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.
In 2026, I am going to use our fantastic website to 'pan-species year list', with the aim of reaching 6,000 species over the course of 2026. Now you might think that sounds utterly unachievable but looking at my 'blind year listing' efforts in 2023, 2024 and so far this year, it might just be achievable.
There's still lots that I see that I don't record every year, plants and marine groups especially. But even with this in mind, I recorded some 4,419 species in 2023 (and 2024 wasn't that different). Here's my PSL life list, my 2023 year list and a rough suggested target list for 2026 to get me to exactly 6,000 species. My 2025 list is on about 3,300 species, with just over 40,000 records entered this year (last year was over 60,000 records).
Now, I am a bit apprehensive about PSL year listing being a big thing (PSL is really a life long quest to see as much wildlife as you can over the course of your life). Regular year-listing could potentially detract from that - my blind year listing has been a good way of doing this for me. That is, I only know what my total is when everything has been identified at the end of the following financial year. However, I hadn't realised how annoying this must be for people year listing as they go. So, I am going to have one big blow out in 2026 and get it out of my system.
It's also a nice thing to do in the year that my book comes out (should be end of January 2026) as it will no doubt generate lots of stories. I am also going to be fundraising during this time for Sussex Wildlife Trust and there is a Just Giving page here. A target of £6000 seems as bonkers as the challenge itself.
The rules are going to follow the typical PSL approach to natural history. The challenge will not be finished on the 31st December 2026 though, but closer to the end of March 2027 (or whenever I finish all of the specimens I collect over 2026 - which for work alone is a lot of work that takes me all winter to complete). No more specimens will be collected after 31st December 2026 though. One rule that I will stick to is that every species must be recorded in my database. I will stick a new tab on my by blog which will track my progress. I will be itching to get out on the 1st January, so I hope we have good weather. I am so excited to attempt this!
Finally, a few side quests...
In addition to the above, I would like to try to achieve the following (although I might leave some of these 'blind' until the end of the challenge).
5,000 of the 6,000 species found and identified by me. I am happy to add things like fungi and other groups that I am going to struggle with but I want the bulk of the list to be of things I have found and identified myself, which reflects my pan-species list.
4,000 of the 6,000 species to be in Sussex.
I am on 9,701 species as I write this, just 299 species away from the mythical 10,000 species mark, so I expect to get there at some point in the second half of 2026.
Visit Scotland at least once. It will have been 19 years by then!
Could this get any more AuDHD?! I will be having a very quiet year in 2027. Well the last nine months of it.
Put the weekend of the 25th and 26th May (with 15th & 16th June as a back up), in your diaries. What time? I hear you say. ALL day, I say. Midnight to midnight. Make no mistakes, this going to hurt. As Douglas Adams said about the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster: It's effects are similar to having "your brains smashed in by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick". Change the lemon to a sweep net and the gold brick to your suction-sampler, and you're starting to get the idea. We are going to try and see and identify 1,500 species (including my own secondary challenge of 1,000 invertebrates) in a single day! This is the sequel to the challenge we set up and achieved in 2017, (that's me and Dave some 12 hours in, in 2017, above) you can read about that here.
I have now set up a Just Giving page which you can access here. We are fund raising for the management of Sussex Wildlife Trust's reserves, which we will be spending most of our time on.
I've been toying with the idea for a few years of trying this again but with a higher target this time BUT I have had years of back problems until this winter that put me off it So, we've been fleshing out the rules and if you want to do it in your region too, you are more than welcome, the more the merrier. The rules are:
It has to be Saturday 25th May or Sunday 26th May. Go with the best day weather-wise in your area. If the weekend is a wash out, then the 15th & 16th June have been selected as a back up but there the only dates we are doing it. This is the only deviation from the rules we set up in 2017, to allow for some regional variation in weather. The following rules are all the same.
It has to be from midnight to midnight in one 24 hour period of a single day.
It has to be teams of two. No more. And you must see everything together (although you both don't have to ID it). This is to stop people splitting up into groups and to encourage some aspect of learning and camaraderie.
We'd much rather you find a partner to work with but if you don't have any friends, then it's going to be a major handicap to do this solo, so we'll allow it if you have no choice. Scribing alone is going to be extremely intense. I really want to encourage people to find a partner though, as we have set this up as a two person challenge and we could always do a solo one another time.
If one person ducks out due to tiredness, they can no longer record as soon as they leave you or until they return. Again to stop people splitting up.
One vehicle. With as much equipment as you like. You can deploy traps but they can't be activated until midnight. So you could dig a few pitfalls in but they have to have lids on until midnight, set some moth traps up but you can't start them until midnight etc. Bare in mind though that you can only have one vehicle full of equipment with only two people in it. Other people can attend but not help in anyway, including with kit.
Moral support in terms of food and drink bought in by other people is OK though.
You can start and finish where you like and drive as much as you like.
Supporters can't go and pin things down for you in advance. By all means, use your knowledge of your sites and local area, this will be vital but no one else can help.
ALL records must be submitted to your local record centre afterwards.
A running total must be kept. This is vital to stop you over/under counting but also to let you know where you are and if you have made it to the total!
Carefully designed recording forms will be key to this but you're on your own for how they'll look.
Leave a few hours at the end for microscope work if need be. All identifications though must be completed by midnight. After that it's game over. This is going to be very difficult to gauge.
