*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).
A Chalk Carpet of course! I have always wondered why I have not seen this moth because I always spend a lot of time on the chalk during its flight season. As I walked towards a quadrat at Ditchling Beacon today, I kicked up what I thought was going to be a Treble-bar but as it settled I recognised it as a Chalk Carpet. It was quite well hidden against the chalk. The small black twin-spots are an ID feature. This moth is both Nb and on the BAP list but there are old records for the site. Nearby I saw the remains of a Musk Orchid.
I added two other species today too, the small tortrix Acleris aspersana and the leaf beetle Sermylassa halensis which in hindsight I have seen before at Castle Hill and probably other places too. That leaves me on 3562 species. Someone mentioned to me today about me stopping listing. Just to reiterate, I have not stopped listing! All I have done is ease the pressure of trying to get to 4000 by the end of the year. I don't think I could ever stop wanting to see new things, nor will I ever forget what I have seen. Anyway, three new species just by walking between quadrats is pretty good going I reckon!
I have been working from home today so I have some natural history from a month ago for you. As we returned to the car park after seeing the
Wartbiters back on the 8th August, a big insect landed on the windscreen and Jo alerted me to it. I could see that it was a backswimmer (an aquatic true bug), one of the
Notonecta sp. but it was not one I had seen before. I took a photo and retained the specimen and have just got around to keying it out. There are four species in the genus. Most
Notonecta species are larger than the water boatmen (Corixidae) but more strikingly, their back legs are much longer than their middle legs (with water boatmen the legs are roughly the same length) and they have a bigger rostrum. There are four species of
Notonecta and this one keyed out to be
Notonecta maculata. This species has mottled hemielytra and an orange metanotum with two black spots (this is just visible in the photo under the hemielytron that is raised).
Interestingly, it was a really hot day and we were parked in a fairly isolated car park. I have had two other incidents this year when water beetles have appeared on or near dark cars parked in very isolated spots (heathland and chalk-grassland). I imagine that on hot days these guys fly around looking for another pond and a dark car just about fits the bill if you have poor eyesight. This is species 2834, 166 to go to 3000!
So exctied was I to post the
Wartbiter photos and videos that I forgot all about this shot and video of a mating pair of
Chalkhill Blues at Castle Hill last weekend. Right at the very end you get about a second of
Stripe-winged Grasshopper too...and a few sheep.
I've had another epic day's natural history running around East Sussex with Oli and Jo. This is going to have to be a two-parter again as there is so much to fit in. We started at Castle Hill, the target being Wartbiters. Soon after arriving at the site we heard the call which sounds a little like a Dark Bush-cricket but the frequency of the notes increases over time, the books say like a bicycle free-wheeling down a hill. I filmed one cricket and managed to get a sound recording so hopefully you will be able to hear it, this is my first video post and although you can't see much of the cricket it is quite a good sound recording! This is a very stocky, thick-set cricket with huge dark eyes and a quite dark-green colour. I think we heard and saw around 10 males, all within a few metres of the path. Some were completely green and some had quite strong black markings. This one had very dark markings but it was difficult to get a good shot.
This RDB2 species is also protected and it's not a good idea to go walking extensively where they are. However, at Castle Hill you can see and hear them easily from the path. Look for longer tussocks of grasses, like Tor-grass (but not exclusively - I heard them singing from other rank grasses in a cultivated field nearby) within the tighter grazed chalk-grassland. The area in the photo below, taken from the path, had many singing crickets in it. We were there for less than an hour and heard around 10 within a few metres of the path. They are good at casting their songs though, often sounding closer than they really were.
Other sightings included Prickly Poppies (photo), Rough Poppies, another daytime Badger (third one this year!), the first Wall butterflies (photo) I have seen in two years (I can't believe how few of these I see now), Willow Warbler, Raven, Chalkhill Blue and the first 2nd brood Adonis Blue of the year I've seen.
Tomorrow's blog will be a report of three rare plants seen in the Cuckmere area.
A miserable day but despite the elements Oliver Froom and I tried to see some of the earlier flowering rare plants in Sussex. The cold winter has slowed everything down though and the Green-winged Orchids at Anchor Bottom are only just getting their shit together, they will probably be at their best in another week. Birds were good with Corn Bunting, Yellowhammer, Linnet, Willow Warbler and Whitethroat. At Castle Hill, the Early Spider Orchids were nowhere in site. Four Wheatears were hanging around in the valley bottom, thanks to Oli for this photo of a knackered looking female. Invertebrates were completely out of the picture today. The highlight was a single specimen of Early Gentian found by Oli. The specimen is just about to open up. This species is endemic to England and is protected by British and European law but in David Streeter's new book he states that it is not genetically different to Autumn Gentian. The species is smaller though and is only found on tightly grazed chalk grassland in the south east. The key thing though is the early flowering season, Autumn Gentian is not out until August. Back to the spider orchids though, I think they will need another two weeks to be worth looking at.
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