The Lyons Share

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.