The Lyons Share

Last night was the biggest low tide of the year and a few of us (Evan Jones, Tony Davis and Oli Froom) decided to go and have a look at the Pound at Holywell, Eastbourne as in January we found a sea slug there and I was taken by how rich and easy to work it was. It was amazing! I don't even know where to start. Maybe with the star of the show above. It's not too hard to guess what it is but I just love this photo taken by Oli.

Every rock we turned over seemed to have a Shanny or a Rock Goby under, like this stunning male. We did see one Tompot Blenny but I didn't even get around to photographing that one.

We saw all manner of weird and wonderful worms including bootstrap worms which I have never seen before. Then Evan turned a rock over and I couldn't believe what I was looking at!

We believe this huge (15 cm) 'thing' is a Sea Gherkin Pawsonia saxicola. It's way east of its known distribution but we don't think there is anything else it can be. It retracted when we put it in the tray rather than unfurling its tentacles. Quite disgusting. I love it!

Then Evan struck gold again with as you've guest it, my first ever Lobster!!!

Tony had more luck picking it up than me as it nipped me straight away much to his amusement. Here it is next to a Squat Lobster. This is an unbelievable beautiful animal.

And the Squat Lobster too. 

And Oli's tail shot again as it's so great!

What a keel! So not even a triple 50th birthday party last night could stop me from getting out in the field this morning. I joined Huw Morgan and his work party again at the Deneway in Brighton. I added 35 species to the reserve including this Sowerby's Keeled Slug. I also saw Iberian Threeband Slug. Both these species were new to the whole reserve network. We are currently on 9834 species across the 32 sites! Only 166 to go. Pretty sure it will happen this year now.

Also picked up the spider Amaurobius ferox.

Yesterday Dave Green and I tested out the recording forms I put together for the 1000 species challenge. It was an AMAZING day and we got a 100 species from the car before we even got to Levin Down. The recording forms worked well but this test run was a great way to see what works and what doesn't. Keeping a running count is harder than you would think though. Sieving moss (above) and beating Juniper yesterday was extremely productive, unlike the suction sampler.

We managed about 250 species in the first 2 hours 30 minutes. Not bad for an overcast windy day in March! I had two lifers, we go lots of species new to the site and one species new to the reserve network found by Penny! Now on the day, it's just gonna be Dave and I recording but it's so much fun doing this there is no way we could have all the fun on our own. Some interesting facts, our first raptor was at species 85 and that was Red Kite! We didn't see or hear a Dunnock all day nor a single migrating Meadow Pipit but that might be down to the breeze. The first species was Cuckooflower and the last was Pied Wagtail. 

We are pretty sure this species is Cordyceps gracilis, a rare parasitic fungus that we have seen at Mill Hill years ago. Have a look here for the post I did at the time. Yesterday there were two of them. There were also LOADS of Platyrhinus resinosus. 14 on clump of Cramp-balls! I've only ever seen three before! Thanks to Penny and Dave for the photos. I found this new to West Sussex (and only the 2nd Sussex record) at Levin last year. It's clearly done very well up there. Look out for it in the area.

The final score was 294 species comprised of:

Vascular plants 126

Bryophytes       13

Lichens             2

Birds                 39

Mammals          5

Beetle                26

Centipede          2

Millipede           5

Crustacean         5

Springtail           1

Earwig               2

Tick                    1

Hymenoptera     9

Moths                2

Bugs                  11

Flies                   4

Molluscs            16

Spiders               19

So, aiming for a 1000 species in a 24 hour period isn't looking quite so daunting now!

This post is mostly about the value of casual recording. On Monday and Tuesday this week I need to walk around our three chalk-grassland sites Southerham, Malling Down and Ditchling Beacon on a compartment by compartment basis to check on our winter grazing. Now I've also been a fan of casual recording on top of the more structure monitoring and surveillance but since I put the spreadsheet together, it's really made me realise how little we know about our sites. So where ever yo are, if you always record the most interesting species of the day, you'll likely be recording something significant.

On Monday I walked up Southerham and the first beetle I encountered was new to the reserve, the common dung beetle Aphodius fimetarius flying around a cow pat. Not much happened then until I got to Bible Bottom where I saw my first Wheatear of the year on top of an isolated Hawthorn. I lifted my binoculars to this larger and paler than usual Wheatear to see it was a Great Grey Shrike! The first for the reserve and my first self found one. Amazingly we now have records of Great Grey Shrike at 10 out of the 32 sites. That's the same as Curlew, Med. Gull, Teal and Woodlark and more than Golden Plover. We only have records of Lesser Black-backed Gull at 11 sites!

