Well, this is exciting! We have always liked the idea of having a tick-list based on the UK Species Inventory (UKSI) on the Pan-species Listing (PSL) website but it was beyond our expertise, funding and available time. Those capable guys at BUBO however, have decided that some 17 years after the launch of the excellent (and free) bird listing website BUBO, that now is the time to add the UKSI to it. Effectively, meaning that you can use the sophisticated listing package to collate and maintain your PSL list.
A phased approach
First off, we are doing this several groups at a time over the next few moths. Starting with butterflies, dragonflies & damselflies and orthopteroids (crickets, grasshoppers, cockroaches, phasmids, earwigs etc.). The idea on this is to trouble shoot as we go, not overwhelm ourselves and the users in the process and allow the 'targets' feature to develop a little, away from the existing c5600 or so users who are all at this stage just able to list birds. The 'target's feature is great, it's a quantifiable way of showing you what your 'bogeys' are based upon the species that most other listers have seen that you have not. Bird lists will therefore NOT automatically populate your PSL list at this stage, but something like this is coming down the line.
What about the PSL rankings and website?
The PSL website will very much remain the home of the PSL rankings and more. Listers are encouraged to use BUBO simply to collate and maintain their lists, then add the totals in the relevant taxa category on the PSL website. There are some more features coming to the website in the next few months, to show a stronger link between biological recording and PSL - an exciting time for the movement. If you use BUBO and/or the PSL website, please do remember to submit your records by some other means, such as iRecord or direct to your local records centre or a recording scheme. In an ideal world, one website would link to the other and populate the totals in the appropriate places but we just don't have that luxury I am afraid. This is however, a huge improvement on collating your totals in spreadsheets, scribbling them down in notebooks or counting your sea-gooseberries on your fingers.
There are a number of possible scenarios:
1) Already on BUBO but not PSL?
If you are already listing birds on BUBO and think some or all of the other taxonomic groups are of interest for you, then please do join the PSL website here. You'll have to populate the PSL website with your species totals. Don't be put off by some of the huge lists there, you could always end up being a top lister for say butterflies in the short term. And by focusing on the lesser known areas of natural history, you could end up in the UK5000 club before you know it! The best thing to do if you are already on BUBO is to read
this first and then please do also sign up to the PSL website
here. Please do use your real name and put a line or two in your profile, as we get a lot of bots and fake accounts.
2) Already on PSL but not BUBO?
My priority here, managing a smooth transition for any existing PSLers who want to move to BUBO for managing their lists. First off, sign up to BUBO
here. Select 'Create New List', then from the location name, select 'Britain, Ireland, Isle of Man & Channel Islands (PSL)'. The quick way to do this is to type PSL into the location drop down. The rest of this set up is all very intuitive. Then you can start ticking off your butterflies, dragonflies and crickets or whatever groups we have launched this week.
3) Already on both?
Well, I reckon you've probably got it figured out already, and with the above, it should all be very simple. Start at scenario 1 above if unsure.
4) New to PSL and BUBO?
Start by setting up a PSL account
here, (do please use your own name and write a few lines to show you are a naturalist and not a fake account), read up on the movement first and get to grips with the idea. Then I would sign up to BUBO
here and skip back to scenario 1 above. This is a great way to get into PSL from scratch, as you will be in a unique position, able to add a few groups and orders at a time with a community of other people doing the same and offering support.
This (being the next few months) really is a once in a lifetime opportunity to break into PSL in a unique way. Be careful, it's addictive and it might just change your life!
Finally, do please consider donating to BUBO as although it's free, it does cost the guys to run it. As a top ten lister and founder of the movement, I really felt like I should set up something regular on a monthly standing order to help out. If others are able to do this too, no matter how small, it will make sure that PSL and BUBO can work together in perpetuity.
Coming soon...maybe mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish...or do you have any suggestions of what you'd like to see next? Everything is coming in time, we just didn't want to do it all at once or start with say, 4100 beetles!
I had a great day at Butcherlands yesterday finishing the fifth visit of an invertebrate survey there. We are up to around 400 species now with some really interesting species turning up there. I have only seen this incredible picture-winged fly Merzomyia westermanni once before at Knepp a couple of years ago where I carried out a similar survey. It's associated with Hoary Ragwort which is abundant on both sites. On our reserves it's only ever been recorded at Ebernoe before but not since the 1980s!
