An Alternative Natural History of Sussex.
This blog shows the highlights of my day to day findings as a naturalist and ecologist living and working in Sussex. Delivered with a pinch of nihilism, a dash of sarcasm and absolutely no tweeness, here is my attempt to show natural history as it really is: Brutal, beautiful, uncompromising and fascinating...and occasionally ridiculous.
I have been studying natural history for some thirty years, nineteen in a professional capacity. I currently work in Sussex as a freelance entomologist, ecologist and botanist and specialise in nature reserve and rewilding management advice based on the interpretation of the surveys I carry out. I also run a number of identification courses. An advocate of the pan-species listing approach. My main areas of interest are birds, plants and invertebrates and a lot of my spare time is spent in the field. I am the county recorder for spiders and bugs.
Last night, Mark put the trap out at Southerham and we opened it this morning to find a single gravid Thyme Pug (Nb), the first in Sussex since 1925! A cracking little pug. Two nights earlier we recorded some other really nice moths such as the first Chalk Carpet (Nb & BAP) for the site and some really nice pyralids including THREE Moitrelia obductella (pRDB3 but expanding and in Sussex only ever known from the Lewes Downs but new to all SWT reserves) and a cool little Nephopterix angustella. Three of those were new for me, I'm edging ever closer to 7000. Only three to go.
What happened in my head when I spent too much time in the sun today
1925. The Last of the Time Pugs, while attempting to interfere with the birth of Margaret Thatcher, misses Lincolnshire and ends up in Sussex (she really did need the help of Space Pug to get that right but they were off-planet). She fought off an invasion by an intergalactic swarm of cybernetically-augmented parasitic wasps while she was there though.
Soon after the aliens had been thwarted, she received a distress signal from the distant future. The year 2018. A rogue band of Gigantic Humanoid Conservators have constructed a Mercurial Star Trap, capable of transfixing the minds of the innocent citizens of Earth and trapping them in silicone tubes where they are to be recorded and entered into a huge database, for all eternity!!! A scarce Chalk Carpet, hiding on the underside of the mega structure where the light cannot reach them, was able to get the distress signal out.
However she was too late, three Moitrelia obductella were already trapped in the sinister blue egg chambers within, zombified and awaiting incarceration. Look at their poor vacant eyes...
She jumped in the TARDIS (Thyme and Rosemary Drifting in Space). No sooner had the Time Pug appeared above the cruel device, she became transfixed by it too! And one particularly ugly giant captured her, placing her in the dark refrigeration unit! She had one chance to escape however. This particular beast was stupid and had a selfish urge to capture an image of the Time Pug for his own perverse reasons, outside of the holding device in a natural setting. Nearly 7000 innocent souls have been permanently captured in it's database. What a foul creature! Yet as soon as the vessel was opened, the Time Pug flew out, smiting the evil giant on the head with a mighty blow, before jumping in the TARDIS and heading off into the future.
That giant was me. I barely lived to tell this tale as some scales rubbed off on my forehead and now my left eyebrow is permanently stuck in in 1963.
But when will the Time Pug next make her next appearance I hear you say? Why not read one of her other adventures:
In the year 2023, the Last Time Pug defeats the Brexit Cannibals by bringing a can opener from the past to save the few remaining giants as they huddle around tins of dog food.
The year 2118, the Last Time Pug escapes from Prison Island One, formerly known as Great Britain. After the giants reject the world, the world rejects them and erects a fence around the whole island, leaving Automated Mechanical Demons to police the last survivors.
The year 2015. The Last Time Pug just kicks back and enjoys life.
I think I need a day out of the sun. Quite enjoyed those two moth traps though.
Excuse the poor quality photo but I had to share this one. Last Sunday was our third Ditchling Beacon Conservation Super Squad and as my back is anything other than super, I was on light duties. Which involved finding wildlife to show the team on a freezing cold day. I had a go with the suction sampler in the quarry at Ditchling and picked up a tiny (1.5 mm) spider. It wasn't until I got home and looked down the microscope that I saw this...
