The Lyons Share

So I have been looking for this shield bug for the last few years but I thought it might turn up in the north of the county first. This is the nymph of the alien species Southern Green Shieldbug Nezara viridula. The nymph is strikingly different to the nymphs of the much commoner native Green Shieldbug Palomena prasina but the adults are oddly similar.

Anyway, it wasn't me who found it. I logged into iRecord to verify a few records to find a glitch in iRecord was showing huge number of already verified records as unverified. However, on the first page of these 1000 records, I could clearly see that someone had had this species new to Sussex in Rustington. Strange thing is I hadn't verified it! After a bit of digging around I realised someone was verifiying lots of shield bug records nationally from Sussex which was hindering me from being able to fulfill some of my role as county recorder. So that's stopped now and I can be a bit more linked in with people recording bugs in Sussex. The first thing I did was get the email of Dr Paul Sopp from Bob at work and headed over to see his garden of alien bug nymphs. Dr Sopp and the Garden of the Alien Bug Nymphs, sounds like a sci-fi!

So I think it's really interesting that this was first recorded by someone who doesn't usually record a lot of shield bugs. It's made a right mess of Dr Sopp's beans and it was this that first brought them to his attention when his wife commented on them. So it's only going to be a matter of time before this alien species spreads. Originally from Africa its been well established in London for over a decade now. Here are cluster of different instars. So they are clearly distinctive and eye-catching!

I was struck by how many there were, 50+ nymphs with a number of adults were reported but it's likely there were many many more than that and they have to be established elsewhere in the county, this surely can't be the only colony. If you have beans in your garden or allotment can you go out and have a look?

Here is the adult. It's a shade yellow-green than Palomena but the key feature is the front of the pronotum. It has a row of three white dots with a pair of black dots either side of these. 

And the cream leading edge to the pronotum and head are also different.

Here is a nymph feeding at the base of a bean flower, this will ultimately end up with the flower not growing and the bean failing which is what has happened to most of the crop. A big thank you to Paul for letting me see his bugs and remember to go and check your beans this week! Please submit any records via iRecord.

So it soon became clear after my first draft of the spreadsheet that our little reserve in Brighton, the Deneway, had zero records. I couldn't release too much about the spreadsheet until this had been rectified, so a chance encounter with Huw Morgan on Friday was very welcome. I had two hours in this fenced off reserve to record as much as I could yesterday whilst a volunteer party bashed away scrub. I wasn't expecting to add anything to the master list OR my list but I did both!

It took me 11 minutes to take the Deneway from 32nd place (bottom) to 31st, beating our part of Withdean Woods. About an hour later and the Deneway was ahead of Marehill Quarry in 30th place. The highlight for me was a surprise encounter with two patches of Cobalt Crust. This striking encrusting fungus is an easy one to identify and I didn't expect it at all yesterday being a new species to me. I also added the naturalised Bay Laurel which is scattered throughout the site. This was also new to the master list, along with...Chives?! Two unwanted species added to the list and nothing to celebrate really but it's diversity of a kind.

You see the Deneway is a half mile strip of woodland and scrub along the railway line. It's only about 10 or 20 metres wide and is hemmed in by houses on one side and the railway track on the other. So garden waste and escapes are rife. It's a low priority for monitoring for me compared to all those SSSIs and SACs but I'm glad I got in there and got a few records made. I added 77 species.

It's how many bugs do we have of course! And by that I mean Heteroptera, the true bugs that I am county recorder for. It's not so easy to do that for other taxa from the Recorder 6 output as the hoppers, plant-lice and aphids are all mixed in too but I have removed the offending species for this analysis. So, I thought it was also about time I put together a definitive county list (both for East and West Sussex) as well as the reserve list. And my list. So many lists.

So the Sussex list is up 5 species to 429 including the tiny introduced Buchananiella continua I recorded at Ebernoe in the summer. Estimates were right in saying East Sussex is the richer county, almost certainly due to more open habitats like Rye that do well for bugs. East Sussex has 387 species with West over 40 species behind on 346. It's important to remember we have two counties and that a first for West Sussex is just as significant as say a first for Surrey. East is also more recently recorded, the mean year of the last record per species is 2007 compared to 2002. With 2008 overall which is not bad really. Sussex Wildlife Trust reserves have 486 bugs (but that's ALL bugs). Just the Heteroptera comes out at 308 species. My Heteroptera list is 255, almost all of which is in Sussex.

