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.
I haven't really used the video camera much on my new camera but I had a quick go to try and capture the song of one of my favourite song birds today, Mistle Thrush or as I prefer Stormcock. I love colloquial names. Bonxie, Dovekie and Tystie are all so much better than the official names don't you think? I think Stormcock song is the best of our thrushes, none of the loud brashness of the Song Thrush or the showiness of the Blackbird. No, Stormcocks are far more understated, even melancholy. A good way to identify them is that the sections of song are shorter in length than the pauses between the sections of song.
Speaking of Song Thrush, I found this nest upside down on the woodland floor. I love the way they line their nests with mud, it's a work of art!
I've been at Ebernoe all day with Maddy measuring trees (G.B.H. = Girth at Breast Height) and mapping them with a GPS and the biggest tree we saw had a GBH of 6.56 m, quite a sight! it's important to know where the veteran trees are so we can manage for them. We saw quite a bit of wildlife in the process, including lots of Wild Daffodils that are just coming out. I hate daffodils but the wild ones are alright.
Found a few beetles today including this little deadwood species under Beech bark. I have seen it there before, it's Bitoma crenata and is only about 3 mm long.
Under the same piece of bark was this larva which I think is the click beetle Stenagostus rhombeus, a species I have only ever seen as a larva.
I found a moth at rest too which does not happen every day. It's an Early Grey which reminds me we put the trap out at Woods Mill last night and recorded 154 moths (108 Small Quakers) but no Early Greys!
Finally, I think I found one species new to me today. Being windy, there were a lot of dead branches blown to the ground and attached to one of these is what I think this lichen is: Usnea cornuta. I had a look under the microscope and it seems to fit the bill. I found a different species of Usnea that I was not so confident with. Looks like I'll be going back to the site tomorrow now to finish the job.
I found this today at Ditching and at first thought it was the common Spring Turf-moss Rhytidiadelphus squarrosus but I am now convinced it's a different species, either: Golden Feather-moss Campyliadelphus chrysophyllus or Dull Starry Feather-moss Campylium protensum. They are both chalk-grassland species apparently and I only found it on an exposed face of an old quarry, growing with lots of Ctenidium mollscum. I didn't gather a specimen so I think this is as far as I can go with it for now. Right, this is the last moss post for a while, I promise! Off to Ebernoe tomorrow for the first time this year.
CG2aiii is my new favourite NVC community. Well, sub-community. No, variant of a sub-community. Anyway, it's tightly-grazed species-rich chalk grassland dominated by chalk-loving bryophytes and there is lots of it at on the new land at Ditchling Beacon. The species I found there on Sunday that I could not ID was identified by Howard Matcham and I was glad that it was one I had considered due to the shape of its pear-shaped leaves. Pale Glaucous Thread-moss Pohlia wahlenbergii. I added three mosses and a woodlouse to my list on Sunday (and drove less than 20 miles). Now, would I have been happier if I had driven 250 miles and added Oriental Turtle Dove to my list instead? I don't think so. I am going to twitch mosses instead of birds from now on, less chance of failure! Anyone know of any good sites for Prince-of-Wales Feather-moss Leptodon smithii, that looks pretty cool?!
Well, this became quite interesting. As I'm borrowing Jo's Mac, I decided to count the Starlings in Photoshop so you can see just how many there are in the photo. My estimate was 2000 in the field, I was not confident with this so as I approached the flock, I got my camera out ready so I could capture them as they flew against the sky. In fact, there are 3630 Starlings in the above photo!!! More Starlings than I have seen species and the biggest flock I have come across during these farm surveys!
20 people submitted an estimate ranging from 700 to 9576 (Jo and Sarah, twelvety and three were not included in the analysis but thanks ever so much for your input). Only 7/20 came via the blog though, most were posted on Twitter and Facebook. The mean of the estimates was 2903 and the median was 2206. This meant that only 5 people over estimated while 15 people under estimated. The closest was Tom Burns at 4000 (out by a mere 370 Starlings). Nice one Tom!
Under-estimating large flocks is definitely something more people do than not and I am aware that I do it too so it's good to carry out an exercise like this to recalibrate my estimates. I find with birds in flocks over 2-300 that photography is the best way forward.
Jo and I had fun in the new land at the foot of the Downs to the north of Ditchling Beacon today. I was preoccupied by mosses, the north face of the Downs is often damper and a little more humid and coupled with all the rabbit grazing, the mosses in this area totally outgun the herbs and graminoids in terms of percentage cover. You can see how much brighter green the foreground is in this photo, the sward is over c80% moss in most places.