I am still terrified of ET as a 40 year old 'man'. I've gone all jittery looking through photos just to write this post. Anyway, money spiders with freaky heads are pretty cool but this one is really weird. What looks like nostrils are actually one of the four pairs of eyes. The palps (External Testicles) were pretty weird too. This is Panamomops sulcifrons(my 373rd arachnid).It's a bit of a chalk-grassland specialist but what's strange is that I didn't pick it up at all last year during a survey there, in fact there were only three species of spider with conservation status that went into the management plan. Even though I was using a suction sampler in that exact same spot. It just shows that ongoing casual recording is also a great way to add to our knowledge of sites. The only other record on a Trust reserve is from Malling in 2009.
This is the second Nationally Scarce species we have added to the site list whilst scrub bashing up at Ditchling. A great way to do practical conservation and learn about wildlife at the same time. Have a look here if you want to sign up. It's always the last Sunday of the month and involves some steep and challenging work but is really rewarding. We also found three other species new to the site. Yellow Archangel, Moschatel and Palmate Newt!
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.
Put Saturday the 10th June in your diaries. What time Saturday? I hear you say. ALL day Saturday I say. Midnight to midnight. Make no mistakes, this going to hurt. As Douglas Adams said about the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster: It's effects are similar to having "your brains smashed in by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick". Change the lemon to a sweep net and the gold brick to your binoculars and you're starting to get the idea. We are going to try and see and identify a 1000 species in a single day!
I've been toying with the idea for a few years but when summer comes it's too late to plan it, so we've put a date in the diary and we're sticking to that date and that time. So, we've been fleshing out the rules and if you want to do it in your region too, you are more than welcome, the more the merrier. The rules are:
It has to be Saturday 10th June.
It has to be from midnight to midnight. We did talk about this but I think the beauty of summarising all this at the end will be exactly what the PSL community was able to do in a single 24 hour period. It will be great knowing we're all starting and (probably) ending together too.
It has to be teams of two. No more. And you must see everything together (although you both don't have to ID it). This is to stop people splitting up into groups and to encourage some aspect of learning and camaraderie.
We'd much rather you find a partner to work with but if you don't have any friends, then it's going to be a major handicap to do this solo, so we'll allow it if you have no choice. Scribing alone is going to be extremely intense. I really want to encourage people to find a partner though as we have set this up as a two person challenge and we could always do a solo one another time.
If one person ducks out due to tiredness, they can no longer record as soon as they leave you or until they return. Again to stop people splitting up.
One vehicle. With as much equipment as you like. You can deploy traps but they can't be activated until midnight. So you could dig a few pitfalls in but they have to have lids on until midnight, set some moth traps up but you can't start them until midnight etc. Bare in mind though that you can only have one vehicle full of equipment with only two people in it. Other people can attend but not help in anyway, including with kit.
Moral support in terms of food and drink bought in by other people is OK though I guess.
You can start and finish where you like.
Supporters can't go and pin things down for you in advance. By all means use your knowledge of your sites, this will be vital but no one else can help.
ALL records must be submitted to your local record centre afterwards.
A running total must be kept. This is vital to stop you over/under counting but also to let you know where you are.
Carefully designed recording forms will be key to this but you're on your own for how they'll look.
Leave a few hours at the end for microscope work if need be. All identifications though must be completed by midnight. After that it's game over. This is going to be very difficult to gauge.
I'd also encourage everyone doing it to raise money for conservation charities in your area. I'm doing it for the Sussex Wildlife Trust and most of our route will be on our sites. So I'll start fund raising closer to the time so any support there will be much appreciated. I think a penny a species might be a good way to approach it.
Now I hope people don't think that's too strict. Just want to get the rules down so that people can then decide if and how they'll play it. It will be great to get a list of who is going to take part.
