The Lyons Share

October and November have been great months for me this year. At the end of a long field season, I have had a little more time to get out and do natural history outside of work. I ended September on 4505 species and started December on 4699, an increase of 194. Many of these have been fungi and leaf-miners but all sorts of things turned up in the last few moths including seven new vertebrates! 

I found the above leaf-miner at Woods Mill by searching for the food plant. I found this on the first specimen of Perforate St Johnswort that I came across, it's Ectoedomia septembrella. It's a common species. It spends its entire larval stages inside the leaf of a species that humans eat to combat depression. I guess that must make it the happiest little caterpillar in the world. Well, maybe not as it fills its home with its own feces as it eats its way through the leaf. However, as the host species (Perforate St Johnswort) comes with its own ventilation, this is one lucky little caterpillar! I digress. My point was that leaf-miners are easy to find and relatively easy to identify, even if they are filthy little buggers.

Anyway, here is the break down of the last two month's additions:

Vascular plants	1209 (+3)
Moths	929 (+34)
Beetles	640 (+20)
Birds	351 (+2)
Fungi	282 (+73)
Spiders	205 (+6)
Mosses	173 (+1)
True bugs	131 (+2)
True flies	127 (+4)
Aculeates	91 (+5)
Molluscs	91 (+7)
Fish	68 (+4)
Butterflies	54 (+1)
Mammals	46 (+1)
Liverworts	43
Crustaceans	43
Dragonflies	33
Lichens	32 (+1)
Crickets & grasshoppers	25
Harvestmen	12
Millipedes	12 (+7)
Lacewings & allies	9 (+2)
Seaweeds & algae	9 (+2)
Caddisflies	9 (+3)
Mites	8 (+2)
Reptiles	7
Amphibians	6
Centipedes	6 (+4)
Anemones	5
Leeches	5
Jellyfish	4
Cockroaches	3
Mayfly	3
Slime Mould	3
Parasitica	3 (+1)
Annelid	2
Scorpionfly	2
Springtails	2
Flatworm	2 (+1)
Pseudoscorpion	2 (+1)
Starfish	2 (+1)
Aphid	1
Cephalopod	1
Earwigs	1
Lice	1
Polychete	1
Sea Urchin	1
Silverfish	1
Snakefly	1
Sponge	1
Stoneflies	1 (+1)

I've also had a big push on updating records. I synced with the the SxBRC and thanks to Penny Green, I now have all my records from the SxBRC too. All in all, my data base now stands at 15,300 records. I'd like to have a quiet winter now but it never seems to happen that way, I'll breach the 5000 mark before you know it...