An Alternative Natural History of Sussex.
This blog shows the highlights of my day to day findings as a naturalist and ecologist living and working in Sussex. Delivered with a pinch of nihilism, a dash of sarcasm and absolutely no tweeness, here is my attempt to show natural history as it really is: Brutal, beautiful, uncompromising and fascinating...and occasionally ridiculous.
I have been studying natural history for some thirty years, nineteen in a professional capacity. I currently work in Sussex as a freelance entomologist, ecologist and botanist and specialise in nature reserve and rewilding management advice based on the interpretation of the surveys I carry out. I also run a number of identification courses. An advocate of the pan-species listing approach. My main areas of interest are birds, plants and invertebrates and a lot of my spare time is spent in the field. I am the county recorder for spiders and bugs.
Today is species 200 in #speciesaday, a series of daily 'microblogs' that I have been doing on Twitter for the last 200 days. Why bother? Well, I haven't had much time to do longer blogs lately, and I really like the snappy format of being restricted to 280 characters. I also REALLY like playing with my maps. As my Recorder 6 database hits 252,611 records, the maps are starting to be quite meaningful. So here are the rules...
I have to do it every day. So far so good, but this is the 3rd time I have attempted this. Don't think I got this far before though...
It must be something I have seen and have a photo of.
If I have a meaningful story to tell about the distribution of my records, I will. Including how many records I have for it, etc.
I'll include as much info as I can, including conservation statuses.
No repeats.
This means I need to keep track of what I have featured so far. I was surprised to see that out of 200 species, beetles were winning with 63 species featured and spiders were a long way behind at 37 species. I do tend to feature whatever I am writing about at the time for work, so they are often out of season. That will change come the summer! This does mean there is a tendency to feature rarer things, as that's what I usually photograph and have to write about in reports. In fact, 117 out of 200 species featured had some form of conservation status. My mean number of records for feature species is 41.8.
Will I ever run out species? Well, I add new species to my PSL list at a rate of about 1.2 to 1.5 species a day and this has been consistent for well over a decade. So I doubt it! But I might run out of species that make good photos. Not any time soon though!
Here is today's effort featuring the photo from the top of this post.
1/3 #speciesaday no. 200 is Pardosa paludicola. Nationally Rare & Endangered. Massive, near-black wolf spider, speckled with golden hairs. Known from less than 10 UK sites. Early adult period, although females later. White egg sacks, like a Pirata.
2/3 I have 16 records from two sites. 15 from Butcherlands next to Ebernoe in West Sussex and one male from a site in Hants. Both could be considered as pragmatic/hybrid rewilding projects (although this is likely coincidence).
3/3 At Butcherlands, as of 2022 it had spread to six fields after I first discovered it there in 2016.
I do sometimes put these on Facebook too but it really goes from a 10 minute thing to a 30 minute thing if I do this. So best to get on Twitter to see these daily updates.
Yesterday was the ten year year anniversary of my first ever blog post. A thousand posts and over a half a million hits later and here we are. It's been a hoot, so much has changed for me in the last decade. Pan-species listing being a big feature of my natural history adventures which in turn led to becoming an entomologist and eventually going fully freelance and leaving Sussex Wildlife Trust. Working on those reserves though was an incredible experience and three of top ten were on Trust reserves.
When I first put my list together I had only seen 2748 species, as of today I am on 7648 species, that's almost tripled. I must admit I do love blogging, it's a nice way to inspire other naturalists as well as acting like a journal and a photo library. Oh and gripping friends off of course. I am at present however limiting my time on social media as it feels healthy to do so in this crisis. That said I put the 24th April in my diary at the start of the year so I wouldn't miss this date.
Before I get to the top ten of of top tens, I must say a huge thank you to Jo Knell for encouraging me to start the blog. Jo is sadly no longer with us and without her encouragement I doubt I would have started it. Here is the link to my first post which was about an encounter with a Snow Bunting we had at the top of Snowdon during a holiday. I've been blogging for so long now I can't remember not blogging.
Now for the top ten in reverse order. ALL of these encounters were in Sussex. If you didn't read these the first time round or need refreshing, I have included the links to the original posts, please do follow these as there are plenty of anecdotes for each encounter.
10). Pardosa paludicola
In April 2017 I found a healthy colony of this incredibly rare and impressive wolf spider at Butcherlands, Sussex Wildlife Trust's rewilding project, this being only the 8th site in the UK for this species. I have since found it another site. Read more here.