Is a 1000 possible? I reckon we can do it. And by we, I mean my team mate is gonna be Dave Green. We have our route planned roughly. I've done a test run on a cold frosty day at Woods Mill in January I got 130 species on my own in an hour. Including Leptodon smithii, Purple Hairstreak (an egg) and Raven. Clearly the first two were down to knowing the site but I didn't plan it, as much as just started in the car park. I can't begin to tell you how much fun it was. So imagine what it would be like in June armed with a net and a beating tray too!
I'm hoping to get the press, Springwatch and maybe even the Guinness Book of Records involved. I really doubt anyone has ever done anything like this before anywhere in the world, the closest being a bird race/bioblitz. Birds are going to be almost incidental in this. Provisionally we've said 75 species but it will be a waste of time to go looking for them, just wait for them to flush or fly over. The big gains will be in the inverts and plants.
I'll also pull together ALL the records collected nationally so we can show off what we can do as a group in a 24 hour period! Time to show off what the last seven years of PSLing can really do!
Have I missed anything? I'm trying to be as inclusive as I can without making the rules too easy to flaunt. So any comments are welcome. Please let me know what you think and lets start putting some names down as to who exactly is involved. Team names might be fun too. We might even get t-shirts made up...
Graeme Lyons & Dave Green - In Sussex raising money for Sussex Wildlife Trust.
There can be only one specimen that is a county first. I wasn't expecting this at Levin Down yesterday! Platyrhinus resinosus (Nb) new to West Sussex! Would you believe it but there is only one record for this species in Sussex being in East Sussex. It is associated with King Alfred's Cakes but is very rare in the county compared to Platystomos albinus (which I saw at Levin two weeks ago). North, east and west of Sussex and it seems fairly frequent. Anyway, found two yesterday on some felled Ash at Levin Down. I've only seen this once before in Berkshire and the individual shot into a hole faster than I could get my camera out. So I was very glad to see a big, bright and cooperative one in Sussex during a survey on one of our reserves.
A LONG time ago, Scotty Dodd described this beetle to me as looking like the Kurgan from Highlander. That image stuck. I've waited a long time to write this blog...
If you're not convinced, maybe the soundtrack will get you more in the mood...it goes a bit weird after two minutes, think that was edited from the movie.
Anyway, here are some more shots of this awesome creature.
Underneath, it's a much more convincing bird-dropping mimic! It has a habit of tucking its legs and rolling away. Very cool indeed. So despite rather changeable weather yesterday, We recorded nearly 90 species in the field with many more specimens that require microscopic identification, that's going to be today's job. Ollie Sayers came out with me and had a great day learning where to find invertebrates and soon found something quite uncommon in the form of Oedemera femoralis (Nb). A good day for saproxylics on a chalk-grassland site. It gets better though. Under some very dull looking brackets (Turkey-tail and Hairy Curtain Crust) on stumps of recently removed scrub I found four of these.
This is Tritoma bipustulata (Na) and possibly the first records in Sussex for 30 years. I think it's only been recorded at Stedham Common and Arundel Park and considering how much saproxylic work we have done in this part of the world, I doubt very much we have overlooked it. The field season has already started with a bang for me but you know what they say:
Usually at this time of year, I burn out of natural history. Mentally exhausted from identifying nearly EVERYTHING I see for a whole summer. So much so that even when I'm 'off duty', my brain continuously identifies things; birds flying over head calling, roadside plants that fall into my field of view, every single moth (or small piece of symmetry) on a shop window. Search image is such a powerful tool that it becomes a subconscious process if you use it frequently enough. I walk around at this time of year feeling a little like Terminator searching for Sarah Connor. Most people back stage at a festival would not even notice the fly. I actually can't stop it you know, I've tried. I'm permanently wired to record.
