The Lyons Share

I have had a bit of a break from blogging recently. Not natural history though, I am already 36 field days into my field season, with over a quarter of the work complete for the year already. One of the most exciting projects I am working on this year is the #WilderBlean invertebrate baseline survey. Kent Wildlife Trust are going to put bison into part of Blean Woods, well West Blean Woods in fact. It's all being monitored heavily before hand, which is great. This includes a solid baseline, with controls and proxy grazers. So using my methodology for monitoring invertebrates on rewilding projects, but scaled up to take in the three different treatments, I will be heading to Blean monthly between April and September. You can read more about the project here.

It turns out Blean is one of the best woods for spiders in the south east, well the UK even, but this bit of Blean hasn't ever been as well recorded as say the RSPB part or East Blean Woods. So, after the second round of visits, I am up to 105 species of spider already, 15 of these have status (that's really good for a wood!) and quite a few of these are Blean specialists. One such species though I was NEVER expecting to find. Walckenaeria mitrata has only ever been recorded from two sites on the western most part of Blean. Have a look at the SRS page for the species here. Here are some more shots, a difficult spider to photograph well but as with most Walckenaeria, the head in the male is produced up into a bizarre 'bed knob' structure (with a pair of eyes on), held back at a jaunty angle. Here are some more shots.

Only nine specimens have been recorded, in 1967 & 1971 on the RSPB Reserve and then again in 2004 at Church Wood. So when I found a male in the suction sampler, I was rather excited, as this is only the third site for this nationally rare/vulnerable spider, ALL in Blean Woods. Interestingly, all the old records were from Sweet Chestnut coppice but this one was from a...conifer plantation!

Which just shows it's probably not as picky as we think. Or that it's at very low densities. Or both. It was strange that I looked at so many other compartments that were nicer habitat than this. It's certainly one of the least interesting of the 24 compartments I am looking at.

I wasn't going to year list spiders this year but it sort of happened. I couldn't help looking in the database and seeing what I have recorded so far. I was desk bound until 30th March though. That hasn't stopped me making over 1900 spider records in six weeks though, and 205 species already. I've had an incredible nine species new this year too, five of which are from Blean.

The leaf litter there is exceptional, sometimes I will find up to four nationally scarce species from sieving a couple of handfuls of litter. New to me (and so far the most widespread of all the spiders with conservation status in the wood - occurring in 15/24 samples) is Phrurolithus minimus. It's incredibly distinctive, appearing very red in the field. It's quite unlike the much commoner and more widespread Phrurolithus festivus.

Scotina celans is also extremely common throughout the litter, recorded in half the plots so far and very many adult females still present in April and May.

Entirely new for the whole of Blean is Euryopis flavomaculata. I have now recorded this in 7/24 plots and it has been recorded in every habitat type except high forest. It's a distinctive spider, even as an immature, and is readily collected by pitfalls. So I think this is most likely a recent colonist rather than something that was overlooked. It could be that it's only found on this bit of woodland and not East Blean and the RSPB reserve but this seems unlikely. I can't see that it has been missed. Also new to Blean in one very open compartment, is the ever expanding Sibianor aurocinctus.

Also common in the litter is Halpodrassus silvestris. So far found in 7/24 compartments.

Another one new for me is the tiny Tapinocyba insecta. So far, only recorded from two plots. A tiny spider of the the leaf litter. I have not seen this anywhere else.

The recent addition to our fauna, Nigma flavescens, was recorded at three sites in early May. I expect I will pick this up more when leaf burst actually completes. It's really taking it's time this year!

It's certainly not all spiders there. This Na Tychius parallelus, a large and stripy Tychius that feeds on Broom, is the only non-Dungeness Kent record! A new one for me. It appears to be spreading though, as the very next day, Scotty had it in Surrey. A rubbish photo but you get the idea.

With lots more visits this year, I can't wait to see what else I will find! Could it involve Pistius truncatus? Now THAT would be something!