9). Columbus Crabs
In February 2016, after watching reports online, I had a hunch that I might find these crabs on Brighton beach after a storm and low and behold, there they were. This species lives in goose barnacles and floats across the oceans. These were the first records for the county.
8). Portuguese Man o' War
As above, there were reports about these washing up along the south west coast after storms in October 2017 and I really wanted to find the first Sussex one. I wasn't quite quick enough but did find my own one on Portslade beach.
7). Melodious Warbler
Last June, when I was finishing up a bird survey at Butcherlands that I had been doing for nearly a decade, I had a WTF moment when I heard a warbler singing I didn't recognise. After nearly losing it, I got a good view and a sound recording. So exciting. The fastest bird song I have ever heard. I loved that site and that survey. Butcherlands features twice in this list!
6). Philodromus fallax
The spider year listing challenge of 2019 was extremely fun and by October I had almost given up. Right at the end of a day of recording in Camber Dunes, a spider I had long given up hope of finding popped out! What a beautiful spider.
5). Polycera quadrilineata
2019 was probably my best overall year for natural history, so it's not surprising that four of the top ten are from this year. In March at the spring tide, I usually try and get down to the Pound at Holywell. This time Evan Jones and I had an amazing evening with four sea slug lifers, Evan found most of them but this one I found by netting sea weed, the tropical looking Polycera quadrilineata. See the rest of the blog for the other species.
4). Crimson Speckled
The oldest post here from October 2011. Michael Blencowe and I trapping at Beachy Head. We very nearly never even saw this moth that was resting in a bush, not the trap. I will never forget shouting CRIMSON SPECKLED!!!
3). Large Tortoiseshell
A lunch time walk at Woods Mill in March 2018 produced a Large Tortoiseshell. It's a terrible photo but just enough to clinch the ID. Another one that almost didn't happen as it flew off so quickly.
2). Coptosoma scutellata
My first first for Britain and an entirely new family of shieldbug at that. This was from Marline in July 2019, Where DO the wings go?!
1). Calosoma sycophanta
Stumbling across this beauty in an arable field at Bishopstone in June 2016 is going to take some beating. It really was mind-blowingly lucky. Big, beautiful, rare. It ticks all the boxes.
So that's it. Ten years reduced into one post. What a decade. So now what for the Lyons Share? Is it time to call it a day?
Never before have I agonised over the order of my top ten natural history highlights but I do not exaggerate when I say 2019 was the best natural history year of my life. Anyway, spiders are here lumped as one and will get their own top ten at a later date. So here they are in reverse order.
10. Carabus intricatus (Blue Ground Beetle) with John Walters in Devon.
It was hard keeping John in eye sight on the side of the hill so I was glad that he was able to find us one of these astonishingly smart beetles. December was an exceptional month for me in nature.
9. Purple Emperor (Apatura iris) larva beaten from willow at Holmwood Common.
Not a really rare species but my first encounter with the larva in September produced some unforgettable photos.
8. Snow Fleas (Boreus hyemalis).
Both on purpose in the Wyre Forest, Shropshire in February and by accident on the Roaches in December.
7. Mega rare moths found in the field, who needs a moth trap?
I found a LOT of rare moths, probably the rarest was this Purple Marbled that I managed to capture even without a net at Seaford Head during a bioblitz. Others this year including sweeping a Dewick's Plusia in a park in London and netting a Hornet Moth in flight on a freelance job in Kent.
6. East Head sand dunes invertebrate survey.
A summer surveying these sand dunes with Lee Walther for the National Trust was a blast. Still I think the site with highest proportion of species with conservation status I have ever surveyed. Here I have picked the sea-lavender feeding weevil Pseudaplemonuslimonii as it's metallic purple!
5. Sea slugs at the Pound
My annual trip to the Pound at Eastbourne with Evan Jones was mid blowing last year and it's testament to how amazing a year this has been that this is way down at number five. Here is the one that blew me away the most and pretty much the only one I found myself, Polycera quadrilineata.
4. The baseline survey of Ken Hill Estate
My trips up to Norfolk this year were so enjoyable, so many great things to find but the day I recorded Breckland Leatherbug Arenocoris waltliimight be the most memorable.
3. A year of spiders
OK, here's the big shock. I have loved year listing spiders (and I will be giving them their own top ten very soon) but it doesn't make it to 1st or even 2nd place. Who will win the spider top ten? I suspect it might have to go toPhilodromus fallaxfor being the most unexpected find in early November that I had almost given up on and one of my most sought after species of all time.