Guess what the best reserve is for Hets? Surprise, surprise it's the greedy Goliath Rye Harbour with a whopping 146 species. It has some bugs found nowhere else in the county like Arenocoris falleni. Followed by Malling at 112, Ebernoe at 90, Woods Mill 86 and the unexpected jewel Flatropers at 74. 

The most frequent species at 16 of the reserves is the tiny but super abundant Plagiognathus arbustorum. Again I'm surprised it's not a shield bug, this is a bug you are unlikely to identify if you haven't made any effort with mirids and I certainly don't have a photo of it. After this it's Hawthorn Shieldbug, Capsus ater and Sloe Shieldbug at 16. The unique species account for 97 of the 308 species.

Across the county, the Dock Bug is the most frequently recorded bug with 639 records. The number of Heteroptera records ha risen to 16977 from 12011. A 41% increase in two years. This is in part to several new and prolific recorders but a big part of this is iRecord. Which leads me to the shieldbug atlas that we have been working on at the SxBRC which I'll be talking about at Adastra in a few weeks. Watch this space for an update on this project really soon! Really interesting to see how poorly recorded our most recorded and easy to identify bugs are. Not for long at this rate though. We are definitely in a new age of bug recording in Sussex!

This photo has made me realise I need to keep my iPhone 6 in my pocket and start getting the Coolpix 4500 out of my bag more often! This is the Top Snail Trochoidea elegans, a naturalised snail that, in Sussex, is only found on the Downs near Denton. Most likely it arrived via Newhaven. There are hundreds up there and as a non-threatening accidental introduction, they are quite a pleasant addition to our local molluscan fauna. They are unusual among terrestrial snails in their wide conical form, quite similar to the top shells you get on the coast. Smaller than I though but very variable and quite odd looking from underneath. Thanks to Steve Teale for the gen and Mark Telfer (who couldn't make it today) for the inspiration. 

I walked a little further down the hill and realised I was right next to one of the farms I surveyed for Natural England back in 2010/11, very close to the fence line in this post. I went into Stump Bottom where I found many more Top Snails, though much smaller ones this time. This patch of the NVC community CG7 (dominated by Wild Thyme, Mouse-ear Hawkweed and the moss Homalothecium lutescens) but all I found was Sitona humeralis and Galeruca tanaceti. Any day now I'm gonna hit 1000 beetles but it's not today! 

Thanks to a tip off by Steve Gale I was luck enough to catch up with yet another novelty alien fungus up in Surrey, the Red Cage Clathrus ruber. It was however already way beyond its best and was looking a little deflated by yesterday morning. Not all that different to the closely related actor Nicolas Cage Clathrus crapactor, also beyond his best, here he is expressing joy at discovering a rare leaf-miner on the set of the latest David Lynch film, 'Pan-species Listing: The Movie'. Early reviews suggest Cage's performance is lacklustre and that he wasn't even looking AT the leaf in this scene! 

Anyway, I met up there with Seth Gibson and as we both had the day off work, we headed into the field to see all manor of interesting things. We went back to the Aseroe site, as Seth hadn't been over to look at the freaky Starfish Fungi of which we saw many, including this one that was just opening up. It didn't smell at all compared to the ones I saw last week. I agree that Anemone Fungi works better.

Whilst trying to identify a webcap (as if!), I stumbled upon a fungus which was a tick for both of us. The rather smart Earpick Fungus that grows out of decomposing pine cones. Once you get your eye in there are loads there.

Seth is really good on leaf miners, an area of natural history I am ashamed to say I have not really ventured into. Seth showed me this Stigmella tityrella mine on Beech. You can see the larvae still feeding at the end of the mine. I can't believe this is the first Stigmella I have ticked! With very little effort, I saw four new moths, all very common. This is a vast reservoir of species that I am now a little more inspired to access. Thanks Seth!

We also found lots of the alien Girdled Snail which was a new one for me.

And this common but distinctive millipede was also a tick being Nanogona polydesmoides.

I must do more of this sort of thing. So far Seth added 10 new species from the day and I added 11 which I guess is about even. I ended the day on 4559 species. It's good for making me aware of how much stuff I miss right under my nose! I'll happily host next time somewhere in Sussex anytime any of the listers fancy a day out and I'm free!

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.

I was walking back from a meeting at the RSPB office in Brighton today, wondering what I would blog about when I stumbled upon my first Rosemary Beetle Chrysolina americana. This is the sixth Chrysolina I have seen now. I know this is an introduced species but it is a very nice looking beetle all the same. Has anyone else seen them in Brighton yet? There are lots of records in Sussex on the NBN gateway but only two on the SxBRC.