Every year just seems to beat the last one. This has been my most prolific recording year to date with well over 15000 records entered so far this year but what were the highlights? In reverse order we have:
10. Tiered Tooth at Ebernoe Common. My all time favourite fungus which also couldn't be more Christmas if it tried.
9. The first time I'd ever seen an
Osprey fishing let alone catch a fish (and then drop it). This was in the Cuckmere.
8. Rock-pooling at the Pound near Eastbourne produced my first live Lobster (which promptly nipped me) and not only my first species of sea slug but three species of them, I've still not seen them anywhere else! It's the best place I know for rock-pooling in Sussex. Thanks to Oli Froom for the photo.
7. Wildlife in Portugal was AMAZING. I had ten new birds which were all unforgettable but the highlight has to be Mediterranean Chameleon just for how much effort we put into tracking one down and its sudden appearance at the final hour.
6. Controversial as it might be, mopping up loads of rare bugs on Jersey and adding them to my PSL list was a blast. This Graphosoma lineatum says it all really.
5. After walking the beach in Hove for weeks looking for a Portuguese Man o' War, I finally struck gold after a tip off from work that they'd arrived.
4. Invertebrate survey at Butcherlands, Ebernoe Common. I still haven't identified all the specimens yet but the spiders alone were amazing. The large population of Pardosa paludicola was a real surprise to everyone. Thanks to Evan Jones for the photo.
3. The invertebrate survey at Graffham Common was even more surprising, the spiders were also out of this world there but it was perhaps this Sundew Plume, that hadn't been seen in Sussex for 20 years that was most surprising.
2. 1000 species in a day. Probably the most fun you can have in 24 hours of non-stop biological recording. Read more about this
here. Photo by Alice Parfitt.
1. Pan-species Listing ALL of Sussex Wildlife Trust's 32 reserves. When I first did this last year we were on around 9770. I have six reserves left to analyse and I will have updated the list for the year. Will we have reached 10,000? I will be talking about this at Adastra soon in more detail but I can't express enough how useful an exercise this has been and will continue to be if regularly updated. I use the spreadsheet every day now and can't imagine doing my job without it.
Let's hope that 2018 is another amazing year for wildlife recording! Thanks for reading.
The sun came out on Jersey today and so did the bugs! What an epic day we had and I really had a chance to get my new camera to work. We spent most of the day in the huge Le Blanches Banques Dunes to the south west of the island. The island seems to be really good for bugs, first up with have an island speciality being Broad-shouldered Shieldbug. We only saw one of these all day.
I reckon this is the nymph of Dicronocephalus agilis but it's what this nymph led me too that was a real surprise.
As I was trying to keep pace with this bug. it crawled right by a tiny plant. A plant I searched for many times on the cliffs at Beachy Head. The incredibly rare Small Hare's-ear!
Back to the bugs and another island speciality, White-shouldered Shieldbug. Again we saw only one of these.
And this is incredibly rare in the UK being known from one site in Cornwall. It;s the Cornish Shieldbug.
Another species not recorded from Sussex is the Sand-runner Shieldbug. And odd little thing, we only saw one of them.
Here is a mirid, common on the island but rare in the UK. Capsodes sulcatus.
And I've seen this one a few times, it's only at Rye Harbour in Sussex but it's always nice to see. Lesser Streaked Shieldbug.
Plants were good such as this Small Melilot. It's not always easy to tell what's native or not on the island but I expect not with this one being along a road.
And the invasive succulent Purple Dewplant which is a real problem on the coasts.
And I think these two are Sticky Storksbill and Musk Storksbill respectively. Come to think of it I didn't see much Common.
Back to the inverts. I had three new bees so far but this was the only one I photographed. Silvery Leaf-cutter Megachile leachella.
We caught several flies, one very exciting one that I managed to let go.However, I was pleased to find a couple of these beauties. The Dark-cloaked Bee-fly.
We reckon this must be the nymph of Blue-winged Grasshopper!
A little further north and I we heard lots of Field Crickets. I was also able to redeem myself somewhat with Chris and show him a huge male.
And finally the beetles. I believe this is Chrysolina haemoptera.
But this was my favourite species and my favourite photo. This was a surprise, as it took me several years to figure out this is just a very different-looking sub-species of Timarcha goettingensis. I suggest the English name Rugged Bloody-nose Beetle! This is the photo-stacking feature working at its best.
Oh yeah, we had European Green Lizard too but it was too fast for a photo! Wow, so much to see here. Loads yet to identify from too, I've taken so many photos. The bets thing about all this is that we decided to allow the Channel Islands in PSL. So coming here just adds to the feeling that you are in the Med whilst being in the UK at the same time. I LOVE Jersey and its natural history. So today we are going to some commons followed by rock-pooling at a VERY low tide. Watch this space!