During a walk around Iping and Stedham today, I spotted two little green plants in an area of wet heath. A particular shade of green that I know very well so I knew instantly we were talking about Marsh Clubmoss! This is not a common species and the plant was last seen towards the far south eastern side of Stedham, some ten years ago. Scrapes were put in in this area but as yet, we have not recorded the clubmoss in this spot. So it was a complete surprise to find two plants growing close to each other at the opposite end of the reserve. It's great to see that the poaching and bare ground caused by the cattle will have helped this early-successional species get a new lease of life at Stedham. Brilliant news!

The rest of the day followed a similar pattern, with several RDB beetles and nationally scarce spiders turning up at Graffham but after a long day, that will have to wait until another time...

It surprised me yesterday that I had not yet written a blog about this Trust project so here goes. I went to Ebernoe yesterday where we are grazing the common this year with a small number of British White Cattle. As we are keen to find out where they are going within the grazing area, we are using GPS technology to track the animals. The difference to the collars we have been using for the past 2.5 years though is that they include SIM cards that text the data. They text the data directly to Germany of course where the manufacturers of the collars then email to a separate email account on my work desktop the raw data. I can then pull out the xy co-ordinates and plot them in a GIS package. So, it doesn't happen in real time, there are delays in the data coming through, partly due to the strength of the mobile phone signal (which at Ebernoe is poor). The neat thing with the collars though is that they store up the data and transmit it when the animals enter into an area of coverage. This particular collar that we use at Ebernoe is on pay as you go Vodafone as it was the best deal we could get in that area.

We have three of these collars that we can deploy on up to three herds at any one time (we only need to put one collar on one animals within a herd as they mostly stay close together). The large unit at the bottom of the collar is the battery pack and the smaller unit at the top houses the GPS and SIM card while the antenna is concealed within the collar itself. I tend to check the data first thing on a Monday morning. I'll try and get some of the maps produced by the data, it is remarkable how similar the maps look in different years even when using different individuals. Here is a link to small video of it I did for the BBC two years ago.

Finally, Dennis's Croft (a small meadow within Ebernoe) is looking great with lots of Devil's-bit Scabious, an important late summer nectar source in this habitat.

I've been back to the New Forest today to discuss management of Holly so that we can gain experience for the proposed management at Ebernoe Common, Neil Sanderson was our guide and was, as ever, very helpful and informative. I managed a few ticks, best for me was a number of these smart hoverflies, Sericomyia lappona feeding on Bramble flowers in the woods near Pig Bush car park. On the edge of the wood, Neil was able to show me the leaves of Soft-leaved Sedge that I could not find two weeks ago but looked for. Probably because it was hardly in flower!

Nearby we also stumbled upon a Lesser Butterfly Orchid. I might not have seen this since I was a kid.

Neil also pointed a number of rare lichens that I could not possibly hope to re-identify so I won't be adding them to my list however, this Usnea ceratina is pretty distinctive and can't tolerate much pollution. We also saw the acid loving version of the moss Thuidium assimile which is called Thuidium delicatulum. I end the day on 3430 species.

I had a great day out on reserves with the reserve team today, discussing grazing and management. We looked at the three central chalk-grassland sites, Ditchling Beacon, Malling Down and Southerham. The highlight of the day was an Osprey flying east along the north face of the downs. It was quite close and we were looking down on it, so it was not silhouetted against the sky. Bloody awesome! I did get a little over excited.

We went on to Malling Down and had a look at the grazing exclosures I set up in May 2009. The one where rabbits can graze but sheep cannot (top photo) now looks quite different to the one where sheep and rabbits can graze (middle photo). Almost all of the biomass has been removed (as in the sheep and rabbit grazed plot and quite unlike the rank, totally ungrazed plot - bottom photo). However, there are many many more flower heads of Devil's-bit Scabious showing how the sheep favour the flower heads while the rabbits ignore them. In mid summer, these plots looked almost identical.

Finally, we went on to Bible Bottom at Southerham where the chalk-grassland is looking fantastic. With many plants still in full bloom and dozens of Adonis Blues (the commonest butterfly there today), it felt like mid summer still. The highlight here was the discovery of some White Horehound in a big rabbit warren. I am pretty sure this is a new location for this plant.