2. Melodious Warbler and breeding Dartford Warblers at Butcherlands
The Butcherlands bird survey has delighted me for nearly a decade. So the breeding Dartford Warblers in bramble scrub were amazing but then picking up an odd warbler in the distance on the last visit, chasing it, realising it was a bird I didn't know was possibly the most exciting thing ever. Especially as at one point it was getting away from me. Then a great big yellow warbler jumped right out in front of me, a Melodious Warbler!. Definitely the fastest song of any bird and a great way to end a very enjoyable survey. When I first picked it up it was in the big willow on the left.
1. My first first for Britain!
Not only a new species but a new family for the UK. Finding this at Marline Valley was such an exciting experience. What a strange looking thing. It was closely followed by a second specimen swept by young Ted on his work experience! I tentatively identified it as Coptosoma scutellatum and Tristan Bantock soon confirmed the ID and I gave it the English name Trapezium Shieldbug. A really exciting way to end 12 years at Sussex Wildlife Trust but I have to end this on a downer. It probably turned up in the hot summer of 2018 and this in turn is almost certainly down to man made climate change.
We now have a government woefully inadequate in terms of its approach to climate change and emissions, so you have to do every little bit you can to prevent things from getting any worse. I don't think people realise just how important five years is in the crisis we are in now, I know I am preaching to the converted here but we just missed a huge chance to make serious change to our environment at this crucial tipping point in the climate crisis and influence others on the world stage.
But I know what you're thinking. "Where ARE its wings?!". Now lets see what 2020 has to offer...
I had a great day today handing over the Butcherlands bird survey to Glenn where we saw three Hawfinches, Peregrine and Red Kite. Then we went on to Burton where we had a look at the work being done there to open up Black Hole. It's looking really good but I didn't want to miss an opportunity to work some of the tussocks in the bog. I apologise in advance for rubbish photos in the white tray but it's a very wet site and wet day, so nice photos were not really achievable.
We recorded 27 species of spider, 16 of which were new to the site. Including Nesticus cellulanus, a spider that I was worried I might not pick up this year. Also new for the year were a couple of other 'bogey spiders' I had not seen until now but really should have. Macrargus rufus and FINALLY Robertus lividus. That puts me on 343 species for the year, just passing over the 50% mark. Now I know I am a few months behind Matt Prince on this but I am very pleased to get to this point.
New to the site today was the creepy Taranuncus setosus. A Nationally Scarce spider I have only ever found in Greater Tussock-sedge or Purple Moor-grass tussocks. It is really rather sinister looking, a big dark leggy liny with 'something of the night' about it. Here is a female on the left. To the right is the disappointing Walckenaeria nudipalpis which lacks a fancy head in the male.
And these tiny spiders must surely be young Rugathodes instabilis given the habitat.
Then Glenn swept the first Hieroglyphic Ladybird I have ever seen in Sussex and the first on a Trust reserve since 1993 (which was actually Graffham Common). This was from an area of rush growing over Sphagnum, a long way from any heathers. Why are these so hard to find? I have now seen them three times, all this year in Surrey, Hampshire and Sussex.
Yesterday morning was my first day in my part time role at the Trust. I started early by heading out to Butcherlands to finish the bird survey. I have, since the last visit I reported, confirmed breeding of the Dartford Warblers there. I was just getting to that area when in the distance, around 100 m away among the cacophony of Garden Warblers and Whitethroats, I heard what I thought was a Sedge Warbler. That was odd as I had a migrant Sedge Warbler last time. So I headed towards it and soon realised I had something quite different. It sounded like a Garden Warbler singing twice as fast but this was preceded by some unusual repetitive notes, not unlike Swallow or Starling alarm calls.
What on Earth was this? I can tell you hearing a singing bird in Britain that I don't recognise is a thrilling event. My heart was beating like a big clock in fear it would get away without me seeing it. It had moved from the big willow to the left of the image above and was moving away from me rapidly, singing from the bramble clumps. I headed towards it, filming to get a sound recording with my camera. It wasn't a warbler I knew from Europe, so it had to be one I had never heard singing. Through a process of elimination my money was on a Sylvia warbler and I thought maybe Subalpine Warbler. I rounded one bramble to see it sat right out in the open atop a bramble singing its heart out. A massive yellow warbler with a sharp crest and a big pale bill. Obviously a Hippolais warbler!!!