Yesterday I entered my 30,000th record on to my Recorder database (it was Rhagonycha fulva) so I thought this would be a good time to celebrate and promote biological recording. This includes 7632 plant records, 5372 birds, 4212 beetles, 3981 butterflies and moths, 2483 spiders and 1116 bugs among many more. Here is the view of my records nationally, at the county level and in the People's Republic of Brighton & Hove.
1) Know your basics
I don't want to teach people how to suck eggs here but good biological recording contains at least the following information: Species, Recorder, Location, Grid Reference, Date and preferably some level of abundance or qualifying data.
2) Register on iRecord!
I don't use iRecord as I have my own personnel database BUT if I was starting again and I wasn't a professional, I would be using it. It's a great way for getting your records in AND verified without sending your data to dozens of different recording schemes, you can sign up here http://www.brc.ac.uk/irecord/.
3) Get a smart phone or a hand held GPS
Smart phones have some great features for helping you record. Cheap GPS apps. Increasingly good cameras. Access to Internet resources. If you have a hand held GPS, this is also very useful. I enter my more interesting records in as 'way points'. I type in the species name in short hand on the key pad and it stores the grid ref to 10 figures (I only use 8) along with the time and date.
4) 8 figure grid ref vs site centroid
A site centroid is a generic grid reference for a whole site. It's really good for walk over surveys, recording common and abundant species, birds flying over or when you are recording a LOT of species. A detailed 8 figure grid reference is much better for casual recording, stumbling across something unusual or out of place/time etc. I try to put as much in to 8 figures as I possibly can. Have a look at my records for Woods Mill for example. If I was just putting in to a site centroid, there would just be one blue dot in the middle and that wouldn't be good for informing site management. You can always scale back if you start detailed but you can't do it the other way around!
5) What to record?
You can't record everything. In Brighton I'd be recording Herring Gull every day. That's not gonna tell anyone anything. If I'm doing a survey and that's my job, I obviously record everything but casual recording is a little different. I try to record something everyday and I always record anything that's unusual. So I would always record the following:
Something I'd never seen before
Something I'd only seen a few times before
Something I'd never seen at that site or that time of year before
Anything thought to be scarce or rare
Anything on a site I'd never been to before
Once upon a time I used to record every Firecrest I heard but these days I hear as many as I do Goldcrest. So this does change with time. You can't record everything all of the time!
6) Push yourself!
Concentrate on the the most difficult groups you can identify as you are more likely to make a valuable contribution to the recording world this way. It's not that hard to find county firsts with invertebrates, even in this heavily recorded part of the world! I'm not saying don't record the commoner things but you'll get more out of biological recording by pushing yourself into new areas in addition to the obvious. The best way to do this is to get into Pan-species Listing. Have a look here http://www.brc.ac.uk/psl/.
7) Keep up to date
Don't let your records build up into a back log! This can be hard to achieve but if you try and chip away at your records every day/week the job becomes more manageable. I've been there and it's a nightmare. If you do have a back log, concentrate on your contemporary records! This also helps to recognise the value of recording. A worrying number of people who work in conservation do not submit any records for example. I believe this is because in recent years we have forgotten the importance of recording and it's slipped down the priority ladder becoming a nice thing to do! It's absolutely vital to our understanding the world around us. Challenge yourself. Make one record a day for a year for example!
8) Some other useful websites
If, like me, you're not using iRecord, I find Grab a Grid Reference invaluable at finding grid refs when I don't have my GPS. You can get an 8 figure grid reference easily using the aerial photos there.
I also use this website for figuring out what vice county (useful for cataloguing site locations systematically in Recorder) I'm in if I'm out of Sussex http://herbariaunited.org/gridrefVC/
9) Be prepared
Always have some form of a camera, notebook/phone and some kind of pot for bringing a specimen back for identification. Sometimes you get stuck without anything and you need to improvise. This was what happened to me when I got stuck without anything last year coming back from Cross Fit.
10) Have no shame!