This ugly critter, which is surely the larvae of a Bloody-nosed Beetle. I found this at Friston Forest today crawling around in the grass in exactly the same place I saw the adults a couple of years ago. Other highlights today included the impressive staph and beetle tick Othius punctulatus (species 3870) and two Adders. I also saw my first Grizzled and Dingy Skippers of the year. This is gonna be a short one today as I have an early start tomorrow and I'm not used to them this year, I always find it harder to get up early when I have fewer bird surveys to do, must be the lack of routine.
Picture the scene. I'm walking quietly through a heathery glade at Graffham Common with Jane and two chaps from Amphibian and Reptile Conservation looking for potential hibernacula. I had my net with me and took the opportunity to do a little sweeping, mainly for spiders. I look down into my net to see a small longhorn beetle which I thought was going to be Leiopus. I then realised it was actually a Pogonocherus. Looking a little closer, I noticed it lacked the horns at the back of the elytra, which meant it was the scarce one on pine. Before putting it in a pot, I needed to get a decent photo, so I placed it on some pine bark and began snapping away. Little did I know that I had knelt down in a Wood Ants nest. I suddenly found ants crawling all over me, heading down my trousers and before I knew it, I had been bitten in the worst place you could possibly be bitten by an ant! I held still until I had taken the shot but it wasn't as good as it could have been with all the shaking...
...I got back to the office and confirmed the ID as Pogonocherus fasciculatus. A new species for me! I checked the SxBRC to see there were no records and a quick phone call to Peter Hodge confirmed that this would be a county first. Peter did also say I should check that it wasn't one of the European Pogonocherus too but either way, that's a first for Sussex! This is a beetle, a longhorn beetle at that, a bird-dropping mimic, a first for me, a first for the county and it was on a Trust reserve. It doesn't get any better than that as far as I am concerned!
Other things I recorded today included this female Evarcha arcuata. Another nationally scarce species, this time a heathland specialist jumping spider.
And this nice carrion beetle, Oiceoptoma thoracica. It would not keep still for a photo, so I took a shot of the interesting red pronotum with the beetle in my grasp. The next adventure is going to be to look for a scarce leaf beetle on Lullington Heath...
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 went to a great site in East Sussex thanks to a friend and was pleased to find out there was a Lizard Orchid on show there. Seconds after taking these shots I spotted this Common Lizard too. Sadly, the weather turned pretty rotten after that and we didn't see much else. I'll have to go back!
Driving along a major road in the New Forest this morning, I spotted a number of people on the road verge, I then saw a few nets so I decided to dive into a lay by and see if I could get any new species. Cheeky, yes, but it became a very useful chance encounter. Anyway, the surveyors were looking at New Forest Shield Bugs Eysacoris aeneus (RDB?) and this was certainly a new species for me. It was really good to chat about what is about and what is not and what's already gone over. It was interesting to hear someone say they have seen 25 species of longhorn beetle in the New Forest (I have seen one). Pretty impressive then to have recorded 18 species at Ebernoe alone I think. Anyway, I went on to Denny Wood where, as usual, rare beetles were landing on me throughout the day.
The first new species I saw was this amazing Tomoxia bucephela. This Na mordellid was distinctly different in the field to Variimorda villosa that I have seen a few times in Sussex. I later found another one when I lifted my binoculars to my eyes to find one in the eye cup!
We saw lots of Rose Chafers, I saw more today than I have seen in the rest of my life. Again, they always seem to try and land on my head!
Seconds after taking this shot, Jo shouted, 'what's that on your t-shirt?' and took this photo. It's the Na Oak Jewel Beetle Agrilus biguttatus. I have seen this only once before in Chiddingfold Forest. I later saw another but they are fast beetles!
The only Ampedus I found was missing a head and thorax, not sure what species this was.
I found Jo sitting next to this Adder, She had no idea it was there. She was quite unafraid of this venomous snake yet utterly terrified of the aging terrier (that could hardly run) that we encountered earlier.
Finally, I went to a different site and saw a couple of Scarlet Malachite Beetles. I have always wanted to see this cracking beetle (RDB3 and BAP I think). I struggled to get a decent photo though.
I am also pretty sure I saw Cantharis fusca on Hemlock Water-dropwort. I didn't realise that this was a rare species at the time as I would have tried to get a photo. I have been looking out for this species but for some reason I never feel inspired to photograph soldier beetles. Could I have mistaken this for just another C. rustica? The black spot was right at the front of the pronotum and the edges of the pronotum appeared more upturned.
I have found looking for beetles in the New Forest quite odd. I have seen only one longhorn beetle, Stictoleptura scutellata (I've seen three individuals). But no Wasp Beetles, no Rhagium mordax but also not a single cardinal beetle! The commonest native saproxylic beetle I have seen is Mycetochara humeralis which I have seen every day pretty much. Going back home tomorrow.
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