasn't a new one for me but is a chalk-grassland specialist. Fissidens dubius.

We have lots of the attractive moss Hylocomium splendens.

And Scapania aspera is all over the place in small patches. This liverwort is a key species for the site and the only species that makes up the 'southern hepatic mat' that occurs at Ditchling Beacon.

I was finally able to put a name to this golden pleurocarp, it's Campylium protensum.

Last week I was out again with the bryologists Sharon Pilkington and Tom Ottley. This time at Marline Valley, my first real opportunity to walk the length of the ghyll stream there and see some of the rarer mosses and liverworts along its length. Now this is tough going. The valley gets quite steep while fallen trees and 'course woody debris' make progress slow. A lot of recent rainfall made the waders a good decision but slippy clay makes climbing the valley sides very difficult which you have to do often to avoid fallen trees. You really have to want to go down here. However, the first things I have to say is just how stunningly beautiful this place is. What is also great is that it's so untouched. There are no signs of people or management except the inevitable odd bit of litter and in this case the bryophytes are ticking along just fine under natural processes. It's hard to see how this could ever have been different. A real wild oasis just on the edge of Hastings. Waterfalls, sandrocks, base-rich flushes, plunge pools, hard bottomed sections, iron ore seepages. This stretch of stream is really quite something, every turn seems to throw up something new. Wild Garlic is showing its head and the banks are sometimes covered in Greater Woodrush.

This is the nationally scarce Fissidens rivularis growing along rocks on the edge of the stream. 

The rather strange looking moss Hookeria lucens grows all along the steep sides of the ghyll.

There really is no management we can do to enhance the bryophytes here. All we really need to do is monitor the species and keep an eye on any potential pollution events. I saw 12 bryophytes new to my list putting me on 4168 species!

On the 9th January I met up with Sharon Pilkington and Tom Ottley to look at some of the rare bryophytes growing on the sandrocks at Eridge Rocks. It was an interesting day, I managed to see seven species I hadn't seen before (4156) including some quite scarce ones for this region. It was good to talk about the management of these often over-looked plants and to see that we are mostly getting it right too. Tom thought that the rocks were probably looking the best they had done in the last 50 years for this rare assemblage of tiny plants. A few tweaks that we could make include clearing brambles from some of the boulders and removing some of the lower branches from evergreen shrubs to let the dappled sunlight that these plants demand (direct sunlight or complete shade are a sure way to eradicate most of the species).
Here are a few of the species we saw. This first was perhaps the rarest of the mosses, Dicranum scottianum (we only saw three tiny plants) but I was particularly pleased with this shot. It is taken with the lens looking directly up the side of the sandrocks. It was an incredibly dull, overcast day which I think the Coolpix 4500 does well in.
This TINY liverwort is known Scapania umbrosa and was yet another species the bryologists were quite excited by. Nearby, this boulder, with a birch growing from it, was also a hot spot for a few scarce bryophytes.
Including this endearing little acrocarp (did I just say that). Tiny luminous-green sea urchins spring to mind. It's yet another species that can thrive on the sandrock, Campylopus fragilis.
A phrase that kept popping up in the species accounts in the literature for these scarce species was 'hyper oceanic', essentially meaning of a far north-westerly distribution close to the Atlantic. In the Weald, we have many of these species, particularly on the sandrocks, but they are often very rare in the region (where they might be common in the north-west). It must be a specific set of climatic and substrate conditions that are provided here but it is something well worth holding on to. Without the appropriate management at Eridge we would certainly lose these plants to succession as Holly, Yew and Rhododendron cast their dense winter shade over the rocks. This is a great example of monitoring and management working hand in hand with the specialists feeding their knowledge and advice straight to us at the Trust in the field. If we want to hold on to rare and scarce species that have such specific requirements, we cannot rely on a 'one-size fits all' approach to their management and natural processes here would be damaging. Species-assemblage focused management is therefore vital if we are to maintain the more unusual plants and animals at Eridge. Small scale management like this is often referred to as 'gardening' by some conservationists these days. Call it what you like, I see it as exactly what is required to maintain a rare and precious assemblage and that's exactly why I have conservation written through me like a stick of rock!

Firstly, a huge thank you to Niall (above right), Sean and Mary Basquille for their kindness and hospitality that made my first trip to Ireland so much fun (having the loan of a Mercedes for a week was pretty rad, I can tell you). I saw so much in Ireland that I will split it into three posts, this first concentrating on the Burren (thanks to Liam Jones for the above photo).

My first experience of the Burren was nothing other than magical. We pulled over in a completely random place as soon as we hit the edge of the limestone pavement and immediately spotted Bloody Cransebill everywhere. It really is one of the commonest plants there. This was immediately followed by numerous Transparent Burnets. I was photographing this Rustyback Fern when a Microdon mutabilis landed in front of me (a nationally scarce hoverfly). 

My head was starting to spin when I spotted Fly Orchids, Mountain Everlasting, Helicella itala (one of the commonest snails there) and what had to be Spring Gentian that had gone over. As I was trying to get a photo of this last, a tiny reddish moth flew past me and landed. Least Minor!

Back to the gentian and I walked right up to a very active Anania funebris (no photos) and then found several Small Plume-moths (again no photos). This was a really amazing hour and was perhaps the only real sun we caught all week. It was the only real chance we had to see any day flying insects.

Perhaps the most beautiful flower I have ever seen is the Spring Gentian. Common enough in the Burren but we were way too late for the vast majority of flowers and we really only found a few right at the end of our stay that were still in flower.

Also mostly gone over is the fantastic Mountain Avens (with Blue Hair-grass in the lower picture).

Other ticks included Shrubby Cinquefoil below and Lesser Meadow-rue (no photo).

And it was great to see species like Northern Bedstraw again after so many years. I must go north more.

During the second day in the Burren, we climbed two peaks and got some amazing views. It's not hard to take dramatic shots of wildflowers with amazing scenery in the background in Ireland. Here we have Hoary Rock-rose.

This Brittle Bladder-fern was also a tick for me.

I added a few new bryophytes, including a small amount of this stunning bright purple-red liverwort, Pleurozia purpurea.

Coming down a series of staggering terraces, each one more dramatic than the last, was a really memorable experience. Out of all the shots I took In Ireland, including all of the wildlife, it's these two that I like the most! I have never seen such a bizarre and strange landscape.

The next exciting instalment sees us head north to Connemara.