The Lyons Share

I would literally trade in family members to see this beetle. Sadly, the Sycophant Calosoma sycophanta is only ever a very rare vagrant to the UK so I am not likely to see one any day soon. So why am I featuring this at all...

...last Saturday I attended the carabid workshop at Dinton Pastures ran by Mark Telfer and John Walters. It was a great day, it's hugely important NOT to be an entomologist in isolation and having the opportunity to work through a correctly identified reference collection is worth its weight in gold. It's so great to see specimens of beetles that you have only ever seen in photographs. You really can't get the scale and the jizz from just a photograph. Mark and John are great at explaining things and the guides they are working on are really ground breaking. I particularly like Mark's English names for beetles. They are really well thought out but memorable and imaginative too. Naming species like this is a great responsibility, not just for entomologists as a memory aid but I think it's also part of our national heritage. Look at the English names for macro moths. Did they know when they named them that they were leaving behind one of the most fun things in natural history? I don't know if they did but natural history would be a poorer place without them and I feel Mark is doing something similar with carabids. I hope they are well used!

After an inspiring talk by John (including a section on Philorhizus species, making me realise just how significant a dip it was when I missed the tiny carabid Mab's Lantern Philorhizus quadrisignatus that Dave Gibbs found whilst torching oak trunks last year at Parham). I then spent the rest of the day keying out several families which I rarely encounter representatives of beyond the extremely common ones: Dyschirius, Anisodactylus (I will remember how to identify the Heath Shortspur Anisodactylus nemorivagus BASED on its name!) and Amara. I have been to both the carabid and the staphylinid workshops at Dinton Pastures. They are free although they often get fully booked and you don't need to be a member of BENHS to attend.

I am now getting the beetle bug back and I can't believe I am planning on starting invertebrate surveys in a couple of weeks time, as I am now sat at home writing this on a snow day as Woods Mill is closed and the server is down. Now, I think I will work on my presentation to kick off my 'Introduction to Beetles' course...

I may be doing less natural history than usual but I still had an amazing year in 2012 so I thought it only fair to pull together some of the highlights and my favourite photos! I saw an additional 414 species in 2012 starting the year on 3735 and ending the year on 4149 species. So, in reverse order then my highlights were:

I found Marsh Clubmoss at Stedham after not being seen for a decade. We also then went onto Graffham and found three RDB saproxylic beetles on a single fallen birch tree including this Diaperis boleti.

Getting the twitch on again is always good value. Common Yellowthroat, Spanish Sparrow, Dark-eyed Junco, Paddyfield Warbler, Kentish Plover, Siberian Stonechat (photo {of a photo}) and Desert Wheatear.

This was the Fern Weevil Syagrius intrudens. A remarkable alien weevil that got everyone excited and was my highlight of the meeting. I hope someone is going to organise an event next year.

We did it! It was relatively easy to organise really but several things fell into place to make for a really great weekend. Firstly, the weather was great. Secondly, attendance was high. We had 18 people in the field on the Friday (16 people from Mark Telfer's list of 35 listers) which I think is pretty good. Much more than this and it would have become difficult to manage. Thanks to Sarah Patton for the photo above. From left to right we have Dave Gibbs, Martin Harvey, Mark Telfer, Simon Davey, Mark Skevington, Penny Green, Clive Washington, Michael Blencowe (yes we recorded it for the podcast too!), Matt Prince, Dave Green, Nicola Bacciu, Jonathan Newman, Me and Malcolm Storey, Many people even had a tick in the car park, the mining bee Andrena scotica and/or this Burrowing Clover.

So why Parham Park? Well I have been once to Parham for the last two years and we always find good things (usually saproxylic beetles) and I wanted to target a difficult group like this, and many people were quite new to deadwood beetles. Probably the first mega that most people saw though were the Field Crickets. A species that I am so used to down here that I forgot to tell people they were on site! Oops. It was great to get Dave Gibbs a tick that he had to abort 20 years ago!

It's going to take me a long time to add up and identify all the specimens but interesting saproxylics that we saw included the larvae of the exceptionally rare Variable Chafer Gnorimus variabilis. A Melandrya caraboides that Michael spotted and I netted in flight. Mark Telfer found a great tick for me, the striking little bright metallic blue hairy clerid Korynetes caeruleus. This species is nationally scarce and new for the site. Dave Gibbs found what is likely to be Procraeus tibialis in the same tree I found one on two years ago. I also found new to the site a single elytron of Colydium elongatum, the second time I have recorded this species in this way.