Wildlife doesn't wait around for people who are worried about their image or whether someone will be offended if you butt in! You often only have a few seconds to react and it's best to just go for it. People will forgive you for butting in, stopping the car or making a slight detour but you'll never forgive yourself afterwards if you aren't prepared to drop everything ALL of the time. Here are a coupe of examples...
So, no matter where I am, I'm recording wildlife. Such as this longhorn beetle. Recorded in Suffolk back stage at Latitude festival. I was helping Bryony load in Marika Hackman when I had to stop, drop the gear and 'borrow' a box of filters to put the specimen in to be identified at a later date. It was a male Stictoleptura rubra, a species I hadn't seen before. Longhorns are one of my favourite groups of beetles so I wasn't missing the chance at a new species.
A few weeks later and I'm the toilets back stage at the Green Man festival. I was chatting to Super Furry Animals' back-line tech in the toilets when I spotted a weird looking beetle which turned out to be Oedemera femoralis, if I was a self conscious person, I wouldn't have made this record. I'd only seen this species once before that, also in quite strange circumstances. In a spider's web in a pub garden.
So get out there and get recording! Not only is it great fun, it's a great way to learn about the natural world and informs management, research, planning and much much more. Now I might have had a few weeks out due to illness but I've been able to catch up on my summer back log of records in the process, so as far as field work goes...I'll be back!
As the weather was fine on Sunday, I wanted to go and beat some evergreen shrubs to see what I could get out of them, as you do (seriously great for entomology in the winter). I've been eyeing up the Juniper on New Timber Hill but haven't got permission to record there yet so I headed over to Levin Down (with Niall).
A pair of showy Red Kites greeted us at the reserve, Niall was impressed. We started beating Juniper into a white tray and it was a bit disappointing to be honest. Too windy for the detritus in the tray and because of this, it was hard to detect motion. We recorded about 40 species in total so not the end of the world but no lifers. Highlight was probably Corizus hyoscyami (above). I've seen this bug quite a few times now (this is the 16th time I've recorded it in five years) but it's so active in the summer, I can't get them to sit still for a second, this is the first photo of one I've ever managed.
Here is a couple of shield bugs beaten from the same branch as each other, left is the Gorse Shieldbug and right Juniper Shieldbug.
And what I believe must be Juniper Aphid Cinara juniperi. Go and beat an evergreen bush near you and see what comes out!
Because I'm going on a leaf-mining day today and hope to get to a 1000 moths but I'm still in bed writing a blog. AND the title of this post is yet another quote from Dune. Anyway, Martin Allison has identified the rest of the specimens we found in the dunes at Camber Sands on Tuesday and there were some goodies in there. I was pleased to have had a go and tentatively got some of them right including this strange looking Arrhenia spathulata which took us a while in the field to decide if it was a fungi or a lichen.
This was one of the showiest fungi of the day being the Garland Roundhead Stropharia coronilla.
It was perhaps these tiny Marasmius anomalus though which I liked the most.
This Melanoleuca cinereifolia although not much to look at was one of the species strongly associated with Marram.
So, I added quite a few species that I wouldn't have, at this stage, have been able to get to species without Martin's help. Equally though, I spotted the interesting fungi there in the first place, predicted the best places to go and found many of the specimens so I believe that is team work so I am happy ticking these species until I am equipped one day to cover fungi in more detail.
A couple of days ago I found myself being escorted into the Millenium Seedbank at Wakehurst Place to give a talk on Barbastelle Bats (featuring a picture of a Ferengi from Star Trek of course). I was nattering away with Ben Rainbow at the back of the group and as we walked up to the entrance we were distracted by some fancy raised beds with wild plants set out in various habitats, the nearest one being vegetated shingle. I saw there two plants I had never seen in the wild, Yellow Vetch and Small-flowered Buttercup, I recognised them both instantly and felt excitement closely followed by frustration as they were not wild and I couldn't tick them. Ben said in reference to the vetch "I saw that at Widewater on Monday". Three hours later, I was at Widewater and the above photos are of the wild plant. My 1220th vascular plant. There wasn't a huge amount there and it took a bit of searching. The vegetated shingle is really nice with masses of Sea Heath, Thrift, Rough Clover, BFT and Sea Kale.
