Posts
My 1000th post!
Posted by Graeme Lyons , Sunday, 12 January 2020 19:19
*I AM DEFINITELY NOT YEAR LISTING SPIDERS*.
I noticed just the other day that my next post would be my 1000th! I have nearly been blogging for ten years and blocking up people's feeds with gibberish about wildlife for so long I can't remember not doing it. DID I used to NOT write this blog? I can't be sure. Can anyone remember not reading it?
I had an interesting day doing some casual recording at Castle Hill on the edge of Brighton in my home 10 km square today. It's the first time I have gone out with my suction sampler for ages, well for 12 days to be precise. An electric suction-sampler is such a great way to terminate boring conversation in the field, just turn it on and instantly your friend's incessant monologues are drowned out as you collect a hat full of spiders! It's the gift that keeps on giving. (Carole, I only wrote this because you said my blogs used to be funny, I didn't mean it. I could still hear you).
I was trying not to focus just on spiders but I kind of found myself focusing rather a lot just on spiders. Carole Mortimer was keen to spend some time at an NNR with me recording spiders so we did just that and I managed 28 species, 18 of which were new to the 10 km square. I feel quite embarrassed by that as I live in it and did quite a bit of spider recording last year. The species above is the nationally scarce/S.41 Ozyptila nigrita. It's fairly regular on the chalk in the summer but I have never seen it in January before as an adult, no one has it would seem looking at the scheme. Both male and female were present today. I didn't see this until mid April last year. These warm winters are odd.
I took a load of linys home and amazingly got a lifer! So a species I clearly didn't see last year. A female Diplocephalus picinus. Not scarce but clearly not common in Sussex.
And earlier, another spider that I have only recorded twice, both at 450 m in the Peak District and never in Sussex. The first Sussex record of Poeciloneta variegata since 2007 (and the first East Sussex one since 2004).
Here is today's list with those in bold new to the 10 km square and cons statuses in brackets. The four scarce things are all good chalk-grassland species.
| Agalenatea redii Centromerita concinna |
| Cnephalocotes obscurus |
| Diplocephalus picinus |
| Ero cambridgei |
| Euophrys frontalis |
| Gonatium rubens |
| Hypsosinga albovittata (NS) |
| Hypsosinga pygmaea |
| Mangora acalypha |
| Meioneta rurestris |
| Meioneta simplicitarsis (NS) |
| Micrargus herbigradus |
| Microlinyphia pusilla |
| Neottiura bimaculata |
| Ozyptila brevipes |
| Ozyptila nigrita (NS, S.41) |
| Pachygnatha degeeri |
| Palliduphantes ericaeus |
| Panamomops sulcifrons (NS) |
| Pelecopsis parallela |
| Pholcomma gibbum |
| Pisaura mirabilis |
| Poeciloneta variegata |
| Selimus vittatus |
| Tenuiphantes tenuis |
| Zora spinimana |
| Zygiella atrica |
So if you make a site list of spiders (28), add it to the spiders you have recorded in your flat this year (3), apparently that's year-listing spiders but as I said earlier, I AM DEFINITELY NOT YEAR-LISTING SPIDERS.
I end the day on 31 spiders for the year
(BUT I AM NOT YEAR-LISTING SPIDERS, THAT'S JUST THE TOTAL OF ALL THE SPECIES OF SPIDER I HAVE SEEN THIS YEAR).
Posted in
I reckon 450 is do-able if you were to throw Scotland into the mix. Has that ever been achieved, do you know - like ever? Pity you definitely ARE NOT doing spiders this year...