I attended the British Arachnological Society field event that Andy Philips and Chris Bentley organised yesterday at Rye Harbour. It was frustratingly windy but we did see the scarce Sitticus inexpectus which I saw in exactly the same place two years ago. The real excitement in this spot though were two really small spiders. The RDB3 Lathys stigmatista but best of all a tiny money spider that I took home to identify which turned out to be yet another shingle specialist. The RDB2 Trichoncus affinis. No photos of these two though.
I also connected with one of my bogey plants. Red Hemp-nettle! I don't know how I have managed to miss this shingle specialist for so many years but I have seen it now, albeit only in leaf. We looked at an area of upper saltmarsh next to Limekiln Cottage for the Na spider Enoplognatha mordax and Chris found one. The first live male he had seen but it wasn't up for a photo so I only managed this blurred shot.
Turning stones over in this area was quite productive. We found Bombardier Beetle, my first Anchomenus dorsalis and this Cassida nobilis. Now this is interesting because I have gone decades without seeing one of these and I only saw my first the day before at Seaford Head!
At the time of writing, my list stands at 4323 species and my spider list at 182.
When was the last time you saw SEVEN species of vertebrate you hadn't seen before in the UK? I can't remember. I also now that this time yesterday, I hadn't heard of a Reticulated Dragonet but I saw one today. I got up at the ungodly hour of 4.00 am to go and volunteer with Chichester Harbour Conservancy and Sussex Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority with some of their annual monitoring of fish populations. I was expecting a few new species, but six new fish and two new crustaceans was a real treat. I haven't been that excited since I first started moth trapping years ago!
Other highlights included three Great Pipefish all around 30 cm long. I also keyed out the spider crab you can see in the image below. There are several different species but this one was the Long-legged Spider Crab. I saw some unidentified pipefish under rocks on Anglesey years ago but these were a totally different looking beast.Much more like the sea horses they are related to.
Here is one of the beautiful Sand Smelt as it was being measured and put back in the sea.
I hadn't realised how many gobies there were, but I learnt how to identify Black Goby today. New fish number four!
We caught quite a few young Pollack. My fifth new fish of the day.
The final fish I hadn't seen before were Herring but I didn't get a photo of those. We also saw Common Goby, Shanny, Sea Bass, Long-spined Sea Scorpion and this Mackerel.
I picked up a very odd looking shrimpy thing which keyed out easily to Chameleon Prawn. Yet another new species! On the way back we saw a Little Tern, six Common Seals and two Grey Seals (one Grey is visible to the bottom right of this photo). A big thank you to Ed Rowsell and colleagues for the opportunity. I'll definitely be going back.
But that's only six vertebrates I hear you say. Well, the 7th was at the opposite end of the county in the Cuckmere. I just went and twitched a first summer male American Golden Plover that Matt Eade found yesterday. A nice bird and one of my bogies! So, after what seems like a very long day I end the day on 4314 species.
Shaun and I called in at Knepp to look on the log stack for Pyrrhidium sanguineum that I dipped out on at the recording weekend and stumbled across this amazing chrysalis of a Silver-washed Fritillary. I had no idea they were so spectacular. The silver projections look like droplets of liquid metal. I have never come across one of these before. In fact I have never seen the early stages of any of the fritillaries before. I was quite fascinating by it. The droplets, I presume, appear as holes in the chrysalis (disruptive camouflage?) by reflecting the surrounding habitat back at the observer.
If you look at it from the front, it's even stranger!
That was when I noticed it looked like some strange creature hanging upside down. So I flipped the image! What a strange looking thing. It totally eclipsed the fact that we saw the longhorn beetle...
So here is one of the three Pyrrhidium sanguineum that we saw there. This being my 33rd longhorn beetle. Only recorded in Sussex once last year for the first time, it seems it is rapidly colonising Sussex. Smaller than I thought (this one was a really small female, the male ran off!) but stunning all the same.
I can hardly believe it but I have the dead specimen sitting on my desk in front of me. I went to Graffham Common with Rachael today to show her the heathland restoration we have been doing there. In the wet heath area I was looking for Marsh Clubmoss, I spotted one plant but then about 10 cm away my eye was drawn to a dead butterfly stuck to a Round-leaved Sundew leaf. It was a small fritillary. At this time of year it had to be one of the good ones. A quick call to Michael Blencowe to check it wasn't a wind up and I realised it had to be Pearl-bordered Fritillary. What the heck?! Where on Earth has this come from? What a strange way to find it too! Sadly, it's hard to imagine another one turning up. There are no violets on site as far as I know and neither are there ever likely to be with the soil types present. It's just likely to be a freak occurrence. But still. Where did it come from?!
