The Lyons Share

I finished an invertebrate survey at Holmwood Common today for the National Trust in Surrey. I was pleasantly surprised by how much stuff I found today but the lep. larvae were the highlights. This is the first time I have see a Purple Emperor larva, so you won't be surprised to see I took a LOT of photos of it. Enjoy!

What a cute little dude! Hard to believe next year this could become our biggest butterfly. If it's lucky!

Nearby I beat some gorse and got this remarkable looking lichen mimic moth larva. At first I thought Brussel's Lace, then a Light Emerald and thanks to Jeroen Voogd on the Caterpillars UK & EUROPE Facebook group he pointed me in the right direction. It's not a geometrid at all. It's Beautiful Hook-tip. A moth I have seen hundreds of times but another larva tick!

And then, a massive Pale Tussock! I couldn't get it to unfurl.

The black stuff on Pale Tussocks is like that Vantablack paint, it reflects no light at all. I was staring into that blackness when I was reminded of the Fast Show...

Thanks to my school teacher Steve Cooper I got into moths and moth trapping around about age 13. So for the last two thirds of my life I've been moth-bothering, with the middle third involving a lot of moth trapping. The latter third however has been more concerned with recording moths in the field and this involves a lot more micros but also, moth larvae. There are quite a few generic green or brown moth larvae that are really not easy to identify, then there are quite a few that are much easier and really abundant such as Mottled Umber and Common Quaker etc. Larvae are really useful on invertebrate surveys as they show you the botanical associations of the species, as moth traps can suck moths in from off the site you're surveying. The only problem with learning moth larvae is you have to do everything twice, learn the adult and the larva. The other difficulty is that although there are some really common ones, many of them I've only ever seen once. Such as the Brindled Beauty above that we saw at Brickfield Meadow a couple of weeks ago. There is so much going on there!

This one turned out to be Cypress Carpet beat from an ornamental evergreen at a site in Worthing. Again only seen once.

This beauty is the Chamomile Shark swept from mayweed. Only ever seen this once.

This is the amazing looking Black Arches. A moth I've seen many times before, but this year I have seen the larvae twice. This was beaten off oak.

This one took a bit if time and help from Butterfly Conservation, it's Pale Eggar beaten from oak at Ebernoe. I like the repeating pattern of Boba Fett's helmet! Only seen this once.

And this odd little thing turned out to be a Brussel's Lace, beaten from an old Blackthorn covered in lichen at Seaford Head. I've seen loads of the moth, only ever seen the larva once. So get out there and beat some bushes and see what you can find.

A couple of weekends ago, Dave and I had another go at limbering up for the 1000 species challenge (that's the two of us aiming to see and identify 1000 species or more in a 24 hour period on the 10th June). We did 400 species in 4 hours and 16 minutes which I am pretty pleased with. Most of this was from two sites with a bit of Burton Pond tagged on at the end. The highlight for me was this mystery caterpillar that I had to admit defeat on. I ended up going right up to the top of Butterfly Conservation to get a species name. It's none other than a Pale Eggar. This was my bogey moth for a long time. This was beaten from oak in Dennis's Croft in Ebernoe. It's quite a scarce moth that I have only seen once or twice before.

Anyway, four hours was hard work but I reckon we are going to make it on the day, weather permitting! We will have our hands full but are hoping somehow to do social media and photographic updates on the day but this might need the help of some other friends. We have our (top secret) route planned and we think it's a good one but time will tell. So don't forget the 10th June 2017, we certainly won't!

Fund raising for the 1000 species challenge has now started, so please sponsor us what you can here at our Just Giving page.

It's ironic that I was with Mike Edwards when he found the first record for Downland Villa Villa cingulata in Sussex the day after I watched my first ever football match. It's a type of bee-fly and is quite a smart looking beast. It hovers around in chalk-grassland looking for its host which is thought to be noctuid moth larvae. Having swept the grassland there all day yesterday, the only noctuid larvae we found in any abundance was Dusky Sallow. Could it be host-specific on this moth larvae?

Other exciting finds included the Mistletoe specialist bug Pinalitus viscicola which is new to West Sussex. Great also to see a male Araneus angulatus, only seen the females before.

Also new for me was this Six-belted Clearwing that I swept off a bank of Bird's-foot Trefoil. It was a bit worn from being swept but great to see my fifth clearwing (ALL without pheremones I should add).

