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.
Yesterday I headed to Staffordshire Wildlife Trust's Gun Moor reserve (just over the way from the Roaches which looks much less impressive from a distance). Basically I am picking the furthest north sites and exploring my home county in a way that is very cathartic. I am utterly devastated by the collapse of the Red Wall, I might not ever reconcile this but I am falling in love with the landscape all over again instead. Nature and big open wild places are good for healing the soul. And there are so many spiders too. I am in uncharted territory now, so as I approached Gun Moor I was a little lost and asked a chap for directions...
Me: "Excuse me, is that Gun Moor?
Stranger: "Yes, well Gun Hill".
Me: "Is there a layby along this road or that road back there?"
Stranger: "That road back there. There's nothing there though. It's just a hill".
Me: "I'll be the judge of that". Speeds off into the distance...
All of that happened except the last line. Nothing there?! I would have thought someone going for a walk would have had a better opinion of the local wildlife. Or maybe a better opinion of people under 50.
There wasn't even a Costa or a toilet when I got there! One star.
I had no idea where to go so I followed the water with one thing in mind: Sphagnum. Within fifteen minutes I had a lifer!
The unbelievably small Theonoe minutissima. At barely a millimetre long, this is dwarfed by pretty much every liny. It was extremely common in Sphagnum there (377 and a long overdue lifer). Here it is being dwarfed by Pholcomma gibbum on the left. It's also a new 10 km square record.
I knew that one in the field and I had a few other things I didn't recognise. My assessment was therefore between one and four species new for the year. It was actually six! This turned out to be Micrargus apertus (378 - lifer). This is a new 10 km square for this species.
And the nationally scarce Hypselistes jacksoni (male top). Not a new one for the year but nice to see.
But things got really exciting when I got back to the microscope. I had another four lifers. Mainly quite widespread north western species that I had never seen before. From left to right: Micrargus apertus, Aphileta misera (379), Tapinocyba pallens (380) and Theonoe minutissima. These were all lifers and all new 10 km square records except Tapinocyba pallens.
I also had a female Bolyphnates alticeps (381). And then this popped out, don't even remember picking it up. Saaristoa abnormis (382). These two and Tapinocyba pallens were all also new to the group so we have seen 67.8% f the UK's spiders now.
Now I am currently nine species ahead. That could all change daily. Is 400 species of spider possible in a year? I have added 14 species in four days just by going home for Christmas (13 of which were lifers). There is eight days to go so I think it is possible.
I had a long overdue bug lifer. Stenodema holsata.
I sieved a Heather Shieldbug from Sphagnum.
And I am assuming this is Red Grouse poo? And not Pheasant poo?
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...
I first went up Oldacre Valley nearly 30 years ago with Steve Cooper to see Small Pearl-bordered Fritillaries (anyone know if they are still there?). Always loved this valley on the western edge of Cannock Chase but all those years ago I didn't know anything about spiders. I did however remember that there were one or two tussocks of Greater Tussock-sedge up there. I wasn't disappointed and pulled out Notioscopus sarcinatus from the very first tussock I looked at! This nationally scarce/section 41 species hasn't been recorded in Staffs since 1994 according to the scheme and this might be a first record for the Chase even. I found at least four today.
I recorded 37 species of spider there today and 15 of these are new to the 10 km square SJ91 (the adjacent square to the one I grew up in). Of these, two were lifers and therefore new for the year for me putting me on 371 species and I'm slightly in the lead again. Will it last?
Here is the common (in the north west) Dicymbium tibiale with massive front legs in the male. There were lots of these present today.
Spider of the day will have to go to Erigonella ignobilis though. This nationally scarce species is new to me and looking at the recording scheme website was not only recorded from the exact same 10 km square (albeit 20 years ago) it was also recorded from the exact same 1 km square (beyond this there is only one other very old Staffs record). Pretty bonkers for something that is only 1.5 mm long.
If Alice Cooper were a money spider, he would be Lophomma punctatum. A common wetland species but also new to the 10 km square.
The only other nationally scarce species was Theridiosoma gemmosum, dwarfed by a springtail!
