The Lyons Share

It's been two months since I last showed how my list has changed. Back then, on the 31st May I was on 3397, by the 31st July I was on 3601 species! So I have added 204 species in two months. I might have stopped trying to get to 4000 species but I am heading there anyway without any real effort beyond going to work and identifying things I see whilst I'm surveying.

I have added a few really nice species recently that for one reason or another didn't make it into a blog post. The rarest is perhaps a beetle that I caught at Parham last Monday (25th July). Whilst moth trapping I did a bit of torching on oak trunks and netted a tenebrionid in flight. I new it was one I had not seen and suspected it was Prionychus ater. By the time I got round to identifying it I realised it was the RDB2 Prionychus melanarius! A great find.

Another surprise came when I suddenly realised that the huge spiders with tubercles on their abdomens that I saw at Friston on the 30th June when moth trapping were not Gibbaranea gibbosa but actually the Nb Araneus angulatus. I wish I had managed a photo now, quite a large spider, certainly bigger than any Araneus diadematus that I have seen. This just goes to show, moth-trapping is great for getting you out into wild places after dark with a torch, something that few people do. Pan-species listing has made moth trapping even more exciting for me!

Here is how the list breaks down:

I've been at Friston today and spotted a few nice moths. The highlight was my first Sussex Scarlet Tiger. I have not seen this since around 1994 in Cornwall (ouch, that's 17 years!). It is turning up in gardens in Brighton now but as I don't currently have a garden (Sussex is my garden!) I haven't seen one until today. There were quite a few Hummingbird Hawkmoths out there too.

I did have one tick, the local Pammene aurana that feeds on Hogweed, it seems both as a larvae and as an adult. If all tortrix moths stuck to simple blocks of colour in childish shapes like this one they would be so much easier to identify! I'm getting a little more used to the Canon G12 now too having found a few functions that are resulting in better shots.

Yesterday was a dark day. Too painful was yesterday's event that I could not even blog about it until 24 hours later. No, actually I was so busy running around from one end of the county to the other with work that I didn't get a chance to blog. Anyway. Picture the scene: I walk up to a tree at Cowdray which has been very productive to see an ovipositing Hornet Beetle Leptura aurulenta. I pull out the Coolpix, go to turn it on when it begins to make a very pained sound and refuses to turn on at all. At least it went out with style. I bought the camera second hand in 2005 and 95% of all the photos on this blog are taken using this 4 mega pixel fossil. Good job I bought a back up. Perhaps now I will finally figure out how to use this vastly superior camera! 

Anyway, we had a good day with a number of species new to my list and many more for the site. Again, picking through fragments of beetles in old trees proved very productive and we might have found two RDB additions to the list using this method! Not so productive though for the pan-species lister.

I then went on to Friston to look for one of my bogey moths, the Lappet. We failed to see it but we did see Olive Crescent, Great Oak Beauty and one of my other bogey moths, the Fern (which flew off before I had chance to get a photo). We also saw a couple of Scallop Shells (haven't seen them for years), my first male Glow Worms, and this  Brown Chafer Serica brunnea which was also new to me. I end the day on 3515 species. I also remembered that today has another signifigance. It's ten years ago today my career in conservation started as a volunteer at Dungeness RSPB Reserve. I may have to do yet another blog about that...