The Lyons Share

Thanks to my school teacher Steve Cooper I got into moths and moth trapping around about age 13. So for the last two thirds of my life I've been moth-bothering, with the middle third involving a lot of moth trapping. The latter third however has been more concerned with recording moths in the field and this involves a lot more micros but also, moth larvae. There are quite a few generic green or brown moth larvae that are really not easy to identify, then there are quite a few that are much easier and really abundant such as Mottled Umber and Common Quaker etc. Larvae are really useful on invertebrate surveys as they show you the botanical associations of the species, as moth traps can suck moths in from off the site you're surveying. The only problem with learning moth larvae is you have to do everything twice, learn the adult and the larva. The other difficulty is that although there are some really common ones, many of them I've only ever seen once. Such as the Brindled Beauty above that we saw at Brickfield Meadow a couple of weeks ago. There is so much going on there!

This one turned out to be Cypress Carpet beat from an ornamental evergreen at a site in Worthing. Again only seen once.

This beauty is the Chamomile Shark swept from mayweed. Only ever seen this once.

This is the amazing looking Black Arches. A moth I've seen many times before, but this year I have seen the larvae twice. This was beaten off oak.

This one took a bit if time and help from Butterfly Conservation, it's Pale Eggar beaten from oak at Ebernoe. I like the repeating pattern of Boba Fett's helmet! Only seen this once.

And this odd little thing turned out to be a Brussel's Lace, beaten from an old Blackthorn covered in lichen at Seaford Head. I've seen loads of the moth, only ever seen the larva once. So get out there and beat some bushes and see what you can find.

Last Thursday night, Alice put the MV Skinner trap out at Southerham and we recorded 95 species of moth (229 moths in all)! Five of these species were new to me and four were new to ALL Sussex Wildlife Trust reserves. This is remarkable as we have now recorded 1240 species on the reserves. We only started trapping at Southerham last year so many of these 95 species will be new to the site. I'm afraid I was a little carried away with the scarcer micro moths so I am afraid I forgot to photograph the three hawk moths that we had in the trap!

First up is Ethmia dodecea which I originally wrote down as Ethmia terminella - we had two of these last week and this is much more likely feeding on Viper's Bugloss. Ethmia dodecea feeds on Common Gromwell which as far as I know is not present on Southerham and Malling Down. However with that crazy heat we had, moths were dispersing all over the place. I haven't seen this moth since about 2004 and I'm glad we now have it on our reserves.

Then we had this Crescent Plume which I have seen at Benfield Country Park where I saw a similar amount of moths many years ago. It feeds on Restharrow which IS just up the hill from the office.

This Hollyhock Seed Moth is nationally scarce (Nb) and feeds on various types of mallows. These are in nearby gardens and hedgerows.

And finally Piniphila bifasciana which feeds on pine! No pine near Southerham! But that photo was too awful to be published. What's the largest number of species you've ever had in a single unattended MV trap? I'd love to know what the record is too!

Mike Edwards and I completed the June invertebrate survey for Waltham yesterday, starting and finishing early due to the heat. So afterwards I stayed out and went and mapped some key plants. Thanks to the SxBRC I finally tracked down the Common Meadow-rue there, about 25 plants present, last recorded in 2011.

The last time Pink Water-speedwell was recorded was 1977, before I was born some 40 years ago. I soon noticed it was galled and it didn't take long to find an adult of the weevil that caused the galls, Gymnetron villosulum (a Nb species new to the reserve network).

We also had lots of Skullcap leaf Beetle, recorded new to the reserve by Dave and I in the 1000species challenge.

Plus hundreds of Crudosilus ruficollis, a wetland soldier beetle that can look quite like the much commoner Cantharis nigra until you take a closer look. This is flatter, glossier with more feathered-antennae and a pitted pronotum.

...1035! So it's took me a week to get around to typing up the list (this week has been hectic due to all this glorious high pressure). The final score has dropped a little and comes out at 1035. So, some logistics: overall we walked 14.2 miles, drove 63.9 miles, recorded a species every 1 minute and 13 seconds and had a bloody good laugh! We recorded four species new to the reserve network including the Welsh Oak Longhorn Beetle below and many many species new to that particular reserve but this needs more work and deserves a blog of its own. We have raised £906 (plus gift aid) which is fantastic and we are so grateful for the support we have had from 67 different people! Thank you so much!

I was surprised to see we didn't really tail off ALL DAY except after we hit 1000 and became a little more casual around the moth traps at Burton Pond.

And here is the break down of what we saw. Plants made up over a third of everything we saw at 424 species. Followed by beetles at 116 and moths at 113. Overall we recorded 460 species of invertebrate. What we didn't see was pretty interesting. You may have noticed we took a risk by avoiding the coastal plain entirely, so no wonder we are missing so many water birds. However, we didn't see: Fox, Speckled Wood, any of the three white butterflies or a Silver-Y. Big soldier beetles were thing on the ground too.

I wish there were more hours in the day but I have to go and count Field Crickets now. So i am sorry this is yet again a little rushed and there are likely to be many typos in the following list. I've taken a few things off I wasn't happy with, added a few things on that we didn't write down and the rest is down to over vigorous clicking of the counter. I give you the full 1035 species! Watch this space for a review of the rarer things we found on our travels. The number is the order in which each species was seen. We used a clicker to jeep track of this. 

If you've scrolled this far, here is a little teaser for what's coming next year. Put the 25th May 2018 in your diary. Challenge #1500species is coming!