But what I got most excited about was only the second record for West Sussex (and the first for any Trust reserve) of the Triangle Spider Hyptiotes paradoxus. So three days ago I was copied into a tweet showing this unusual spider had been seen at Kingley Vale. It's known to like Yew and I had always thought if it was going to turn up anywhere it would be in this part of the Downs (in fact I had thought I would find it at Levin Down). Anyway, at Butcherlands I swept it from a field of Soft Rush! Sixty species of spider have now been recorded at Butcherlands, nine (15%) of which have conservation status! That has been quite a surprise for a site that was arable 16 years ago.
And this is the second species new to the reserve network. A very odd looking gall on Ash called the Ash Key Gall Aceria fraxinivorus caused by mites.
I also met up with dawn Nelson for the latter half of the day and we swapped some skills. i had seen an interesting knotgrass but I am not so sure it will be anything special now. We called in to an area that had been coppiced and had responded with a huge patch of Orpine (albeit grazed hard by the Roe Deer). It was COVERED in the fly Rhingia rostrata. Dawn's reaction to the huge female Wasp Spider we found was fantastic! One more visit to go, I wonder what else we will find?
And finally, after three years of looking. I saw one of the
Willow Emerald Damselflies when I got back to Woods Mill!
The 'canny' among you can probably tell from the title of this post, it's about a trip to Norway with a bunch of Geordies. This is what I got up to on a short break in September last year with Rachael and her lovely family. We hadn't been before and I didn't really think I would spend my first trip to Scandinavia in September with my top off but I'm not complaining! When we weren't on a speed boat, a trampoline or a wake board, I was squeezing in some natural history...
No matter where I go in the world, natural history plays its part. It's like a curse and a blessing all in one. I was quite restrained though, and didn't do too much this time. As I was jumping up and down on a trampoline, I could hear what sounded like someone clicking their fingers in the distance. I realised it was coming from a rough grassy bank nearby and was probably some sort of cricket. I spotted a huge grasshopper, shuffling up and down the stems and recognised it as the
Large Marsh Grasshopper (above)
, a species I am yet to see in the UK. Nearby I spotted a
Yellow-winged Darter, another species not on my British list. I even got Rachael's Mum taking photos of invertebrates, with this
Goat Moth larvae she spotted on the way to the shops! I've only ever seen this moth as an adult or from the feeding damage it creates on the trees.
I picked up on a few
Wart-biters by their distinctive song as I walked passed an unremarkable road verge. A species that's so rare in the UK it's only at a handful of chalk-grassland sites in the south.
Swimming with
Lion's-man Jellyfish is less than fun. "Whatever you do, don't look over your shoulder!". There are thousands of them in the fjords.
I went on one long walk (actually a 16 miler) through the woods. I wanted to see one new species of bird and was hoping for a woodpecker. About two miles in I heard an awful racket which turned out to be a
Nutcracker and I watched it land on the top of pine in front of me. Now, I have Nutcracker on my UK list (the Staffordshire bird) but was chuffed to see one again after some 20 years. At this point, an even louder noise came from behind the tree line and I assumed it would be another Nutcracker. It was actually a
Black Woodpecker and landed on the adjacent pine top, so I had both birds in the same field of view. It then flew off straight over my head!!! My first ever Black Woodpecker and it was THE bird I really wanted to see. I then walked for another 14 miles and hardly saw anything else! I didn't care though, the landscape was amazing...
This little house is the furthest north I have ever been.
Northern Willow Tits were frequent here.
Wild
Blueberries.
And Moose poo. No Mooses though.
A currently unidentified carpet of
club-moss from the spruce forest.
And the days we spent in the Skyberg's family holiday home were amazing. Waking up to
Northern Nuthatches (how cool are they ?!) and
Crested Tits was very cool.
A huge thank you to Espen and Jenny for sharing their home with us! We had a great time and I can't wait to go back.
Although it wasn't my most prolific blogging year, 2013 was an amazing year for natural history. Here are the top ten in reverse order.
10). Pearl-bordered Fritillary dead on a sundew at Graffham Common. When Rachael said 'I've never seen anyone get so excited over a dead butterfly' was the moment she realised her new boyfriend was an obsessed maniac.
9). Six new birds in 2013 which were: Western Bonnelli's Warbler, American Golden Plover, Hermit Thrush, Radde's Warbler, Semipalmated Sandpiper and (see below). The twitching trip to Cornwall in search of the Hermit Thrush with Mark, Neil and Seth was a blast. Despite seeing the Hermit Thrush, I thought the smartest thing that day was this Blue-rayed Limpet. It just goes to show that twitching with a bunch of pan-species listers can go in all sorts of directions.