Last month I blogged about a survey we are conducting at Malling Down and Southerham and this week we carried out our fourth visit and it was rather good. The highlight was hearing Chris Bentley bellow "DOROS!!!". Not knowing if he had caught it yet, I legged it down into the Green Pits at Malling to find Chris looking very pleased with himself and something large and wasp like flying around inside his net. I've always wanted to see the Phantom Hoverfly Doros profuges as it's one of the few species that has acquired an English name, albeit via the BAP process. It's a cool name none the less. It is genuinely rare and difficult to find and is quite a convincing wasp mimic, even moving like a wasp. Thanks also to Chris for the photo.

However, that was not the rarest find of the survey. I swept a bee that got James and Mike excited and this turned out to be the RDB1 Halictus eurygnathus! This species really is restricted to the chalk around Lewes and Eastbourne and is so poorly known that we were informing the autecology of the species just by sweeping it off plants it's currently not known to nectar on. Also in the Coombe at Malling Down James recorded the Na bee Andrena fulvago. Cistus Foresters and Rose Chafers were also recorded and we were all in agreement that the site couldn't look better with a wide range of structural diversity and nectar being available. Here you can see masses of Common Rock-rose, Dropwort and Bird's-foot Trefoil. Go an have a look this week, it's amazing!!!

Also of note was this larva. It was by far the most abundant larva we were sweeping and was present in all six areas surveyed. The only noctuid moth I could ever remember seeing up there in any numbers was Dusky Sallow. A quick Google search and we soon realised this was indeed the larva of Dusky Sallow. Another tiny piece of the infinitely large jigsaw puzzle added!

Pink and yellow, not exactly my favourite colour combo (unless of course we are talking Batternberg - marzipan is my only weakness! Well and I can't swim...and I'm scared of E.T. Anyway, where was I?) but quite an unusual one in the world of caterpillars. I swept this from sedge at Burton Pond last month during a survey there and struggled to identify it. Realising it was probably a micro and most likely a pyralid, I posted it on line and didn't get a single response. Well it pupated and has just emerged and I was quite surprised at how much smaller the moth was than the larva. I've only ever seen it three or four times moth trapping at Woods Mill. It's the Nb Nascia cilialis! This photo is from one I caught back in 2011 by the way.

I swept this incredible caterpillar from Burton Pond last week. It puked up all over the net in quite a horrific manner, I've never seen anything like it (other than on the Exorcist) where it thrashed its head from side to side. It was pretty huge and being so striking, I didn't think I'd have any problem identifying it. Despite going through Porter THREE times, I didn't come up with a single candidate. I swept it of Purple Moor-grass with some young birch growing through it.

So I tried a different tactic. Working through the larger moths of the macro fauna, Googling the Latin names (with the word larva) whilst keeping an open mind. So I started on the first large moth on the first page of the book I opened it at. This just happened to be Red Sword-grass. Bingo! That was it. This is a really scarce moth in Sussex and it's great to have confirmed breeding at Black Hole! It just goes to show that not only do caterpillars vary as they grow older (just look at the larvae of the Alder Moth - which we also saw at Burton by the way!) but they also vary greatly between individuals and one photo is just not enough, even with a striking larva like the Red Sword-grass.

Well, very cool caterpillars. I've seen hundreds of Pebble Prominents Notodonta ziczac (isn't that the best Latin name!?) but have never seen the larvae before, despite beating hundreds of suitable trees every year. We walked right up to these two larvae feeding on Aspen seedlings today in Badlands Meadows.

Right next to them was this cracking Chrysomela populi showing the indicative black tips to the elytra and new for me today was the Broad Damsel Bug Nabis flavomarginatus.

I like seeing new wildlife, especially when I've never heard of it before! That's what happened yesterday with this beetle. This is the nationally scarce (Nb) Hallomenus binotatus and I found three on the underneath of a Sulphur Polypore at Ashcombe Bottom. I've been doing some freelance entomology for the National Trust up there and I have to say, it's a very strange place.

