WOW! We have just got back from a week on Jersey and it was INSANE! I will have to write several posts to cover just how much stuff we saw there, this one being concerned with the marine side of things. Rock-pooling to the south east of the island is incredible. The first thing you need to know about rock-pooling here is that there is a huge tidal reach but (and this is where I went wrong last time I went in 2017) it's not just about going as far out as you can. In fact, it's as much about getting as low as you can. So yes, you'll see more on the lower tides but that can still be quite close to the shore. This is where I went wrong last time, legging it out as far as I could, I spent so much time worried about getting cut off, that I barely found anything.
I had at least 44 lifers on this trip, the majority of these coming from the rock-pools. So here, in no particular order are some of the amazing things we saw. I am starting with the nudibranchs and other sea-slug like creatures as they are the thing I have become most obsessed with! First up above is Facelina auriculata, a new one for me and the only one we found (at Green Island). Only about 5 mm long. Who needs to watch science fiction when there is an alien world on your doorstep?
I was very pleased to find five Edmundsella pedata! At both Green Island and La Rocque. I found this last year on the Isle of Wight and this was the sea-slug I found the most on this trip. Again, all only about 5 mm long on the underside of rocks.
A lifer for me was the huge Warty Doris Doris verrucosa. Karen spotted the first one by finding the egg mass (image below).
Just one Aeolidiae filomenae at Green Island.
I am definitely getting better at spotting nudibranchs. This one at Ouaisne was so inconspicuous at first when I turned the stone but it soon unfurled. I believe this is the star-ascidian-eating Goniodoris castanea. I saw one of these at Kimmeridge Bay last year but this was a much larger animal. It might not be that bright but the shape of the thing is incredible. Like a snow plough crossed with a WW1 tank. I was pleased with five species of nudibranch for this trip.
There were quite a few Yellow-plumed Sea Slugs (Berthella pulumella) about but I didn't photograph them and I believe these things are Lamellaria perspicua (a sea-slug like snail). I have seen this at the Pound in Eastbourne but again I am pleased to be getting better at spotting them. Close-focus binoculars are pretty useful in rock-pools.
Now for the other molluscs. When I turned a rock shortly after starting to find FIVE Green Ormers under it, my mind was blown. This is a huge, fast-moving mollusc and a real Channel Island speciality. I could not get enough of their weird beauty. I reckon I saw 50 of these on Saturday 21st, which was one of the lowest tides of the year.
Key-hole Limpet (Diodora graeca) was a long-overdue lifer too. Quite different to what I was expecting with the key-hole itself mostly obscured, the shell covered in debris and the mantle rising up around the base of the shell.
Anemones were pretty amazing too but my favourite was the Parasitic Anemone. We found two of these, really quite large.
And this one was the Trumpet Anemone. Thanks to Nicolas Jouault for his help with some identifications and gen for La Rocque and to John Walters for his gen too.
I am rather out of my depth with sponges and tunicates but I was told this one was Sea Strawberry (Aplidium elegans).
I am pretty sure this large sea-squirt was the Yellow-ringed Sea Squirt Ciona intestinalis.
And this thing was the size of a hand! It was huge. This must surely be the amazingly-named Neptune's Heart Sea Squirt Phallusia mammillata. That hand belongs to Tim Ransom by the way, I'll come back to Tim in the blog about the terrestrial stuff when I get some time. We had a great few hours yesterday morning looking at the marine stuff. Even on a rubbish tide, La Rocque is incredible just a few hundred metres out from the beach.
My only sponge tick was these orange-sized blobs I believe to be Tethya citrina. There is so much more there that I am not even attempting to ID.
Now for the worms. Karen spotted the first one of these huge worms but it shot in when she touched it. We found another though, easily disturbed if you are not quiet. This is Sabella spallanzanii. Listed as the Feather Duster Worm on the UKSI but called the Mediterranean Fan Worm on iNaturalist. This is my greatest issue with iNaturalist, the use of non-standard or Americanised English names for species. However, it was very good at seeing what people had been recording locally on the island, especially so when you have left most of your books at home. I wish iRecord could be as slick as iNaturalist for features like this. Thanks again to Nicolas for pointing this feature out though.
Nearby, the Twin Fanworm (Bispira vilutacornis) was a real looker. Yet another lifer.
We only saw two of these, but very pleased to finally catch up with Candy-striped Flatworm. This was a tiny one, spotted using the close-focus binoculars (barely 5 mm long).