I was hoping to find a few invertebrates associated with bare ground, early colonisers of the new habitat we have created but this was something else! Only four months ago this was a conifer plantation with a tiny proportion of relict wet and dry heath. It's hard to imagine how this butterfly could have made it to the spot prior to the felling. A very exciting find. I hope the sundew appreciated the meal.
Other highlights today included the saproxylic hoverfly Microdon analis, the longhorn Pachytodes cerambyciformis (both new to the site) plus another Diaperis boleti.
On Wednesday I had a fantastic day at Iping Common with our new Voluntary Trainee Ecologist, Shaun Pryor. I am setting up a new invertebrate survey of bare ground, which originally stemmed from the Heath Tiger Beetle release project there. There are many purpose made scrapes, created using a turf-stripper, that produce bare ground that many species require. However, it soon became clear that we don't know all that much about what uses these scrapes. And what scrapes are valued (location, size, age etc etc). So we have mapped them and are putting together a list of 'bare ground species' that can be surveyed. By the end of the summer I will have species lists for each of the scrapes and using GIS can look for patterns across the site. It will also help us decide where next winter's scrapes go.
After a long but excellent day we had recorded Heath Tiger Beetles on six different scrapes. A nice surprise was the awesome jumping spider Aelurillus v-insignitis which we found on about five different scrapes. I also recorded two more Anisodactylus nemorivagus (one of which I netted in mid air) but there were very few other carabids. Xerolycosa nemoralis (yet another nationally scarce spider) was abundant on the scrapes and a single female Alopecosa barbipes was recorded. Aculeates were very thin on the ground, with only Sphecodes sp. being common and a single Nomada sp. However, it was the tiny (3mm) jumping spider above that stole the show. Talavera petrensis has not been recorded in Sussex since 1968. It was recorded at Iping and was also known from Ambersham at the same time. We recorded two males on two different scrapes. Despite the size, it's highly distinctive with bright red hairs around the eye and black and white palps. So where has it been for the last 45 years? The answer, right there. It's just that it's easy to get missed when you're 3 mm long and with the exception of the survey we carried out last year, not that many people have been looking! What will we find out there next month?
I just hit 4300 species today.
Rachael and I had a great time in Teesdale, the first time I have been up to that part of the world. I was impressed with the water falls High Force (above) and Low Force (below). The plants were pretty amazing with lots of arctic-alpine species, many of which I haven't seen since I went up into the Cairngorms in 2004.
Spring Gentian, Bird's-eye Primrose, Globeflower, Mountain Pansy, Wood Horsetail, Beech Fern and Pyrenean Scurvy-grass were all over the place.
Alpine Bartsia was a new one for me. Any plant with purple flowers AND purple leaves gets my vote.
As was False Sedge which is a key component of the NVC community CG9d (a new NVC community for me too).
Surprises included stumbling across Wood Stitchwort on the walk back down from High Force and also stumbling across this unfortunate Violet Oil Beetle Meloe violaceus. This gravid female had been squashed on a path and the bright orange eggs were all over the place. Amazingly the poor thing was still alive and recalled the end scene from Aliens. I imagined my first encounter with a violet oil beetle would have been a little different to this.
We were too early for many flowering species though such as Spring Sandwort and Yellow Saxifrage. The breeding waders were stunning. I have never seen so many Lapwings, Redshanks, Curlews, Snipe, Common Sandpiper, Oystercatcher and Golden Plover. Oddly though, we didn't see a single bird of prey in the valley. Spotted Flycatchers were one of the commonest passerines too!
We've just got back from four days in Teesdale but before that we spent a great few days at Rachael's folk's new house in Whitley Bay. I hadn't prepared myself for how much wildlife, literally just on their doorstep, we were going to see. Within fifteen minutes of arriving we were sat in the garden when a Spoonbill flew over flying north! the next morning I was up early for a sea watch in the hope of a skua or two but sea watching into the Sun isn't much fun. I was rewarded with a Hen Harrier flying north out to sea being mobbed by terns. Close in Eiders remind you of how far north you are.
I soon discovered that the rocks around St Mary's Lighthouse are pretty good for rockpooling and on Monday at about lunch time a very low tide was due. We headed out and found quite a few goodies but the net that I bought on the sea front lasted me about 5 minutes. The above Common Sea Urchin Echinus esculentus was a new species for me. I caught a Shanny which bit me. We also saw Long-spined Sea Scorpions and Butterfish.
The strange Broad-clawed Porcelain Crab put in a show.
And the first squat lobsters I have seen in almost a decade, this one is Galathea squamifera and looks like the ones I saw on Anglesey in 2003.
Strangest of all though was this 'armoured worm'. I have keyed it out tentatively to Lepidonotus squamatus. The plates are referred to as elytra in Hayward & Ryland.
Next time I go though, I will be prepared for some serious rock pooling as I suspect that Lumpsucker is not out of the question. It's pretty amazing having all that on your doorstep!
