The Lyons Share

Yesterday I ran a new course for the Trust entitled 'Invertebrates of a Heathland'. The idea was to show the participants how to find and identify some of the many species of invertebrate that thrive in this habitat. So where better to run it than at our third most speciose site and arguably the richest heathland in Sussex than Iping & Stedham Commons?

It was a good group with 11 in attendance including staff from Sussex Wildlife Trust, Surrey Wildlife Trust, Species Recovery Trust, National Trust and Thames Basin Heaths Partnership. My approach was to get them to get their hand's dirty, so nets and pots were handed out and id didn't take long until we built up quite an impressive list. I have included below the whole list as promised to the course attendees with some notes on the species they saw. 'N' is new to the site (14 in all), 'NN' is new to the site AND the reserve network (amazingly there were three of these!) and GL was new to me. I had four new species taking me into 7th places on the PSL rankings.

The most exciting find for me was Phytocoris insignis. This rare heathland species that looks like a small and dark Phytocoris varipes was swept from Heather on Stedham. It's only the second Sussex site for this RDB3 species.

But the stars of the show were the Hornet Robber Fly and Thomisus onsitus. Hornet Robber Fly because it was new to all the attendees and was the biggest one I had ever seen. What a beauty! Thomisus onistus because one of the attendees stated at the beginning how much they wanted to see this strange spider. I instructed that it was best to sweep Bell Heather and after some furious sweeping, she turned up the only one!

Bee Wolf was EVERYWHERE!

And Epeolus cruciger was a new one for me. It's hard to believe this is a bee!

Spiders came in at 22 species, with the stonking Philodromus histrio a real favourite.

Another attendee found Ivy Bee new to the site too. So it was really great to not only give people some guidance but also to show that they can directly contribute to the recording of such well recorded sites. Of the 105 species mentioned above, 14 were new to the site! This really surprised me and some of them seem like they might be errors on my part when I put the master spreadsheet together (Small Tortoiseshell and Bombus lapidarius particularly). The reserve network now boasts records of some 9908 species and 2781 of these have been recorded at Iping & Stedham. We didn't add any new spiders though, it's really tough going to find a new spider for this site. No Heath Tiger Beetles but we were cut short on that one by a monster of a storm. It was a great atmosphere and I would definitely run this kind of course again.

It's been a while. I've been very busy with the field season this year so very little time for blogging or even taking photos but I couldn't resist a few shots of this beast. This impressive looking insect was recorded by Trust volunteer Ellie Blows on a phone camera todat at Woods Mill. I was too busy with interviews to go and have a closer look there and then so I handed a net and a pot to Ellie and I was pleased to find she had managed to bring it back for a closer look. It's not a Hornet but the Hornet mimic Large Alder Sawfly Cimbex connatus. There is only one other Sussex record, being from last year, so it's clearly starting to spread. This is a large insect and would not be easy to miss but it would be easy to mistake for a Hornet. Check out those jaws!!!

It's not a new species for me though, as I am convinced that this is the larva of the same thing that I found last year at Woodwalton Fen in Cambridgeshire. However, I'd much rather see the adult than the larva! It's certainly a new record for Woods Mill too. Great stuff.

This weekend was the third 'official' PSL field meeting, and a great weekend it was. This time Jonathon Newman was the organiser and the site was Woodwalton Fen in Cambridgeshire. I've managed to process ALL of my identifications and get ALL of my records onto Recorder already so I am feeling rather pleased with myself, if a little exhausted.

The weather was pretty poor on the Saturday but we did still manage a couple of stonking beetles. The site manager had told us of the recent discovery of Tansy Beetle Chrysolina graminis (a very scarce priority species). Have a look here for Buglife's write up on the species. At Woodwalton it's not feeding on Tansy, rather on Water Mint.

I saw my second ever Musk Beetle Aromia moschata, which was even more impressive than I remember. The last one I saw flew over our heads in Lakenheath car park back in 2004. This is a huge beetle!

All in all I have added 27 new species including this larvae, which I am pretty sure is the larvae of the scarce sawfly Cimbex connatus, the first thing I found on the day!

I wonder where the next event will be and who will host it? These are great opportunities to meet like-minded naturalists and learn from those around you but attendance was surprisingly low, with only 12 people maximum. I hope next year there will be even more people! A massive thank you to Jonathon for organising the event, having arranged the first one back in 2012, I know that these things take up a lot more of your time than you would think. It was really well organised and I was pleased to relax and not feel like I was at work (even though I relentlessly surveyed all weekend and got a lot of people a lot of new species). That's what this is all about though, helping those further down the rankings, even if it means everyone is closing in on me. All I want from PSL is to be a better naturalist, help make lots of other competent naturalists and have a bloody good laugh along the way! So far so good I say!!!

WARNING: This post is stupid.

It's that time of year when I have to get up really early once or twice a week to carry out bird surveys. This morning I woke up twelve minutes before my alarm clock at the ungodly hour of 4:18 am. This meant I went to bed early, about 9:00 pm. When I have to have an early night, I pass out pretty quickly, so when Rachael comes in a few hours later, I'm out cold. Almost. See, I have a tendency to talk utter rubbish at these times and occasionally wake myself up laughing, hysterically sometimes. Last night was no exception, as I simply uttered the word:

"Fungalton"

WHAT THE HELL IS FUNGALTON?!? A mythical mushroom market town in the Midlands? An actual ton of toadstools? I have no idea. I can only think it was something to do with the West Weald Fungi Recording Group field meeting I attended yesterday at Whithurst Park. Other classics from the last two years include:

"There's a man over there dressed as a lamp post" (there wasn't)

"Can you smell wizards?" (we couldn't, actually I still can't)

And the all time mid summer 2013 classic:

"It will soon be time for my Christmas egg" (to this day, I have not received my Christmas egg)

Enough of this nonsense and time for some wildlife, I am a serious naturalist after all! The highlight of yesterday's field trip was not actually a fungus but rather a vascular plant that has eluded me for a number of years, despite searching for it. We stumbled across over twenty plants of Narrow-leaved Bittercress on a woodland ride. I still get a kick out of seeing new plants even if they're not in flower. 

I only added one fungi being Pale Brittlstem Psthyrella candolleana.

But I did see three new inverts. A spider (Pachygnatha listeri), a saproxylic beetle under oak bark (Cerylon histeroides) and this very cool Truffle Gall caused by the wasp Andricus quercusradicis. Growing out of the base of an oak tree, it really did look like a fungus but it's quite hard and woody and full of cells each containing a tiny larva. Now, I wonder what fresh madness I will dream up tonight (fortunately for everyone I only have about eight early starts left this year).