The Lyons Share

Before I found myself sucked into the inescapable gravitational pull of Black Hole at Burton Pond, I headed to Iping Common to MAX OUT ON MY SPIDER YEAR LIST! There, I've said it. I'm year-listing spiders again apparently. Anyway yesterday was awesome. From Iping and Burton I recorded 65 species of spider which from mid winter on a frosty day I think is pretty smart. I got TWO lifers out of it. Neither were from Iping. Iping was great for some big impressive spiders I would normally expect to see in autumn, such as an adult Ero tuberculata above (looks like another new record for January). This adult female Agroeca proxima. 

Other charismatic mega fauna included Marpissa muscosa.

Nuctenea umbratica. I don't think I have ever noticed their weird eye arrangement before.

Clubiona corticalis with the above two on the same tree.

And a Cream-streaked Ladybird just to keep my eye in with the beetles.

I had collected tons of linys which it turned out were going to be mostly unexciting species. The Sphagnum areas at Iping were yielding nothing so by about 1.30 pm I found myself sucked into the Black Hole at Burton Pond.

A year on I was very much aware how much my spider field craft, especially with money spiders, had moved on. I was ticking off things such a Sintula corniger, Taranuncus setosus, even female Notioscopus sarcinatus (I did check these). In addition immature Theridiosoma gemmosum and Rugathodes instabilis. Black Hole really is a gem and recent work that Jane Willmott has done there is clearly having a great benefit to the site by keeping it more open. An an adult Platnickina tincta was a bit of a surprise too.

Oh and Demetrias monostigma. If you are finding this beetle, you are on a good site for spiders. And beetles. I only ever see it in old Greater Tussock-sedge and Marram tussocks.

It wasn't until I got home though that I realised I had found something rather good.

Here is Centromerus brevivulvatus. Last seen in the UK in West Sussex in 1998 by Dick Jones at Durford Heath. It's Endangered and Nationally Rare. Only ever known from seven 10 km squares, four of which are in Sussex. Interestingly one of these is Iping Common where it was last seen in 1969. This record though is an entirely new 10 km square making eight 10 km squares, five of which are in Sussex! Oddly only this week I assessed this species as a 'Sussex rare species' and thought to myself "I should get out there and have a look at Durford Heath."

Have a look at the SRS page for it here. Here is the map. Look at all those 'x's.

The singularity that is the Black Hole opened up an Einstein-Rosen Bridge to 1998. What was I doing then? This:

I didn't know anything about spiders then, but I did look a lot more like a spider than I do now. I'd have been half way through my astrophysics degree at Sussex Uni at this point (that's not the name of a hipster ale by the way {hipsters didn't exist then} - in the above image I am halfway through a pint of Hoegaarden).

Anyway, back to Black Hole. One of the next spiders I looked at I only recently ticked off up north. I was amazed to find a male Aphileta misera. This seems to be a species new to West Sussex, the last Sussex record from Ashdown Forest was in 1970. So where was I in 1970? Well I was an unconstituted smear of matter across the Staffordshire landscape, with smaller clusters peppered around the world depending on where my mother's food would come from some seven years later. Some of my carbon might even have been sequestered by spiders at that point, probably the bits that would one day make up my neurons. We have all been there!

And also new for me was Diplocephalus permixtus. A species I was expecting to see up north. Turns out this is the first West Sussex record since 1944 and Sussex record since 1999.

Now I did quite a bit of recording at both these sites last year and it really does go to show how important repeat visits are. With just shy of 10% of the UK fauna seen in a single day I will not be doing any recording now until next weekend.

Less than two weeks ago Matt Prince put up a photo of the palps of the weird money spider Sintula corniger. I have always wanted to see this nationally scarce spider because of its strange tackle but it doesn't occur in Sussex. Until today that is! Jane and I had a good look around Burton Pond and we had a go with the suction-sampler in the Sphagnum and Tussock-sedge there. Sintula corniger is the 391st spider recorded on any Sussex Wildlife Trust reserve and it's entirely new to both counties!

If you can't see what is going on there, here is the illustration of the palp from Roberts. It has a backwards-pointing appendage like no other spider, with hairs and lumps all over the place. I think it looks like a tiny pair of nutcrackers. Wait, would that be a pair of pair of nutcrackers? Given what the male palps actually are, you could equally call these a pair of crackers nuts. What does all that extra stuff actually achieve?!

New to West Sussex (but not Sussex as a whole) was the nationally scarce Notioscopus sarcinatus sucked from Sphagnum. Even more scarce nationally, this seems quite strongly tied to Sphagnum, the only other place I have seen it being in a similar habitat at Old Lodge. Identifiable in the field by the male's 'finger'like' projection off the back of the cephalothorax which you can see in this old photo.

All in all we added nine new spiders to the site (an increase of 10% to 99 species). Three of these were nationally scarce. I end the day on 105 spiders for the year having seen over 15% of the British list so far.

Oh and we also added the carabid Agonum sexpunctatum to the site on an an area of recently scraped Bracken being restored to heath! This nationally scarce species is usually fairly typical on black, peaty, wet heaths but is always nice to see. Great to see scarce species colonising the recently created habitat.

I found myself nearly waist deep in a stinking black bog today known ominously as the Black Hole, part of our Burton Pond reserve. It's a dangerous place but we had to have a good look around to discuss alder, willow and birch management there. It wasn't all bad though. I did a wee bit of sweeping on the edge of the bog and came up with this striking nationally scarce (Nb) spider, Araneus alsine. I have wanted to see this for years and was glad to finally chance upon it. There are only three records on SxBRC and the last in West Sussex was in the 1890s! Considering how distinctive this thing is, and apparently how hard it is to find, perhaps this is the first record since then! The only Araneus I have not seen now is Araneus marmoreus.

I also swept a carabid new to me, the nationally scarce Demetrias monostigma being my 4029th species. Here is a shot of Cranberry flowering in the bog, there is more there than I have seen anywhere else in Sussex.

Now this is the last post before I go to Ireland. See you on the flip side!