The Lyons Share

I found this today in an arable field. It's a cup fungi, a Peziza sp. I think but I'm not sure which species or even if that is the correct genus. I thought it looked pretty strange, reminded me of something from Trapdoor. It definitely looks like it's burping. If anyone has any experience with Pezizas or think they can ID this, please get in touch.  More typical ones looked like the specimen below. BURRRRRPPP!!!

I was just walking back from a meeting when I spotted a family transfixed by something in the road. The street was quite busy as it was 5.45 pm, so I was quite surprised to see it was a Fox. The family told me they had disturbed it with a string of sausages, which it had dropped, but the greedy bugger didn't want to leave its feast behind. I got my camera out and hung back with the family and managed this shot (it was disturbed by a car). It crisscrossed the road waiting for a window of opportunity and then came back and snaffled the sausages and then legged it down the road but my flash didn't go off and I missed the money shot. It amazes  me how bold they are these days and it was really nice to see how excited the kids were at seeing it.

I went into town yesterday, a very rare occurrence for me nowadays. I was on a mission though to scrape together some natural history sightings on the way down the hill. I spotted a moth on a for sale sign which turned out to be a late Common Marbled Carpet. It got me thinking about how attuned I am at spotting moths in the street. It seems that if you are into moths, you subconsciously look for small, dark patches of symmetry. Two things have led me to think this happens; 1). People I am with never spot moths on walls that I haven't spotted first (you could argue I am looking more though I guess) 2.) On regular routes my eyes are repeatedly drawn to 'false' moths: small, dark patches of symmetry that are not moths, like a section of peeled paint or an unusually shaped blob of chewing gum (there is even one on my front door that still gets me). Time after time I have noticed my eyes are drawn to these things and I even experience a rush of excitement at thinking I have found a moth. If there are any moth-ers out there who have noticed this, I would be interested to hear about it.

I also got this shot of a Garden Spider Araneus diadematus on a wall yesterday. Would you believe it I also had two ticks on the way into town, the Pellucid Glass Snail Vitrina pellucisa and my first harvestman Opilio parietinus. I bought the key to harvestmen last week and this is the first time I have seen one and been able to use it. It was pretty easy, being that there are only around 25 species and all the features were easy to see under the microscope although without the microscope, some things would have been impossible to see.

I went looking for spiders in the workshop at Woods Mill on my lunch break today (as you do) and failed to find anything in there other than Pholcus phalangioides. I did find, in a very cobweb filled window, two wings and a leg of a large moth that I instantly recognized as an Old Lady. This big moth is quite local and not all that easy to catch in moth traps (although they do come to light). It's the first one I have seen at Woods Mill. These moths fly in July and August and during periods of hot weather they 'aestivate'. They enter a period of dormancy in a safe, cool, sheltered spot, just like the Woods Mill workshop that is very cool in mid summer. Sadly, when things cooled down, this old dear must have tried to escape via the window which is exactly where all the spiders were waiting. However, the moth is not named after its inability to cope with hot weather, years ago I read somewhere it was named after its similarity to a Victorian pensioner's petticoat although I can't find the reference. If anyone else can confirm this I would appreciate the comment. Have a look in your sheds during hot spells in mid summer, there may be an uninvited Old Lady hanging out.

Here are some of the better shots from 2010 that didn't make it into a post so far this year. In no particular order we have:

The beautiful but rare Oxyopes heterophthalmus a female from Pirbright in Surrey on the 7th June, no records for this as far as I know in Sussex, be great to find it on the West Sussex heaths although I think that would be very unlikely.

The common Swollen-thighed Beetle Oedemera nobilis. This one's a female (without the swollen thighs) taken at Friston Forest on 26th July.

Big hoverfly Volucella inanis, this was new to me at the time, taken on the edge of The Mens on the 27th July.

After the deluge of rain water that came down the new Woods Mill channel yesterday, it's already starting to look quite different. Extensive silty/sandy deposits have appeared along the whole of the channel, literally overnight! You can see them in the above photo as being purply-brown and slightly reflective compared to the orangy/brown of the bare clay. Several days ago this was all bare clay. In most places the deposits are around half a cm in depth but at one point I almost got stuck in the mud!

Perhaps even more remarkable is the appearance of a number of sand banks/bars, again, almost over night. Some of this must have built up over the last few weeks but the stream has only been running for 19 days. I am amazed how quickly things are starting to change.

I might not be there to witness it but the Woods Mill stream has flooded already. The contractors literally finished the job just in time. Thanks to Steve Tillman for these photos. There is going to be water in different places now at Woods Mill and it might take some getting used to but that was always going to be the case. It will be great to see what the new channel looks like when the floods have subsided. If you zoom in on the first photo you can see where a little tributary might be forming and what also looks like a large piece of woody debris moving down the channel! I can't believe how vast it looks, amazing!

So it's just outside of Sussex but who cares? Went to Dungeness today, no sign of the Red-flanked Bluetail but we did get some great views of a Great White Egret. It always amazes me how long and thin their necks are, so much thinner (relatively) than Grey Herons and Little Egrets. This is my third UK GWE. Plenty of Marsh Harriers too but we didn't see much else on the RSPB reserve other than a very late Swallow over the car park as we were leaving.

Down the Patch there was a Sandwich Tern and a Med. Gull but the sea was dominated by Gannets and Kittiwakes and little else. A few Chaffinches were coming in off the sea and there was quite a movement of auks out distant. A single diver sp. flew west but that was about it. As we were leaving Lydd we saw a Barn Owl (Jo's first owl) and we soon saw another owl sp. fly over the road just east of Middle Farm. Twenty seven years without seeing an owl and she sees two in an hour.

Jo also informed me today that her old landlord was into birdwatching, did I know him? His name was John Gooders! I only grew up reading his books, sad to find out he passed away last May though.

I wish I had started blogging ten years ago. So, to make up for this and to find things to blog about in the winter or when I have a stinking hangover (like today) and have not done any natural history, I am gonna post a regular feature reminiscing about natural history conquests of yesteryear. I don't know if it's the way I tell 'em or if I really do seem to have a lot of strange things happen to me...

So, rewind nine years and I'm living in the volunteer accommodation at Dungeness RSPB reserve in Kent. I'd gone back to Brighton for a weekend and was amazed to find a Death's-head Hawk-moth had turned up in one of the moth traps! Only about six months prior to that I had a tattoo of one on my arm (by my exceptionally talented friend Gerry Carnelly) so I jumped at the opportunity to have a photo of it taken next to the tattoo. Thanks to David Burrows for taking the photo, who, many years later I would meet again as a member of Sussex Moth Group. The Dungeness moth traps were pretty rad, lots of rare residents and scarce migrants. We used to get Great Crested Newts, Lesser Cockroaches, Great Silver Water Beetles and once even a Black Redstart on or in the traps too. I got  a huge list of birds as well, although the ibis incident  is perhaps another story. I think I'll be making a visit tomorrow if the Red-flanked Bluetail is there, those four and a half months I spent as a residential volunteer are very close to my heart indeed!

A little late but here it is anyway. I ended the month on a respectable 3009 species and here is the breakdown of my current list. Molluscs have shot up the rankings, I've now seen more molluscs than butterflies! The highlights of the month though were Jellybabies, Box Bug, Purse-web Spider and Rose-coloured Starling. I am still finding old records of micro moths in ancient notebooks, the micros are an area that, although I have been looking at them for years, until recently I have not been keeping a list. Let's see what November brings!