8). An autumn at Rye Harbour NVCing the whole nature reserve. I found a
Pectoral Sandpiper but this female
Red-veined Darter was a highlight for me.
7). Teesdale. Lots of scarce new plants including this
Alpine Bartsia.
6). It was a fantastic autumn for fungi, this
Starfish or
Anemone Fungus is still giving me nightmares. And boy do I LOVE nightmares!
5). A summer of fish surveys with Sussex IFCA. I saw so many new species, I couldn't decide between
Little Cuttlefish or
Thornback Ray as my favourite.
4). Micrommata virescens and Carabus arvensis, just two of the 584 species Chris Bentley and I recorded at the Old Lodge invertebrate survey.
3). 67
Heath Tiger Beetles at Iping Common using purpose made scrapes put in with a turf stripper. Great to see this reintroduced species not only present on site but thriving. The 1st August was a great day and so glad I was able to share it with Shaun Pryor.
2). Lumpsucker and
Montagu's Sea-snail at St Mary's Island. Sublime.
1). The 'elusive'
Corncrake at Beachy Head. Say no more.
So is that it for 2013? I was hoping for an Ivory Gull on the way back south tomorrow but they all seem to have gone now. I think I might have a day at the microscope on the 31st...
...she would probably look like this. I've been at Rye Harbour carrying on with the NVC I'm doing there this year where I bumped into a species I have not seen for 12 years. It's a female Red-veined Darter and it was by far the most well behaved dragonfly I saw today (there were dozens of pairs of Common Darters ovipositing today as well as Ruddy Darter and Migrant Hawker but they were all very lively). I don't think I have ever seen the females of this species before and did wonder whether this was a teneral animal due to its reluctance to fly. I love the blue and red eyes, which along with the black-bordered yellow pterostigma and the yellow veins are ID features. Here are some more shots...
I saw one Clouded Yellow today, I am hoping it was a female of the form helice but it was so fast and it appeared to come straight in off the sea heading north west faster than I could run, and I can run pretty quick! I wonder if the best way to find Pale or Berger's Clouded Yellows is to catch and check closely every helice type Clouded Yellow you see? It's the only one I have seen this year though and I didn't get a chance.
But perhaps the scarcest thing I found today was a new one for me. A nice scarce (Na) carabid called Cymindis axillaris. Not a bad day!
Last week I was identifying some invertebrates from a survey I did of the lake at Woods Mill in the autumn of last year and this summer. Having identified all the beetles I was working on the dragonflies and damselflies. The first big shock was that I didn't record a single dragonfly nymph AT ALL! No doubt eaten by the carp. Working through the damselfly nymphs I recorded four species. Several Blue-tailed Damselflies, a few Azures and a single Large Red. One large species however dominated the samples being both the most numerous and the largest at nearly 30 mm. What was strange though was that this species, although known from the lake, never appears that numerous. The Red-eyed Damselfly nymph is an impressive creature with strange and beautiful 'caudal lamellae' (the three 'tails' at the tip of the abdomen). These structures which are used for respiration, are particularly well marked in this species, there is something distinctly oriental about them. I wonder if something in this species's behaviour allows it to evade the carp? It was fascinating to learn to identify a different stage in a group of species I know so well. Next time I get a minute to work through the samples, I will try the case-bearing caddisfly larvae.
I was making a cup of tea at work yesterday and I saw a beetle fly past at eye level. Mr Miyagi style, I snatched it out of the air with my hand and carried it back to my bag of pots betwixt thumb and forefinger. I could see it was an Anthrenus but I thought it was going to be the Museum Beetle. It keyed out to Anthrenus fuscus (species 3865). Quite striking under the microscope.
I spotted this Large Red Damselfly at rest on a tree at Burton Mill Pond which made a nice subject.
Went for a nice stroll around Old Lodge this afternoon with Jo. I was hoping to catch up with Small Red Damselfly which we did but that wasn't the highlight for me. On our approach to the bog I turned to Jo and sitting on her coat was this False Ladybird Endomychus coccineus. This is a new species for me, I was reading about it only earlier this morning and thought it odd that I had not seen it yet. Anyway, it's on the list now! I noticed that the camera wasn't picking up the true scarlet of the beetle, the photo makes it look much more orange than it was.
Whilst standing around one of the acid pools waiting for a Keeled Skimmer I saw lots of backswimmers and suddenly remembered there is a distinctive one in acid pools. I hoyed a couple out and indeed it was Notonecta obliqua. Easy to id in the field on the white markings. I managed to add three species in about two hours, not a bad afternoon in all.
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