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Peak spider
Posted by Graeme Lyons , Monday, 23 December 2019 08:57
The Roaches will always be one of the places that absolutely blow me away. Only 35 miles from where I grew up (as far as Iping Common is from home) but it felt like another country growing up. So this morning I headed to this site to do some upland spidering and had a pretty awesome day. I got a lifer in the first sample. The embarrassingly common Poecilonta variegata. It's great coming up 'north'!
Then on the second suction sample I got another lifer. It wasn't until I got home that |I realised which Bolyphantes I had but all the specimens I took were Bolyphantes luteolus and not the more northern species. And at about 400 m I saw on my phone that Matt had pulled ahead meaning we were now level-pegging on 373. The tension!
I suction-sampled a lovely adult male Walckneaeria acuminata. Look at that eye turret!
It got a little colder and I slowed down but the surprise of a male Snow Flea in the suction sampler was awesome!
It's such an alien landscape. Love it up there. My first Red Grouse in over 15 years was a welcome distraction.
Plants I grew up with like Crowberry and Cowberry seem exotic to me now.
At over 450 m, Megabunus diadema was surprisingly hardy. A new 10 km square for this species.
Then I found what I was looking for, some stones to turn over. Here is an adult female Segestria senoculata at nearly 450 m.
A Hedgehog Slug.
I picked up two female Centromerus prudens, another lifer for me (374). What also turned out to be a lifer, the nationally scarce Porrhomma montanum below (375). And I have just spent an hour figuring out what the last spider was, another nationally scarce lifer!!! Scotinotylus evansi (376). Now, I'm off back up north to Gun Moor...
Posted in
Mecoptera,
molluscs,
plants,
slugs,
spiders,
Staffordshire,
suction,
The Roaches,
uplands
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