Tomorrow I will explore some Staffordshire Wildlife Trust reserves. Ten days to go...
I decided to do something completely different today so went to a site I haven't been to in over ten years; Kingley Vale. My target was Hyptiotes paradoxus. It must be easily identifiable as a spiderling but I couldn't find one. I got bored of looking on the Yew trees and went to the chalk-grassland and then things started to get interesting having only seen common species and Nigma puella up to that point.
I had a go with the suction sampler on this big south facing chalk slope and couldn't believe my eyes when I saw an adult male Scotina. Now on my birthday this year I picked up a female Scotina palliardii from sieving moss at Levin Down. This being a Nationally Rare and Endangered species. Knowing this is the most likely species in mid on chalk (and after a quick Google, December too) I got quite excited. Then I recorded another 15!!! More than ten were adults and this was all with six goes on the sampler and about four sessions of sieving moss. I can't quite believe it but in hindsight this was the commonest larger spider in the samples. It's also more Scotina (off all three species) than I have seen before which is awesome as it is by far the rarest one.
It seems that the place where most of these spiders were present is on these little blow outs, that seem to be caused by livestock/rabbits. There is a overhand of moss (Hypnum lacunosum) and they seem to like that but I also sieved them from Pseudosceleropodium purum further down the slope.
So this is actually not a year tick for me but is possibly one of the finds of the year. It is in the same 10 km square as Levin Down so not a new dot on the map but clearly an extremely healthy population as I only ever found the one at Levin. I did get one new species for me, a lifer in the form of Drassyllus praeficus which has no records on the scheme but there is a record in 1984 from Heyshott Escarpment (nationally scarce also) and readily identifiable as a sub-adult. This puts me one behind Matt on 368 species and is my 250th larger spider of the year.
Also present was an adult female Cercida prominens.
Hypsosinga albovittata
Also present was a new 10 km square for Panamomops sulcifrons. Yet the photo that I was most pleased with was this young male Diaea dorsata.
This is the final part of my spidering trip to the south east and the plot twist that makes every good season finale. We headed up on to the edge of Bodmin to a woodland site called Cardinham Woods.
First up though, we pulled into a garden centre for a quick lifer! Achaearanea tepidarorium.
Right back to the woods and Tylan found me another life in about five seconds, Cryphoeca silvicola at the top of the post. And nearby the commonest spider I hadn't seen this year, Tegenaria sylvestris. Then we climbed the hill through spruce plantation but the ground flora was dominated by bramble and not very interesting. A bit higher and we found some heather regenerating in a clearfel area and it was almost totally devoid of spiders. Then a nice warm south-facing heathy bank. Almost totally devoid of spiders. I did find what I believe is Brown Snail Zenobiella subrufescensthat I have been looking at on the front of the atlas for the last ten years.
We spent a good hour and a half finding next to nothing. Then, a dark and dank spruce plantation that was freezing cold beckoned. There was no light. No vascular plants BUT a carpet of bryophytes. It looked just like the end scenes of Under the Skin.
We needed to use our phone torches to see despite clear skies a few metres away. I started sieiving Thuidium tamariscinum and that's where ALL the linys were!
In less than an hour we added loads of new species. Four for my year list, three of which were lifers for me! Best of all was this Centromerus serratus, nationally rare and new to Cornwall!
Gongylidiellum latebricola (nationally scarce) was abundant there, only the 2nd time I have seen this and new for the year. Lots of Monocephalus were present and both castanipes (nationally scarce) and fulvipes were present. Also there were plenty of Coelotes atropos, Macrargus rufus and a few nice things that Tylan took. A weird pale liny turned out to be Porrhomma pallidum (a lifer - thanks to Tylan for the photo below) and on the way back down the hill, Walckenaeria alticeps (nationally scarce) and another lifer. It was remarkable how much there was compared to the heath. Quite counter intuitive. Anyway, a massive thanks to everyone but especially to Tylan and Matt. I am very pleased with 367 spiders, I hope this is going to be an opportunity to push this up a little more though.