I'll paint a picture. It's quite hard to get to, about halfway between Ditchling Beacon and Lewes and not far from Black Cap (2.5 miles from Ditchling Beacon car park, I know this, as my legs are killing me). The site is a large ancient woodland nestled in a valley so when you are in there you see hardly anyone, hear hardly anything and don't feel at all like you are on the Downs. There are some huge ancient oaks and ash in there but the old hazels and hawthorns are perhaps the most remarkable, the biggest hawthorns and hazels I have EVER seen I saw yesterday. In fact, the above Sulphur Polypore was growing out of a huge hawthorn. Bracken grows everywhere throughout the wood but there are pockets of chalk-grassland in the form of glades.

This striking larvae looked easy enough for me to identify and indeed it was, this is the Frosted Green which I beat off a Turkey Oak. Lots of specimens to identify including a tiny Malthodes the size of a thrip and some rather nice looking crab spiders...

I'm afraid I have unearthed a whole load of old records I have for bryophytes whilst searching through my old computer, adding another 18 species to my list but that is it for the old records. I went on a bryophytes masterclass course in September 2005 and we went to the Long Myndd and Whixall Moss. Long Myndd first. The above liverwort is a strange fern-like thing with a ridiculous English name; Handsome Woollywort Trichocolea tomentella. I saw this in the same gully as I saw Wilson's Filmy-fern in too. This is a really nice moss, Urn Haircap Pogonatum urnigerum and is very distinctive being so glaucous (I love glaucous plants, don't  know why). The photo is a little blurred, I had only owned the Coolpix 4500 for a few months at the time and hadn't figured out I was supposed to keep it still when taking photos.

We also went to Whixall Moss where I got to grips with most of the common Sphagnum but I forgot I saw this beauty, which just so happens to be quite a local one. This is Golden Bog-moss Sphagnum pulchrum (with a little Round-leaved Sundew).

So that puts me on 3053 and I can promise no more retrospective ticks (I was a little eager to put my list together in the summer and didn't quite collate all my older sightings). Finally though I leave you with the best photo I took that day, the larvae of the Broom Moth curled up on a path and one of my all time favourite shots.

Neil Fletcher and I went into Hoe Wood today to photograph Common Tamarisk-moss Thuidium tamariscinum for a bryophytes course planned for next year. Neil got the shots but on the way out, I spotted this crazy caterpillar walking up some Isothecium moss on the base of an oak tree. It's the larva of the Pale Tussock moth and I am really pleased how this shot came out. I love the nearest row of 'exploding' yellow hairs, like a fire works display. The narrow jet of long red hairs above the vent is also impressive, as are the velvety-black pits between the segments, they seem to reflect no light what-so-ever.

Well, Fox Moth but close enough. This big furry caterpillar turns into a big furry moth that is quite common and is easy to spot when they are loafing around in the undergrowth, I think they look a little like reversed hairy Cinnabar caterpillars when they are small but they do get much bigger.  I have been at Frensham Great Pond again today looking at NVC communities. I saw a few good things in the process including an immature Hobby chasing Common Terns and there was a Black Tern there too. I saw a huge Signal Crayfish disappear under a log and a whole shoal of Rudd.

I also saw some of the alien Orange Balsam, a species from North America but it is quite smart so I had to take a photo.

Check out this awesome moth, it's a Raspberry Clearwing, an excellent example of Batesian mimicry and was found by Mike Edwards today during the last part of our Friston Forest invertebrate survey. This is one of the few clearwings that does not develop inside wood, rather  in the stems of Raspberry.  I previously misidentified it as Six-belted Clearwing but the fact that it has only two veins running through the clear patch at the end of the wing is diagnostic. This species only appeared in the UK a few years ago and it was probably imported in Raspberry canes but no one in is sure if it was just over-looked. This is only the second site for this species in Sussex, the first being a site in Bexhill and is therefore  first for me and although I saw a clearwing very close to this spot on the last visit to Friston Forest that I could not catch and ID, it was definitely not a Raspberry Clearwing though and will remain a mystery.

We also saw several Woodland Grasshoppers, another nationally scarce (Nb) species. It's quite variable but the most striking form is mostly black with a red abdomen. However, it's the white palps that clinch this species but I'm afraid I couldn't photograph them. The palps are really easy to see in a live specimen though. 

Finally, for comedy value, here is an early instar larvae of the amazing Pale Tussock. I'm sure these used to be on Fraggle Rock.

Another survey wrapped up for the year, I can't wait for the report.