Now for the crustaceans. So less than an hour into rock-pooling, we saw the most amazing thing but it got away. Perhaps the most brightly-coloured crustacean I have ever seen. With a little help, it was clear that what we saw was an immature of a Spiny Squat Lobster. Quite different to what the adults look like. Gutted I didn't get a photo though but what an experience seeing this red, orange, blue, yellow and white thing darting around our feet!
An incredibly attractive species this one but I was sad to realise it was a non-native. This is the Asian Shore Crab. Quite common higher up the shore.
There were lots of spider crabs about. I think this one is Macropodia deflexa but I was running out of time here and didn't get as many shots as I would have liked.
And this one is a mystery to me. It was much bigger than all the other spider crabs that I saw (the commonest seems to be Leach's Spider Crab (Inachus phalangium). This was almost twice as big with huge claws with a distinctive shape. I can't see anything that matches in "Shallow-water crabs". Is it just a large male Inachus phalangium? Those pincers are huge! EDIT: Thanks to Nicolas, it's a large male Pisa tetraodon.
And finally, the fish. I think the fish list for the week was nearly 14 species and three of these were lifers. I was surprised at how common Connemara Clingfish was! What a gorgeous fish this is.
Yesterday I found two Giant Gobies at La Rocque, which was also a lifer but no photo. Here is a Ballan Wrasse, we also had a Corkwing yesterday, as well as three species of blenny. Too much stuff to photograph.And on the way back, I saw Blue-fin Tuna from the ferry near Alderney! No photo though, they were quick. As was the ferry.
It was pretty amazing. I couldn't drag myself away from the sea. I even overcame my fear of being in the water. I bought a snorkel and mask and went out with Bouley Bay Diving Centre who were great at helping me overcome my fears. After 10 minutes I got my breathing and heart-rate down and absolutely loved it. I didn't want to come out. A huge thanks to them for this. I am already planning on a buying wet suit for more snorkelling action more locally. I even had a shave, so that my mask wouldn't fill with water (always one of my big fears with this being a contact lens wearer). I got close to Pollack, Montagu's Blenny and Two-spot Goby here but it was much harder to use my camera than I was expecting!
So that's it for now, part two will be some time next week now as I have lots to do back home. Here's Karen and I on the way back enjoying the sunset. I will not be waiting another seven years before I go back to the Channel Islands. It is amazing!
We ran a stall promoting the PSL movement, the new website and my book (out next year) at Global Birdfair. It was my first time there in over 30 years. So what did we actually do there? Well, I left it to the last minute to arrange it all but somehow, with less than a month's notice, we managed to make it a real success.
First off, Mike Prince and I got up there on the Thursday to set up our stand. Here's Mike after we set it all up.
Yes, he did make PSL mugs and t-shirts! They'll be all the rage come next Birdfair, you wait and see! I put together a fiendish ID quiz and Mike set up a laptop and a screen to show our fancy new website in action. We kept a pan-species list for the whole area, for the full three days.
If you didn't know, this is how you enter a species onto the website. Just hold the species up next to the screen, and it magically appears on you list! Well, not quite. First you have to identify it!
We wanted to make this species list a collaborative affair but we also needed to boost the numbers ourselves. The way we did this was to run six, hour-long bioblitzes. We ran two a day, one at 10:00 am and the other at 2:00 pm. I was shattered after day one. So I was very welcome when the cavalry turned up on Saturday, in the form of...Andy Musgrove!
It was great having an extra pair of hands (as Mike was also co-running another stall). I don't think I could have spent three days at the stall without some field time, so having Andy to help out with the bioblitzes and chatting to people on the stall was a life saver. We recorded 175 species across all taxa on the first bioblitz and 203 species by the time we did the fifth. The sixth bioblitz was more chilled and indulgent, we used this to target a veteran Ash tree and an oak tree and got some nice saproxylic species.
I absolutely loved doing these, especially when we had a mixture of mad-keen young naturalists/PSLers, enthusiastic amateurs and complete newbies. I was throwing species at people at an incredible rate and yet despite this, everyone found them really enjoyable and worthwhile. Seeing new PSLers grab my net and come back with pockets full of insects was just great, or seeing someone see their first Marbled White is what it's all about to me. I finally got to meet Ben Mapp, Brian Laney and Clare Boyes, but also met Max Cantrell, Zak Spaull and Ben Rumsby. I am continuously impressed by this new wave of young naturalists coming through, they are all so knowledgeable for their age, imagine what they will be like in 20 years! I wish I had had PSL in my teens instead of starting doing it when I was 32.
Feeding time at the zoo (not sure who took this but thanks).
Thanks to Robin Sandham for this composite image of one of the bioblitzes.