Here is the full list for the weekend, 91 species in all with 21 (22%) having conservation status. Which show just how much there is to see even in the middle of winter. I had 16 lifers (species in bold) and 18 species new for the year! What's remarkable though is that a quarter of the 367 species of spider I have seen this year I saw in a long weekend in December!!!
I left the gang in Devon and headed to Cornwall for some spidering action with Tylan on his patch. We headed down to Kynance Cove on the Lizard, I have never been there before. I think the first hour that we spent on the cliffs at Kynance Cove was the highlight of the weekend. We were threatened by a horrendous on shore wind but storm cells that just kept missing us, the wind was battering the coast, you could feel the vibrations at the top of the cliffs! So despite hellish weather all around us, we remained dry. And best of all the spiders lined up to throw themselves at us. Five national rarities in an hour and four of them were lifers for me!
First up Gnaphosa occidentalis. I was really gutted I couldn't get down in the summer but this sub adult male was absolutely stunning. Really solid and tarantula-like with such a chocolatey abdomen. This is one handsome spider. Found under scattered stones on the grassy cliffs.
Then Tylan suggested looking at the cliffs themselves for Segestria bavarica. I found a lightning fast immature that disappeared in a crack. Then on the next rock I lifted up this amazing mature female. This all happened in the space of about ten minutes. This was a really big spider, there are no records for adult females on the recording scheme for December.
It took a little longer to find Clubiona genevensis (but not much longer). A fairly small Clubiona under stones, all these species were in a few metres of each other.
Then we got the suction sampler out in the same area and on the third go I got Tylan a rather special lifer. Agroeca cuprea! An adult male and the first record for Cornwall in 51 years! Soon after this we got a young female Euophrys herbigrada that we think is doable even at this stage. I must admit if Tylan had not found them on the site I would not be ticking this species but it certainly looked good to us both. It's much hairier, greyer and with thick white and black hairs that are more in stripes. It's darker with paler stripes rather than paler with a grid of darker markings as in frontalis. We recorded Hypsosinga sanguinea new to Cornwall and picked up another Dipoena inornata.
We carried on looking for linys but nothing exciting came out of the specimens. I found this odd plant in ericaceous tussocks which, with a little help from Mark Gurney, I realised I had stumbled on Hairy Greenweed! A lifer!
And another lifer but one I was expecting, Cornish Heath at long last! I also learnt that although Black Bog-rush forms an impressive tussock, it is very solid and does not accumulate too much plant litter. As such it is an inferior tussock compared to the likes or Purple Moor-grass and Greater Tussock-sedge.
I can't thank Tylan enough for this day, it was a really magic day in the field. Now there is one final write up. Tylan and family were kind enough to let me crash on Sunday night and on Monday we headed to the woods. The whole weekend is looking like a species list of over 80 species! As of today, I am only TWO species behind Matt on 367 species for the year. There are 21 days left in 2019 and it's getting very close...
I'd rather not be writing this post here at 5.00 am after only four hours sleep before my penultimate day at work but this is just too important. So hear I am nailing my colours to the mast.
It won't be a surprise to my Facebook friends where I stand on this but I have always kept quiet on my blog about politics but I have had enough and had to say something, even if it sways just one person to not vote Tory it's worth it. And it's my platform and I can say what I like. I might alienate a few people here but this is just too huge a thing to ignore.
WILDLIFE WILL BE HARMED
Just have a look here to see the damage the last nine years of unnecessary Tory austerity (it was a choice, not an inevitability and was nothing to do with Labour, it was all about bailing out the bankers) has done to Natural England. Funding has been cut by more than 50% since 2010.
How are NE meant to do all the things they should be doing looking after our SSSIs with these crippling cuts? Such as assessing, advising and enforcing? This alone is having a dramatic effect on our wildlife and this alone is reason enough to not vote for them again.
TORIES HAVE A TERRIBLE RECORD ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Just look at the policies in the manifestos, if you are not sure where your politics fits with the policies, then please take the time to go through the 'Vote for Policies' website. You might be surprised! Anyway, the Tories have little interest in doing anything sensible with climate change. Do you want our country to go down the route of America, just so we can inflict self harm on ourselves over an obsession with leaving the EU? Take a minute and think of the real issues at hand here.