There is lots going on this weekend in my world. My birthday, the soft launch of the pan-species lister's new website (coming soon), my first silver WOD at Crossfit, the start of a freelance invertebrate survey on the Pevensey Levels today and of course, my imminent approach to 5000 species. So what better time to spend an entire day legging it around Hampshire and Dorset looking for wildlife with Tony Davis? That's exactly what I did yesterday and it was great fun.
Now it's great looking for target species but I quite often fail to find them and find something rarer or more unexpected in the process. Yesterday was a great example of this. I got some gen from Andy Phillips that Studland Dunes was a good place to see spiders so we headed there. I wanted to see Philodromus fallax and the Rhombic Leatherbug Syromastus rhombeus. We saw neither. But we did see LOTS of cool things including the much rarer Dalman's Leatherbug Spathoceradalmanii (above). This is a Na species, much rarer than the target leatherbug!
Other highlights from these dunes included these jumping spiders which I was convinced was a new species for me until I realised they were the females of Aelurillus v-insignitis. Still, I've never seen the females before and never seen this species outside of Iping Common.
This click beetle I believe to be the Nb Cardiophorus asellus. Zoom in on the photo. Seriously, it has a heart shaped scutellum! I think this should be called the Romeo Click Beetle.
And nearby this tenebrionid, being Phylan gibbus. I could literally spend all day staring at bare ground searching for movement. To me this is the entomological equivalent of sea-watching.
This is really only a fraction of the species I saw yesterday which also included great things to stumble across like a stonking Heath Tiger Beetle and male Sand Lizard! Anyway, I reckon I can easily get to 5000 this weekend (I'm on 4990!!!) if I push it but I was starting to feel a little jaded by it all last night, so I am going to relax and just let it happen! I think going off piste and finding unexpected things is far more rewarding than always hitting the targets. You only have to look to Star Wars to remember how bad things can go if you don't learn to be a little flexible now and again! Loosen up!
I have updated this post having realised that what I found at Burton Pond was quite unusual. Here is the original post:
'Just a quick one tonight. I was looking through some specimens from the survey at Burton Pond and came across this strange long white crustacean. I was stumped at first but then dug out the FBA crustacean key and got it to Niphargus aquilex. I had never even heard of this genus and I'm not surprised either, being that they are mostly underground/cave-dwelling species! I found this one at New Piece by sieving sphagnum! Has anyone else encountered this species/genus?'
Twitter went crazy after I posted this and someone sent me this link to this paper stating these creatures have remained unchanged for 19 million years and are the oldest (in the evolutionary sense) living things in the UK. There are some great facts from Mr Anonymous in the comments section that show that although not scarce, this is an animal that you rarely stumble across, you have to go looking for them. I love chance encounters like these.
I spent the weekend up north and went to the sand dunes at Blyth Bay in Northumberland. Now, I've not got much experience at working sand dunes and given how windy it was, the only thing I took with me was a sieve and a tray. It didn't take long to find invertebrates though. My highlight was loads of these quite large pseudoscorpions that even have an English name being the Marram Grass Chelifer Dactylochelifer latreillei. It's associated with Marram Grass on the east coast. Now, it's hardly a 400m long Shai-Hulud but another dune specialist I sieved from litter was the millipede Cylindroiulus latestriatus. I had a carabid tick too, all the Bembidions I saw were the same one, Bembidion aeneum. I'll be back in the summer.
I kicked up a single Snow Bunting from the dunes too, which was a nice surprise, it might even be my first for four years.