So how did we do? Last night I finally identified my last specimen from the weekend, bringing our three-day total to 641 species, including a whopping 437 invertebrates. This was boosted by adding a couple of moth traps to the data set, kindly collated by Ben Rumsby (we'll definitely bring traps next year). Here is a breakdown of what we recorded.
I even managed a few lifers, such as this micro moth that mines the keys of Field Maple, Etainia louisella. Thanks to William Bishop for this one.
I must have made nearly a 1,000 records in my notebook over the weekend but it's going to take me a while to get these written up, so sorry if I promised anyone these sooner. I have to prioritise work and it took me eight hours yesterday to enter 1,149 records from two days at Ken Hill. Watch this space. It's amazing to list 54 spiders but not a single one is classed as Nationally Scarce. This would be totally different down in Sussex, where so many more species at the northern limit of their range in the UK. I digress.
A massive thanks to everyone that helped but no more so than to Mike and Andy. Without them creating the new website, I would not have even entertained going there this year and having all three of us together for the first time since the new website's inception was also great. Even with the three of us on Sat and Sun though, we probably needed a couple of other people to help out. It was exhausting, albeit in a really good way.
So, will we be there in 2025? Hell, yeah! We'll have a bigger profile next year, and hopefully I'll have finished the book by then too. And I bet we can get to 1,000 species for the weekend! But we will be looking for a few more recruits to help out. Maybe some of the young PSL whipper snappers can come and help?
Finally, here is the full species list. Of the 437 invertebrates, nine can be considered to have some form of conservation status. These are highlighted in bold below. If we do this annually, imagine what the accumulative list will look like after a decade or so. You can see the full live list here. And you can start pan-species listing yourself, at www.panspecieslisting.com.
It's took quite some effort to race through the remaining specimens and get the data into a useful format, though here we are. First off, all the photos in the post (unless I state otherwise) are Dave's that he took with his phone (like this stonking Stenocorus meridianus on Wood Spurge at Hoyle). They are far better (and more numerous) than the few I took on the day.
Before I start, a massive thanks to everyone who donated. We raised an incredible £2680! You can still donate here.
First off, the overall total for the challenge was 1072 species found, recorded and identified on the day. Just 37 species more than we managed in 2017. However, with the specimens I took, that figure rose to 1158 species. Pretty pleased with that. The total number of invertebrates found and identified on the day was 555 species, rising to 622 with all the identifications added. Here's how are totals compared to 2017 and what they looked like after the identifications made post 25th May were added. I was surprised we had such lower plant totals but we really did well on spiders and beetles.
Our route went: Burton Pond, Graffham Common, Hoyle Farm, Levin Down, Rewell Wood, Climping Dunes, Peppering Farm and then back to Dave's. Singleton and Charlton were also pretty good!
Burton Pond
I'll put the full species list at the end but for now, some highlights. First up, Burton Pond. We spend the first seven hours at this very diverse site on the Greensand Ridge. I was pleased to find that we recorded 73 species of invertebrate there that had not been recorded there before, including five species never recorded on a Trust reserve before. Such as this Nationally Scarce sapro, Prionychus melanarius I found under bark in the Warren.
We set the moth traps up and turned them on at exactly midnight, with one minute to spare! We then got onto beating, sweeping and suctioning before the dew started. I am not good on very little sleep and spent the first two hours trying to overcome an intense sense of impending doom. Then the Moon came up and it started to get pretty cold - but it was really weird being out so long that we watched the Moon go back down again. We did get a few good moths though, including 15 species new to the site. Surprising for such a small moth list and a well-recorded site!
Bird's Wing was indeed new to the site and Dave got excited by it!
A Privet Hawk-moth scared the bejesus out of us!
While we got a few larvae as well, including a couple I have not come across before. This is Dingy Footman.
And this two-tone fluffkin is actually a Rosy Footman!
Nightjars were all over Burton, which really surprised me. Over the day we got to 77 bird species, which I think is pretty good as we did not chase a single bird. We didn't however see a Kestrel, Little Egret or Bullfinch (the Great White Egret we had over Welch's Common on the reccy was a big ask to see on the day). I think I got about 10 lifers (which has helped get my personal pan-species list to 9000 species, wahoo!), mostly through the specimens but this gelechid was common at light there. It's Carpatolechia proximella.
We left Burton after a glorious sunrise to head to Graffham Common. Great photo, Dave!