Dave Gibbs also got me a couple of new flies. Perhaps one of the most striking invertebrates of the day was this Criorhina floccosa, a really wonderful deadwood hoverfly that looks quite like a carder bee. It was a popular fly!

And also this little doli fly, Neurigona quadrifasciata. I now have two dolis on my list.

Simon Davey showed the group some rare lichens but I find them very tricky to take in with a large group like this, I think they really need to be taught in a more formal, course-like setting. Sadly, I didn't feel confident at re-identifying any of the lichens so I added no new lichen species to my list. Whilst looking closely at a lichen tree, Mark Skevington spotted this smart little psychid, Narycia duplicella. I thought this was going to be a tick for me but Seth Gibson showed me this earlier this year at Epsom. A shame that Seth and Sami were not able to make it but they are currently on their honeymoon quest to walk the length of the country. Meanwhile, a Spotted Flycatcher did its best to 'sing' for us.

Hawthorn, although in full flower, was not as productive as we had all hoped but during some routine sweeping I stumbled across some debris in the bottom of my net that had just a little too much symmetry to it. I very nearly discarded it. As I took a closer look, I saw perhaps the strangest and coolest weevil I have ever seen. Covered in pits and warts, this strange beast looked like no other beetle but when Mark Telfer and Dave Gibbs came along and were almost as equally bemused as I was, I knew we had found something a little unusual. This species is likely to be perhaps the only species that was new to everyone. Mark Telfer was able to tentatively identify it in the field as the introduced Fern Weevil Syagrius intrudens (I did indeed sweep it from Bracken, moments later Mark found another three). This was the highlight for me and was a popular beast, being christened Mr Lumpy. By the afternoon, the relentless heat was making people go a little strange. UPDATE: Mark Telfer has since found out this is only the seventh known site for this weevil...in the world! Read all about it here.

Someone also spotted this Dendroxena quadrimaculata. I have only seen this once before at Ebernoe in 2009 so it was nice to see this strange nationally scarce silphid again.
After a pub meal at the Crown Inn down the road at Cootham, we headed back out into the field for some light trapping and torching.

And of course, Mark's secret weapon, the Autokatcher. Mark transformed his car into a beetle catching device and he did pick up a number of tiny specimens this way that are yet to be identified. I wonder if anything good will come out of this method. Amazing!
Moths that came to light were a little thin on the ground but I did actually get one macro moth tick, Rosy Marbled!
Clive found a cracking Carabus arvensis but I didn't get to tick it unfortunately. Helops caeruleus is abundant on big old oaks at Parham at night. As we were searching some really old trunks I found a click beetle that Mark is yet to identify, so I hope that turns out to be something good whilst in the distance, a Nightjar churred away. Mark also spotted an odd looking beetle too high up on an oak to reach and it vanished into a crack in the bark never to be seen again, I am pretty sure now it was Opilo mollis. We finished up at midnight, headed back home to get some sleep ready to start again on day two at Heyshott Down. This is perhaps the biggest post I have ever written so part two will be out tomorrow. At this point, I would add if you think you would enjoy a day like this and be inspired to work on new and difficult groups, then put your list together, sign up to the pan-species rankings and you'll be able to come on the next field meeting which is already in discussion!

I am going to spend the rest of the day identifying specimens and staying out of the sun. It was an exhausting few days but that didn't stop me going to the pub last night and BMF first thing this morning. That said, I am looking forward to an afternoon sat down, looking down a microscope! My list is getting very close to 4000, at the time of writing I'm on 3963 so I might even get there by the end of the weekend. Finally, a big thank you to Parham Park for allowing us to host this event on their site.

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 have been falling behind with my blogging because I have been so busy. We had a great day recording at Parham Park yesterday. Best for me was this Cassida nebulosa that Peter Hodge swept, it being a first for Sussex and the only tortoise beetle that was not recorded in the county. The atlas states that the conservation status for this tortoise beetle is indeterminate, I'm not sure what this means but it's obviously not all that common looking at the distribution maps. I didn't see much more until later at night when we started moth trapping and I started searching oak trunks by torch light.

I was amazed at how Helops caeruleus appeared on nearly every tree, one had at least five on! I also found several beetles that I do not recognise that are still to be identified including an Aphodius that came to light that is not Aphodius rufipes (there were many of those though), a tenebrionid I netted in flight and a water beetle from outside one of the traps. I didn't really see too many interesting moths but we did net a couple of Evergestis limbata, the moth that is the Sussex Moth Group's logo! I will have to wait to ID everything, I have had another epic day in the field at Amberley today. It's all happening too quickly to process!