So that meant it had to be either Melodious or Icterine Warbler. I had good views but not good enough for a photo so I had to rely on behaviour, colour, timing, location and the sound recording. I was fairly convinced after listening to the two on Xeno-Canto that it was Melodious Warbler, which from memory was also more likely here,and this was soon verified by a variety of more experienced birders. How exciting. Here is the best of the recordings I made.
I have only seen one before in the autumn of 2001 when I was a volunteer at Dungeness RSPB at the start of my career. It was low down in some Rock Samphire in front of the nuclear power station, certainly not singing from the top of a bush. It felt like a lifer to be fair. All this happened between 7.00 am and 7.30 am and by 9.30 when I got back to the same location it was nowhere to be seen. So I think it is long gone. This was by far the best bird I have found on the reserves in the last 11 years. Being possibly my last time I do this survey, it was a real treat to see this and I did well up a bit with excitement. Butcherlands just keeps throwing up exciting records.
I didn't see or hear the Darfords this time, they have finished already. I did however add another new bird to the survey. A singing Reed Warbler in a hedge. Which makes NINE warblers this year from the survey.
Also, some of those weird asperitas clouds I saw last autumn when driving. Strange that these are the most recently named clouds but are some of our most distinctive. And that I have only seen them in the last two years.
Butcherlands. The most exciting, unpredictable and consantly changing Common Bird Census I have ever done. This is the eighth year I have carried out the four visit CBC there and it's amazing how much it's changed. Eighteen years ago this was all arable on Wealden Clay and was fenced and left to be restored to something more natural with pulse grazing by cattle currently pretty much the only management. No planting occurred and there are at least 30,000 oaks out there alone. Before looking at some of the detail though I am gonna cut right to the chase and tell you about what happened yesterday morning. First though a recap from my first visit on the 3rd April 2019. I had a Hawfinch fly over (my first since the previous winter's influx) and then surprisingly a male Dartford Warbler called repeatedly from a bramble bush. Not all that unusual to pick them up in bramble scrub away from the heaths outside of the breeding season (I've seen them in Sheepcote Valley on the edge of Brighton for example).
Yesterday morning, the warblers were in full song. Whitethroats were EVERYWHERE. I recorded 44 singing males across the site. So when I got to the exact same area and heard Dartford Warbler calling again, I was pretty shocked. "It's holding territory!". I bungled the video last time so I got a quick video of it calling and you can see it fly from the bush to the left.
I thought I really should try and hear it singing, so I headed a few bushes away and crouched down out of view. It didn't work and the bird came towards me, scolding me from just a few metres away. I grabbed another video as it did so and it started singing a tiny bit. However what happened next was incredible. A female popped up out of the same bush! "THEY'RE HOLDING TERRITORY!". Some context here, there isn't any heather at Butcherlands, there is however hectares of low bramble scrub. This part of the site is on the edge of a sea of undulating bramble. It's also south west facing with a slightly sandy soil (more Common Bent/Cat's-ear than Heather). So it's hot, dry and with a structural component close to heather/low gorse. I never thought that this would be a thing at Butcherlands but these birds are much less fussy abroad. It may well be that this structural type and temperature envelope is rarely provided outside of the heaths in the UK.
Has anyone else encountered this in the UK before?
Yesterday morning my brain was totally fried from all the warblers. After this encounter I was doubting every Whitethroat that called, after all, if one pair of Darties could nest there, why not more? I really doubt I would have picked them up with so many Whitethroats there if I hadn't found the male three weeks ago. So many questions. So exciting!
I actually recorded over 75 singing warblers yesterday! My rule for difficult species pairs is this: if you're not sure, it's the commoner one. Think I'll call that 'Lyons' Razor'. It certainly came in handy with a few Blackcaps today. A Blackcap AND a Garden Warbler taking turns to sing from the same willow nearly made me lose my mind though.
Whitethroat - 44
Chiffchaff - 11
Garden Warbler - 8
Blackckap - 8
Lesser Whitethroat - 4
Dartford Warbler - 1
That's 76 warblers in all. Plus ten Nightingales and a Cuckoo.
How has this changed over the last eight years though? With provisional data from yesterday's visit (this will change) the warblers look like this. A highly significant increase from linear regression. Only Chiffchaff and Blackcap came out as stable (as they are probably at capacity in the hedgerows and fields edges - for now).
And then like this if you break them down to species.
It's not all winners though. Nightingales have dipped a bit (although this trend is not significant) and Skylarks have nearly disappeared completely (a significant decline), they are still holding on this year though.
But look at the overall number of territories for all species (no suggested data here for 2019) shows a significant increase.
