The Lyons Share

I recorded 391 species of spider in 2019 and 88 of these were lifers. December proved to be the best month of all where I added 42 species and 38 of these were lifers! 21 lifers in Staffs and 16 on the trip to the West Country. Here are my top ten spider highlights in reverse order:

11. My first ever Singa hamata
I had literally just met a new client at a site in Hampshire and in the first sweep net full was this Singa hamata. Being much larger than I expected it to be and not remotely on my radar for the site, I squealed "What the @*&! is that!". Turns out it's the first Hampshire record since 1991.

It was great meeting up with Matt, Chris and others at Rye Harbour, Camber Sands and Castle Water and we added shed loads of species to our year lists in the time we were there. Such as this female Pellenes tripunctatus.

I pushed up the total number of species recorded on Sussex Wildlife Trust's reserves to exactly 400 species by the end of 2019 and Graffham Common shines out as a brilliant spider site, including probably the best place I know to find Araniella displicata.

With 220 species and 55 with conservation status, Iping Common is confidently the top spider site in Sussex. Probably the best day there was in spring when I recorded Mecopisthes peusi (last recorded there in 1968 and in Sussex in 1989). Additionally, I also recorded Tapinocyba mitis on the same day in late February. It was around this point that I had started throwing some time and energy into year listing spiders and was really getting into it.

Probably the most unexpected spider of the year. I was heading rapidly across a site to do a survey and saw what I thought was a Scotophaeus blackwalli. It was actually the first Sussex Haplodrassus silvestris since 1908.

5. Finding Scotina palliardii twice in West Sussex. 

A single animal at Levin Down on my birthday and 16+ at Kingley Vale in mid Deecmber. The first Sussex records for some time with only one known record with a vague date for Shoreham.

Meeting up with Matt for only the second time in 2019 but this time on his turf got me a shed load of ticks and it was great to meet up with John Walters too who took us right up to four Nothophantes horridus.

Tylan Berry took me to Kynance Cove on the Lizard and we recorded five national rarities in an hour and four of these were new to me, I think the highlight for me was finding an adult female Segestria bavarica under the second rock I turned over but the rarest would be the Gnaphosa occidentalis.

I couldn't have done it without the big twist at the end of the year. I went on holiday by mistake. Didn't think my final move would be quite as successful as it was but the trip to the Roaches where I had five lifers (and the following day at Gun Moor where I had another six) was awesome and without these two days specifically it would have been a different result. Finding some real upland species like this Porrhomma montanum under the first rock I looked at was really lucky up the Roaches. I can't believe I just said my highlight of the year was a Porrhomma. It was the whole experience, not just this spider though. The Roaches are just breathtaking. Schwingmoor is so much fun and I can't get enough of all that Sphagnum. Low cloud can do one though.