Graffham Common
For some reason, we didn't take any photos at all at Graffham. It was oddly quiet there. Uloborus walckenaerius was in the first sweep net and we soon heard Hobby, Siskin, Crossbill and Garden Warbler. We still got 12 species new to the site, including (and this really surprises me) Lesser Cockroach - which was new to the Trust reserve network. I am sure it must have been reported from Rye Harbour?
Hoyle Farm
We got to Hoyle shortly after 9.00 am. I first surveyed this site last year and my third visit of the survey produced the most field dets I have ever had (297 inverts in just six hours of recording back in August last year). So we had to visit it. It did not disappoint. After a slow start at Graffham Common, it soon felt like we might make the 1500 species after 2.5 hours at Hoyle. Despite recording 621 species over three days last year, we still recorded 50 species on Saturday that I did not pick up last year. A highlight for me was this Pilemostoma fastusoa (Nationally Rare and Near Threatened) this species is not that uncommon on Common Fleabane in the West Weald. In fact, we had five species of tortoise beetle in an hour. So have a Nationally Scarce Cassida prasina too! These are my only photos here, my lens looks scratched compared to how bright Dave's phone shots are.
I was explaining to Dave my rule that if I see something, I have to sample it. I saw a big stand of Blackthorn and tapped it. Out popped a Brown Hairstreak! It's not every day you see this Vulnerable, Section 41 butterfly and it made up for the lack of any Purple Hairstreak larva.
We got into the woods there which were also really great, including large charismatic species such as the longhorn at the top and this Chrysomela populi on Aspen.
A massive thanks to Bianca for hosting us and a providing coffee and nuts! I'm glad we were able to find so many new species for the site, including some really key invertebrates.
Levin Down (via Singleton and Charlton)
It got very hot between 1 and 2 pm and I started feeling a bit unwell in the sun. But I ploughed on. Obviously we added a lot of new plants but the inverts were not coming through as thick and fast as we would have liked.
We did get a few nice spiders though. Including the Nationally Rare/Vulnerable Trichoncus saxicola, at its only Sussex site. Entelecara flavipes (another Nationally Scarce money spider) was new to the whole reserve network. Butterflies were good, with Grizzled Skipper, Dingy Skipper and Small Blue added here (we had 15 butterflies on the day!). This ball of Common Blues in mating frenzy was something!
A few nice bees too but they were not new to the site, Stelis ornatula, Andrena florea, Ceratina cyanea and Osmia bicolor were all nice and easy to ID species (although I didn't spot the Ceratina in the field). However, the super rare stonefly Nemoura lacustris that I found in the specimens was a lifer and another species new to the reserve network. On the NBN, there is a cluster of records around Charlton would you believe it. I guess it must be a chalk stream thing! What a result. I am so pleased we added 24 species to the Levin site list. In fact, between the three Trust sites we surveyed, 109 were new site records and a whopping NINE species had never been recorded on any Trust reserves.
This site really didn't pay off for some reason (two many species already picked up on similar soils maybe) and it went from being swelteringly hot to cool in the blink of an eye. A Pearl-bordered Fritillary was a target but the Cream-spot Tiger netted in flight was a highlight. It was at Rewell that it dawned on us that we were not going to make the 1500 species.
Climping Dunes It was quite cold by the time we got to Climping, so many of the species I found on the reccy could not be refound. The plants were great though. And Sand Catchfly was a highlight for the whole day. There were a few nice inverts like Grey Bush-cricket, Dune Robberfly and Acrosathe annulata.
And the days only fish...a Small-potted Catshark.
And then back to Dave's for more moth-trapping and microscope work. It wasn't long before this Pygmy Shrew paid us a visit!
Although the first moth trapping at Burton was quiet, the trap was quite lively with an Alder Kitten a rare encounter for me. The last species of the day was this Great Silver Water Beetle. I was sat at the microscope for 2.5 hours but probably only added about 40 species. It was much harder doing this tired in someone else's house than I expected. In fact, it took about 15 hours to process all the specimens, and they only added about 150 species. So, for the 24 hour challenge, I actually think you are better not taking specimens. From a records point of view though, many of the best records came out of this lot.
So that's it! Here's us at about 7.00 am. We did not look like that by the second midnight! So before I finish with the entire species list, it's so long until the next time we are crazy enough to try something like this again.
Oh, one last thing. Out of the 622 inverts we recorded on the day, a whopping 58 had some form of conservation status (such species are included in bold in the following list). Many of these are now out of date but I have not had time to differentiate these. Also, this list is the full 1158 species and includes the 86 microscope IDs added after the challenge, I'll try and update it if I get time but a period of high pressure means I will be head down with work for days/weeks now.
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