If you break the data down to Red & Amber listed Birds of Conservation Concern and compared to the Green listed, there is no significant trend with the scarcer birds but a highly significant one with the green birds. Showing that the generalists are doing better/quicker than the specialists. You would expect this though. This graph would look very different if Whitethroat was still amber listed but that is not something to wish for!
Species-richness of birds holding territory looks like this from 2012 to 2018 and shows no trend being about as level as it could be.
Linnet and Dunnock are two of the other species that have colonised the centre of the fields and have rocketed up significantly over the period. However the star of the show is yet to arrive. Last year FOUR Turtle Dove territories were noted and this chart shows how they have fared over the period. Wow, wasn't expecting to analyse the whole data set. Got a bit carried away there with linear regression.
I think the success of a project like this is when the site can sustain all of the species that the site has the potential to carry. So losing the red-listed Skylarks to the red-listed Linnets completely doesn't seem right to me just because we don't have an easy way of controlling the scrub. It's always early successional habitats that lose out without a constant effort to keep them open, that's why the associated species are rare. But I am also a fan of not trying to have everything everywhere all of the time. Additionally, scale is a factor here and it may not be possible to have all the successional states in 80 ha in a functional way. It shouldn't stop us trying though. How far back do you go though? After all, soon after the project started some 18 years ago (way before monitoring began) there were breeding Lapwing out there. The site would have to look very different to support them again, not something I would propose at all. You can go round and round with this. One thing is certain though, succession goes in one direction and never stops.
Over the last eight years I have recorded 73 species in the survey but this morning added another one to the list in the form of a pair of Egyptian Geese flying over. Whatever next?!
I did the lookering yesterday at Butcherlands and had a quick look for spiders as I went. I was keen to check up on the Pardosa paludicola that we found there back in 2017. It took about 30 seconds to spot one. They are HUGE compared to the wealth of commoner Pardosa that are everywhere. I saw two females and a male (all adult). They are very leggy and spiny compared to other members of the genus and have another skill up their eight sleeves; they're surprisingly good jumpers and unlike the other species, can jump clean out of the tray!
And a male.
Other species new for the year included a few young female Sibianor aurocinctus (I took this photo of a female last year).
Pardosa pullata
Walckenaeria antica
Pelecopsis parallela
Dictyna arundinacea
I found the cows. All good.
Then I had to service some of the dataloggers in Ebernoe and thought about what Matt said about searching Amaurobius webs for Oonops. On one very dark and shady oak in deep Holly shade there was a huge web (which in hindsight was probably a Tegenaria's). I shook this into the tray and found an amazing five specimens of the nationally scarce BAP Dipoena inornata (Silky Gallows-spider). Now this is only the second time I have encountered this spider (the other was as new to East Sussex from Eridge Rocks in a very different habitat - shaken from fern litter growing on sandrock) and was really surprised to see it in this habitat. New to Ebernoe and the 10 km square. They are meant to eat ants, I would imagine that this would just about be suitable for Brown Tree AntLasius brunneus but why were they in this web and in such numbers?!
And the male under the microscope showing the novelty front end. So funny.
Then today the weather wasn't any good for a lunch time jaunt until I saw Matt Prince was on 132 species too. So as I was leaving work I beat the soggy Box bush outside the office window and got THREE species new for the year in ten minutes, putting me on 135 species for 2019.
Do you get your abutilons confused with your punctatonervosus? Then look no further. Looking like a couple of gormless smiling evil aliens from Dr Who, are the two species of Scticopleurus we have in the UK. On the left we have Stictopleurus abutilon and on the right Sticopleurus punctatonervosus. Now in Sussex at least punctatonervosus is much commoner than abutilon. I have 23 and 3 records respectively. I see punctatonervosus all over but in huge numbers on Common Fleabane. It's all over Knepp and Butcherlands for example. I have never seen abutilon in in numbers like this though and don't know about any particular plant associations. How do you tell them apart though?
Here we have S. abutilon. There is a curved pale ridge with no dark punctures present running almost parallel to the leading edge of the pronotum. As these are tough bugs, you can hold them in your fingers and see this with a hand lens easy enough.
And the commoner S. punctatonervosus which basically doesn't have the unpunctured pale ridge.
So that's that sorted then. As these two rhopalid bugs are both on the Sussex Shieldbug Atlas, you've got no excuse to not record them now. I await the flood of records. Somehow I don't think I will get double figures of these two in a year on iRecord (unlike the double figures of Western Conifer Seedbug I am getting on a nearly daily basis now).
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