The Lyons Share

We had a great team day out yesterday looking at invertebrates and their management with Steven Falk. We started off at Pevensey Levels and then went on to look at Southerham and Malling Down. Steven is an exceptional entomologist (Steven illustrated the book on hoverflies and the illustrations are exquisite) and really knows his flies and aculeates. We had walked only a few metres into a field when James spotted a queen Bombus muscorum! A new bumble for me and an impressive beast. Above is Steven showing us the big furry ginger bee and how we could enhance our management for it and other bees.

Round to Southerham and here we have the nationally scarce stiletto fly Thereva plebeja.

I caught this bee which turned out to be the very smart Osmia aurulenta, yet another new species! Amazing what you see when you go out with other specialists. It was hard to take photos of invertebrates in this heat so I didn't get many shots compared to how many new things we saw.

Now, I must get ready for tomorrow's first ever pan-species lister's field meeting! I can't wait, it's gonna be amazing!!!

So tussocking has really provided the goods this week at Woods Mill. I have added quite a few new species and I've become well entrenched in my new office. I managed to get the Victorian gentleman's desk into my new house with a little help from Niall Basquille. So, the new set up works well. Anyway, back to the tussocking. I have recorded the following species this week, those highlighted in bold were new species for me. Nothing particularly rare here but considering I walk around Woods Mill near daily, I was surprised to get so many ticks!

Agonum gracile (above photo)

Tachyporus spp. (I think I have at least two species but need to spend some more time on them)

Stenus spp. (I have at least another two species, I need more time though!)

24-spot Ladybird

Common Pygmy Woodlouse

Common Striped Woodlouse

Common Shiny Woodlouse

Common Pill Woodlouse

Tibellus sp.

What this illustrates is the importance of over-wintering structure for invertebrates. I also realised quite quickly that a tussock on the high and dry in or next to a wetland can be rammed with invertebrates. My 403rd species, making 10% of the 4034 or so UK species, was Agonum gracile above.

Also this week I have got hold of the key to springtails. I have two large specimens to look at today and see how the key works...

I found this book last week in a box of old books that has been in my sister's loft for well over a decade. It was a childhood book that I cherished and I remember being fascinated by this two page spread. Is this where the classifying, taxonomising and collecting began for me? I wouldn't be surprised. I learnt the dinosaurs first, followed by Star Wars characters and eventually ended up at something useful, birds, by about age 10. I'm looking forward to Adastra tomorrow, I'm speaking about pan-species listing but there are some really great talks that I can't wait to hear.

I have just bought a copy of 'British and Irish moths: an illustrated guide to selected difficult species' by Martin C. Townsend, Jon Clifton and Brian Goodey. I have to say I am impressed. I fear many people will be put off by the microscope shots of dissected moth genitals, you shouldn't be. If you are a moth-er, you should get this book, even if you only ever use the paragraphs on external characters it will be worth it. The best thing though is the detailed, step-by-step description of how to dissect a moth's genitals. I know many people are put off by this but once you do it, it opens up a whole world of natural history.  It does however require a microscope, something I use now way more than my telescope. Many beetles for example are impossible to identify without dissecting and taking the odd specimen. I think this kind of text might even encourage people to move on to these more difficult groups (I would say though that dissecting a moth is pretty hard compared to a hard bodied insect like a bug or a beetle). You can buy it from BC at the introductory price of £15 (plus £2 P&P). So please don't be put off by the technical side of this publication, it's a brilliant piece of work and it's so much more than a load of old bo

I don't do many book reviews but I thought this one was worth a mention. It is a great piece of work and an amazing achievement by the Moths Count team, updated distribution maps for all the macro moths in the UK. I was on the steering group for the Moths Count project back when I worked for the RSPB and so I have a particular interest in it.

If you are a moth-er, you'll find this to be compulsive page turning. So many moths are surprisingly scarce  (or occasionally surprisingly abundant). No wonder I have never seen a Lappet or a Northern Drab, they might even be nationally scarce if they were assessed today! There are literally millions of records in the data base that produced these maps, 868 species mapped in all, awesome! It's an essential companion to an ID guide.

You can buy it from the Butterfly Conservation website at £20 plus £5.00 P&P and has been so popular that  it is currently undergoing a reprint.

Finally, I have to point out two of my records on the map for the ridiculously named Bloxworth Snout. The one in West Sussex (the 8th Sussex record) I found in a cave in 2008, the one in Brighton (the 9th Sussex record) I found in a book shop...in the Mr Men section but that is another story...

Generic invertebrate guides, such as the Collins Pocket Guide to the Insects of Britain & Western Europe by Michael Chinery are a good way into entomology and it's a great book but beware, there is one major problem. These books never have the complete fauna in every taxanomic group. The problem is confounded by the fact that the percentage of species shown is not proportional to the size of the group, i.e. smaller, more familiar, well-recorded groups (such as butterflies and dragonflies) often have almost the whole species list shown, I think this tends to suggest that other less known groups are also so similarly well covered. They are not. There are 254 species of beetle in Chinery, this is only 6% of the British fauna. I expect flies are similarly  poorly represented. A lot of this information is in the book but it's in the order introductions and as such is not obvious.

I see many photos confidently labelled as this species or that complete with Latin name on posts and blogs and it's clear that a 'Chinery ID' has occurred. Sometimes, you might get lucky (the common, big, easy-to-ID species are often included), but ultimately, without getting hold of the full species list for your group, an exhaustive key/field guide and without going through the graft of keying out species, this method of entomology is fundamentally flawed. It's a bit like guessing. The other problem is that incorrectly labelled photos are then readily available on the Internet for other people to see.

I don't want to put people off entomology at all, far from it, but if people are using generic guides like this or websites of a similar nature (and you either fall into this group or you're doing it correctly- you'll know which!), I give the following advice:

Finally, Ispot is a really great community based website that allows you to upload photos of wildlife (in record format so a grid reference, date and location are required) and a whole host of experts will swoop down on your post and ID it within days. I think this is a great way to learn for all concerned.