I'd also encourage everyone doing it to raise money for conservation charities in your area. I'm doing it for the Sussex Wildlife Trust and as yet, one undecided charity with a significant biological recording focus. Much of our route will be on SWT sites. So I'll start fund raising closer to the time so any support there will be much appreciated. I think a penny a species might be a good way to approach it.
Now I hope people don't think that's too strict. Just want to get the rules down so that people can then decide if and how they'll play it. It will be great to get a list of who is going to take part. You can a;ways do a different challenge if you don't want to play!
We know 1000 species is achievable but that was tough but we did that last time without suction sampler and without doing any microscope work, so I think 1500 species is doable.
I'm hoping to get the press, Springwatch and maybe even the Guinness Book of Records involved (we got on local BBC radio in 2017). I really doubt anyone has ever done anything like this before anywhere in the world, the closest being a bird race/bioblitz. Birds are going to be almost incidental in this. Provisionally we've said 75 species but it will be a waste of time to go looking for them, just wait for them to flush or fly over. The big gains will be in the inverts and plants.
Have I missed anything? I'm trying to be as inclusive as I can without making the rules too easy to flaunt. So any comments are welcome. Please let me know what you think and lets start putting some names down as to who exactly is involved.
Graeme Lyons & Dave Green - In Sussex raising money for Sussex Wildlife Trust + one other charity.
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?
Put Saturday the 10th June in your diaries. What time Saturday? I hear you say. ALL day Saturday I say. Midnight to midnight. Make no mistakes, this going to hurt. As Douglas Adams said about the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster: It's effects are similar to having "your brains smashed in by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick". Change the lemon to a sweep net and the gold brick to your binoculars and you're starting to get the idea. We are going to try and see and identify a 1000 species in a single day!
I've been toying with the idea for a few years but when summer comes it's too late to plan it, so we've put a date in the diary and we're sticking to that date and that time. So, we've been fleshing out the rules and if you want to do it in your region too, you are more than welcome, the more the merrier. The rules are:
It has to be Saturday 10th June.
It has to be from midnight to midnight. We did talk about this but I think the beauty of summarising all this at the end will be exactly what the PSL community was able to do in a single 24 hour period. It will be great knowing we're all starting and (probably) ending together too.
It has to be teams of two. No more. And you must see everything together (although you both don't have to ID it). This is to stop people splitting up into groups and to encourage some aspect of learning and camaraderie.
We'd much rather you find a partner to work with but if you don't have any friends, then it's going to be a major handicap to do this solo, so we'll allow it if you have no choice. Scribing alone is going to be extremely intense. I really want to encourage people to find a partner though as we have set this up as a two person challenge and we could always do a solo one another time.
If one person ducks out due to tiredness, they can no longer record as soon as they leave you or until they return. Again to stop people splitting up.
One vehicle. With as much equipment as you like. You can deploy traps but they can't be activated until midnight. So you could dig a few pitfalls in but they have to have lids on until midnight, set some moth traps up but you can't start them until midnight etc. Bare in mind though that you can only have one vehicle full of equipment with only two people in it. Other people can attend but not help in anyway, including with kit.
Moral support in terms of food and drink bought in by other people is OK though I guess.
You can start and finish where you like.
Supporters can't go and pin things down for you in advance. By all means use your knowledge of your sites, this will be vital but no one else can help.
ALL records must be submitted to your local record centre afterwards.
A running total must be kept. This is vital to stop you over/under counting but also to let you know where you are.
Carefully designed recording forms will be key to this but you're on your own for how they'll look.
Leave a few hours at the end for microscope work if need be. All identifications though must be completed by midnight. After that it's game over. This is going to be very difficult to gauge.
I'd also encourage everyone doing it to raise money for conservation charities in your area. I'm doing it for the Sussex Wildlife Trust and most of our route will be on our sites. So I'll start fund raising closer to the time so any support there will be much appreciated. I think a penny a species might be a good way to approach it.
Now I hope people don't think that's too strict. Just want to get the rules down so that people can then decide if and how they'll play it. It will be great to get a list of who is going to take part.
Is a 1000 possible? I reckon we can do it. And by we, I mean my team mate is gonna be Dave Green. We have our route planned roughly. I've done a test run on a cold frosty day at Woods Mill in January I got 130 species on my own in an hour. Including Leptodon smithii, Purple Hairstreak (an egg) and Raven. Clearly the first two were down to knowing the site but I didn't plan it, as much as just started in the car park. I can't begin to tell you how much fun it was. So imagine what it would be like in June armed with a net and a beating tray too!
I'm hoping to get the press, Springwatch and maybe even the Guinness Book of Records involved. I really doubt anyone has ever done anything like this before anywhere in the world, the closest being a bird race/bioblitz. Birds are going to be almost incidental in this. Provisionally we've said 75 species but it will be a waste of time to go looking for them, just wait for them to flush or fly over. The big gains will be in the inverts and plants.
I'll also pull together ALL the records collected nationally so we can show off what we can do as a group in a 24 hour period! Time to show off what the last seven years of PSLing can really do!
Have I missed anything? I'm trying to be as inclusive as I can without making the rules too easy to flaunt. So any comments are welcome. Please let me know what you think and lets start putting some names down as to who exactly is involved. Team names might be fun too. We might even get t-shirts made up...
Graeme Lyons & Dave Green - In Sussex raising money for Sussex Wildlife Trust.
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