Then on Tuesday I was walking up the Coombe at Malling Down when I saw a huge ungainly spider walking awkwardly towards me over a ridge. I was amazed to see it was a male Purse-web Spider Atypus affinis on a spring vacation from its subterranean lair! What a treat, I've only seen this spider twice before but in quite different circumstances so this was really exciting! We haven't had a record of this before at Malling and it's the first record on a reserve since 1968 at Iping and Stedham!

Here is another shot from the side. The Coolpix isn't doing too well these days since I dropped it in a rock pool. I'm planning on getting a new camera next month though and it's NOT going to be another Coolpix!!! Anyway, love this shot as you really can see how odd this spider. Even the male's abdomen has like a weird armoured cap on top. Huge pits in the cephalothorax too. Whatever will turn up next?

So yesterday was the first proper day out in the field in 2017 and what an awesome day it was! Andy Phillips organised a BAS day to our Old Lodge reserve Our Mission; to find Thanataus formicinus, a spider not seen in Britain since 1969. We didn't find it but it didn't matter as we found loads of other cool stuff and I soon forgot I was even looking for it. What was great for me about this day is it's the first day out in the field on one of SxWT's reserves since I created the spreadsheet. It's changed the way I do natural history!

So far we added 14 species to the site list (but expect this to go up as the other's identifications come in). Even better though, three of these species were new to my own list and two of these were entirely new to any Sussex Wildlife Trust reserve. So here is a breakdown of those 14 species and some notes on them. What's even more remarkable is that Chris Bentley and I did a very detailed invertebrate survey on the site in 2013, just shows you can never cover a site enough.

Hypselistes jacksoni (a new one for me and any SxWT reserve. I thought that this was going to be a Hypomma but I soon realised it had a pair of eyes on top of the butt on its head that Hypomma bituberculatum doesn't have. It's clearly uncommon with a north western distribution. This fits with Old Lodge being higher and colder, it's a bit more like an upland moor than the West Sussex heaths.

This is Salticus cingulatus, a nice jumping spider not new to the site but the first time I've photographed it. A big thanks to everyone for an awesome day in the field.

It's been a while since I posted one of my 12 year old bird diary entries and this is a corker. I have been looking forward to this one (hence skipping out the Snow Goose entry which was a bit boring really). So, it's 24th November 1990 and I'm fond of copying pictures from the Reader's Digest bird book. However, I think was my finest hour...

Very windy and cold with snow and hail now and then. We split up with Mr Berry at Park hall and went looking for the long eared owls. Then we saw a man with a strange cross bread dog (half dog, half bap), we asked him and he said that he had just saw one (in half) roosting in a tree and he marked a circle in the floor (AKA as ground Little Graeme) around the tree, we saw the bird but it was a bad view. We could make out the ear tufts.

So far so good and not that weird. Then we went looking for mushrooms...

              Then we whent to Shugborough for an hour, looked at some books had our dinner, there was some good books on fungi (I distinctly remember looking at the first edition of Roger Phillips and being amazed), and there was a disc on the computer called 'camping', which I was sent to hospital for drinking contaminated water. 

What?!?! This makes no sense to me, clearly there is a missing sentence and punch-line here. I have never been sent to hospital for drinking contaminated water. There is a slim chance Ewart will be able to shed some light on this but I think we might have to just accept that for what it is. Nonsense!

We saw some fungus, mycenas, parousel mushrooms and Jew's ear (that's Jelly Ear in the civilised age) fungus, which is very damp and soft and looks like someones ear (who knew?!). I pretended to Mr Berry that it was my ear and it came of when I fell out of a tree. Ha ha, I bet I thought he'd fall for it, I was totally convinced it looked identical to a human ear. The power of suggestion to a 12 year old!

Next up a Sociable Plover for an antisocial 12 year old...

I had ten minutes before a meeting yesterday to try and find some interesting wildlife at Woods Mill and I managed two species new to the reserve network! Well, nearly. First up is Alder Tongue, a fungus that grows out of Alder cones. I have looked for this in the past but yesterday I simply reached up and pulled the nearest cones down and it was on the first twig I looked at! Obviously, this is more impressive when the cones are green. I will have to go back. Barry has since confirmed he had it last year at Castle Water but he hasn't put the record in yet so, technically it was still a first for the reserve network!

Then this fly. Not quite new as I have seen it here before but somehow didn't manage to get the record in! This is Phytomyza hellebori, a fly that mines the leaves of hellebore, this being Stinking Hellebore. It's just around the back of the workshop at Woods Mill. It just goes to show, even when you don't have much time you can still find significant records. The reserve network species list is now on at least 9804 species. Only 196 to the 10,000 mark!