This year Chris Bentley and I are carrying out an invertebrate survey at Old Lodge and today I finally managed to catch up with a species I have wanted to see for some time. It's a female Micrommata virescens. It's not all that scarce and is known from the Ashdown Forest but it is one good looking spider, it almost appears luminescent. It certainly caught me by surprise as I was sweeping Bilberry and didn't see it in my tray hidden amongst the Bilberry leaves at first. Despite the cold weather, we still managed some good records with some good looking species like Sericomyia lappona and Ampedus sanguinolentus. We have recorded over 130 species so far there this year and I suspect it will be closer to 200 when all of today's specimens have been identified. Here are some more shots of Micrommata.
But the spider action doesn't stop there! I was packing some equipment away in the garden when I spotted what looked like a pirate spider. I potted it up and had a look through the microscope and it was indeed a mature female Ero furcata, a species I had not seen before. Pirate spiders actually predate other spiders, paralysing them before sucking them dry through a hole in their leg. What a way to go! It might be small compared to Micrommata but it's pretty cool up close.
Last Wednesday I went down to the rock pools off of Saltdean as part of another Shoresearch event. I find it hard to learn seaweeds when there is bigger game to catch so I didn't try and learn any plants and spent the whole time catching fish and crustaceans. I didn't see any that I hadn't seen before but I did catch this cool Shanny which changed colour and pattern after a bout five minutes in this white tray. It's hard to believe it's the same individual fish! I also caught a Corkwing and a Long-spined Sea Scorpion. Crabs included Edible, Shore and Velvet-swimming. Gerald Legg showed me a tiny brittle star called Amphipholis squamata which is the first starfish on my list.
These polychetes were quite unusual too. Known as Sand Masons Lanice conchilega, I would easily recognise these species again.
My list is currently stands at 4245 species. I'm not spending as much time out in the field this year, instead I'm trying to process a huge backlog of records into my Recorder 6 data base. There are 1655 records in there so far, but there are tens of thousands to be entered! Better get back to it then...
Many of you will be familiar with the common Green Tiger Beetle Cicindela campestris but it has a much scarcer cousin, the Heath Tiger Beetle Cicindela sylvatica which probably went extinct in Sussex several decades ago. This species is a Biodiversity Action Plan species and is nationally scarce (Na) with the major population centres being the New Forest and Surrey Heaths. The last unconfirmed sighting in Sussex was at Iping in the 1980s, so it was decided that this would be a good place to reintroduce it. Often confusingly called the Wood Tiger Beetle, this species is very much restricted to lowland heathland and is not really a woodland species. Here it is again in all its glory.
And the smaller and more brightly coloured Green Tiger for comparison.
Prior to the reintroduction, the reason the species went extinct on the site needed to be addressed first. This was loss of bare ground and pioneer heathland. We create this at Iping in a number of ways such as burning, scraping and turf-stripping but it is the turf-stripping that seems to produce the best results for the Heath Tigers and a suite of other scarce invertebrates. In 2007, six females were introduced followed by a further 16 in 2009. The species has been recorded annually in small numbers each year since then and would appear to now be established on site. Turf-stripping is carried out annually to ensure that there is always some suitable habitat and the turf is sold on to golf courses whereby new heathland is created there. Everyone is a winner! Here is the small turf-stripped area I saw the Heath Tiger on, immediately adjacent to the original release site.
When I came to write up this work over the winter, it became clear that we hadn't been keeping track of where and when this management had occurred so I went out there on the 1st May to digitally map and 'age' the scrapes. I also wanted to see what else was benefiting from the management. Heath Tiger emerges a little later in the year than Green so I was surprised to see one. I kept hold of it for an hour or so to cool it down and show the volunteers and it kept still enough to allow the above shots. Proof that the Coolpix 4500 consistently produces good macro shots! Not bad for a ten year old camera.
I picked up a few carabids on the turf-stripped areas but it wasn't until this morning that I realised that the Pterostichus I had picked up on one area only put in this winter was in fact the Heath Short-spur Anisodactylus nemorivagus! This generic looking carabid has as many letters after its name as the Heath Tiger Beetle (BAP and Na) and would appear to be only the third Sussex and second West Sussex record! I trapped it in a pitfall trap at Graffham Common in 2009 and Mark Telfer identified it. Peter Hodge also pitfall-trapped it in Ashdown Forest. This means that I am the only person to have seen this beetle alive in Sussex!
Anyway, after mapping and monitoring 55 turf-stripped scrapes, I recorded about 90 Green Tigers to my one Heath Tiger but it is still early in the season so I hope to see more spreading around the site later in the year.
Birds were good too with a singing Redstart in the same place it was recorded last year and a Hobby catching bumblebees on the wing.
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