So we all have are weak points, right? The one area that I have not been fastidious in keeping up to date and accurate with has been Hemiptera. That is until today. Last week I took on the role of county recorder for Heteroptera. Now for those out there that are not familiar wit the taxonomy of insects, bugs (or true bugs) are collectively known as Hemiptera. This order is split into a number of suborders. The classic bugs, such as shield bugs and ground bugs, fall into the order Heteroptera (this is what I will be covering). The hoppers used to be in the sub order Homoptera but this now has the awfully unpronounceable name of Auchenorrhyncha. Alan Stewart will continue to be the county recorder for these. Then you have psyllids (Sternorrhyncha) which I haven't done anything with yet.
On my list I have previously just treated them to order with a total of 137 species of Hemiptera as of first thing this morning. For this group I have been keeping a paper checklist that I update as a I see new species but today I finally got around to updating this digitally and pulling everything together. I'm glad that I actually came out with 149 Hemiptera, in total being 132 Heteroptera and 17 Auchenorrhyncha, that from now on, on my list I will call true bugs and hoppers respectively. So I end the day on 4798 species, 12 species up. I'm glad to find that I was under-recording rather than over-recording! All the gaps are filled in and the missing species added to Recorder.
Of the 583 species of Heteroptera on the systematic list on British Bugs, I have seen only 132, just 22.6% of the fauna. Plenty of room to for improvement which is great as far as I am concerned. I searched my photo archive for a species that had slipped through the net and this was all I could find. It's the Nb Dicranocephalus medius, a bug that feeds on Wood Spurge that I saw at Rewell Wood in 2009 but have not seen since. So the first thing I need to do as county recorder now I have sorted my own bug business, is do the same for East and West Sussex and find out what the county list is, then I'll be in a better position to write an article about it for next year's Adastra and start doing some of the more fun stuff! Like trying to fill in the gaps and promoting bug recording. That leaves me with just one question that is best asked by Hudson from Aliens:
"Is this gonna be stand up fight, sir, or another bug hunt?"
Thanks to a tip off by Steve Gale I was luck enough to catch up with yet another novelty alien fungus up in Surrey, the Red Cage Clathrus ruber. It was however already way beyond its best and was looking a little deflated by yesterday morning. Not all that different to the closely related actor Nicolas Cage Clathrus crapactor, also beyond his best, here he is expressing joy at discovering a rare leaf-miner on the set of the latest David Lynch film, 'Pan-species Listing: The Movie'. Early reviews suggest Cage's performance is lacklustre and that he wasn't even looking AT the leaf in this scene!
Anyway, I met up there with Seth Gibson and as we both had the day off work, we headed into the field to see all manor of interesting things. We went back to the Aseroe site, as Seth hadn't been over to look at the freaky Starfish Fungi of which we saw many, including this one that was just opening up. It didn't smell at all compared to the ones I saw last week. I agree that Anemone Fungi works better.
Whilst trying to identify a webcap (as if!), I stumbled upon a fungus which was a tick for both of us. The rather smart Earpick Fungus that grows out of decomposing pine cones. Once you get your eye in there are loads there.
Seth is really good on leaf miners, an area of natural history I am ashamed to say I have not really ventured into. Seth showed me this Stigmella tityrella mine on Beech. You can see the larvae still feeding at the end of the mine. I can't believe this is the first Stigmella I have ticked! With very little effort, I saw four new moths, all very common. This is a vast reservoir of species that I am now a little more inspired to access. Thanks Seth!
We also found lots of the alien Girdled Snail which was a new one for me.
And this common but distinctive millipede was also a tick being Nanogona polydesmoides.
I must do more of this sort of thing. So far Seth added 10 new species from the day and I added 11 which I guess is about even. I ended the day on 4559 species. It's good for making me aware of how much stuff I miss right under my nose! I'll happily host next time somewhere in Sussex anytime any of the listers fancy a day out and I'm free!
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