Chalk grassland mosses have really caught my attention for some reason. First up is the handsome large moss, Big Shaggy-moss Rhytidiadelphus triquetrus (top photo). I also found loads of Common Pygmy WoodliceTrichoniscus pusillus in this moss which was actually a tick for me!
The three commonest mosses there are the golden Yellow Feather-moss Homalothecium lutescens, the abundant Neat Feather-mossPseudoscleropodium purum and the sharply-pointed Pointed Spear-moss Calliergonella cuspidata. In this photo we have a species new to me, it's Slender DitrichumDitrichum gracile (the one with long wispy leaves) and is a species I have over looked there before. There is also some Great Plait-mossHypnum lacunosum in this shot.
As we were leaving I noticed what I thought was going to be more Comb-mossCtenidium molluscum (there is a lot there) but as I bent down I realised I was looking at a little Thuidium. I took a sample and I am sure this is the scarcer Philibert's Tamarisk-moss Thuidium assimile, a species I know is on the site but I have not been able to find before! Three new species in one day leaves me on 3139.
There was one moss, a large acrocarp, that I have not been able to identify but I have a sample so I'll see what I can do with it. Finally, there were both Bloody-nosed and Lesser Bloody-nosed Beetles on the crawl today, here they are side by side so you can see the size difference.
OK. In the above photo is large flock of Starlings that were feeding on a farm during a survey today. To see what it's like to survey birds in the winter, try and estimate how many birds are in the picture. You have 10 seconds before they fly over the effective horizon (this is basically what happened today). You can click on the photo to emulate looking through binoculars but no actual counting or using any fancy dot-counting software! Please post your estimate in the comments box here on the blog and I will post the answer (to the nearest ten birds perhaps) from actually counting individuals from a blown up print in a few days. I really want to see if there is a trend in people's estimates.
I completed the winter surveys on my first farm today and there were a few surprises. The good news was flushing a pair of Grey Partridge (new to the site) from a beetle bank. The down side was I only saw three Yellowhammers and not a single Corn Bunting (there have been up to a hundred). Not sure why these changes have occurred or whether the birds will return, we shall have to wait and see...
Whilst clearing some scrub on Levin Down this week, Mark and Reuben discovered some young Juniper bushes that we didn't know about. I went and had a look at them today to take some biometrics and grid references. Despite being very short (under 30 cm), the stems were almost 2 cm in diametre which suggests they are a lot older than they look, kept short by grazing no doubt. The photo below is the larger of the two plants. Other than four plants that were planted at Levin and the two seedlings that were found earlier this year, these are the youngest Juniper plants on site...that we know about at least.
I took the time to look for Juniper Shieldbugs (top photo) which is a new species for me (3136). I found three quite easily, as well as a Gorse Shieldbug. I also spotted the awesome spider Gibbaranea gibbosa. I saw my first butterfly of the year at last, a Peacock.
I took a sample of berries from the bush next to the two seedlings to carry out a seed fertility test as well. It's been great to get out on reserves today, it's been a long winter in the office, soon be time to start the breeding bird surveys! I went to Graffham in the afternoon but I'll blog about that another day...
We put the moth trap out at Woods Mill last night (we're going to try and put it out every Wednesday night from now on). When I scraped the ice of my car this morning I was not expecting there to be anything in the trap. There were in fact 14 moths. As well as the really fresh Small Brindled Beauty in the above photograph, there were also 5 Small Quakers, 7 Common Quakers and a Hebrew Character. SMBs are local woodland moths, I have never trapped anywhere where I see them so regularly as Woods Mill. Just a quick one today as I am blogging on my lunch break.
I usually like the first photo to be a shot of a new species or the focus of the post but I just really liked this photo for capturing just how cold and bleak today was. I went out at lunch time for no more than 15 minutes and was trying to get my head around the commonest lichens on the Alders in the little plantation at Woods Mill. By far the most abundant one is the grey lichen in the above photo which I think is Hypogymnia physodes. It's on all the trees and fence posts in the area. I'm not sure what the orange stuff you get on Alder bark is, I think I heard once it's an algae.
Anyway, I also saw this one which is new to me and I think is Ramalania farinacea. Other common lichens there include the big apple-green Flavoparmelia caperata and the branched Evernia prunastri. I also found the tiny Physcia adscendens on a nearby willow which was also new to me leaving me on 3132. I'm only just really branching into lichens so if you think any of these identifications are wrong, please let me know.
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