LEAVING THE EU WILL DAMAGE WILDLIFE LEGISLATION
I don't think the laws we have from the EU are perfect and we could do with more protected species and a different approach but we will NOT get this by leaving the EU. If this hateful Tory Party gets a majority they will see that as a mandate to leave the EU dramatically and the laws we have that protect species and important places will be ripped up so that it is easier to develop, make no mistake.
NEARLY EVERYONE IN THE CONSERVATION SECTOR VOTES PROGRESSIVELY
Yes I live and work in a bubble. Has the last nine years taken a huge toll on me watching my country go down the pan? Absolutely. It's hugely distracting from the natural history and wildlife conservation that I should be doing.
I WOULDN'T BE DOING MY JOB IF I WAS 18 NOW
I grew up on a council estate below the poverty line in Staffordshire. I live a different life down here due to social mobility, partly down to not paying huge tuition fees back in late 1990s. I would not be doing the job I am doing now if I were 18 now. Austerity has destroyed social mobility. You meet very few people in conservation now who do not come from middle class backgrounds. Volunteering is not on your radar when you don't have enough money to eat.
I am proud of my roots. This Tory government have took everything away from the poorest in our country and in return handed them a tiny morsel, a thimble full of poison. A vote that most people didn't fully understand or research (and I categorically stand by this - because I didn't either, if I had known just how much we stood to lose I would have campaigned harder back then). This summer our Parliament did exactly what it should have done to block Brexit being pushed through (I was outside Parliament the day the proroguing was announced). Bercow is a national hero and one day will be recognised for it. A second referendum is the only way to end this nightmare.
The BBC, the Sun, the Mail and the others have done an amazing job in turning the poorest people, those in the Labour heart lands, against the one person who is trying to help them. The tragic thing about the way you hear people talking about Corbyn is awful. People have and do believe the lies about being an IRA supporter and an antisemite. If you fall in this category of a lifelong Labour supporter and are about to vote Tory just because you desperately want Brexit and have believed the lies about Corbyn please, please think this through. This vote is for FIVE more years of Hell under the Tories. Five more years of cuts, of homeless on the streets, of food banks, of NHS waiting lists. PLUS the chaos of a hard Tory Brexit and the destruction it will do to our country.
Further to this, when I hear people say about Corbyn "he's boring", "he's week", "I can't get my head around him". Just stop reading the Sun for one minute and look at what people DO not what they SAY. I know that is hard as politics is really about what people say but you have a record here of what the Tories stand for, they have been in power for nine years and look what they have done to our country. We are in a total mess because of them. Public services stretched to their limits.
Standing up for the weakest in our society while not being a loud, brash bully are not signs of weakness, they are signs of strength. What does it say about the state of our country that so few people can recognise strong leadership and that so many people are so easily led to believe exactly what the press want them to believe? Wake up people. Our country is gripped by a collective mental health crisis and the Tories and the press are our abusers. I bet you have all met someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (think Donald Trump). They use tactics like gaslighting, triangulation and projection to manipulate you, I have been there. Once you can see it though, you can never not see it. This government are very fond of projection. Accusing your victim of the very things you are doing to them. Just look at the smears they have pushed on Corbyn. Take a look at things objectively and try and make a decision that you have made, rather than regurgitating sound bites.
Yes I will be voting Labour and I would love to see a socialist government in the UK once in my lifetime but I am actually more concerned about getting rid of the Tories than anything else. You should absolutely vote tactically in this and every election until we have proportional representation. The outdated political system we have here favours the Tories (as it does the larger parties). So whatever you do, if you care about wildlife, if you care about people, if you care about anything but your own pocket, please, please, please vote progressively. Vote Labour where you can can but if not, like in Brighton Pavilion, vote Green and in seats where Lib Dems are likely to get in like Lewes and Eastbourne, then vote for them. It's not hard to do a little research and find out who the party to vote for is to oust the Tories.
My home town of Rugeley was always a Labour seat until last time when it swung to Tory. It sadly has a 69% leave vote but please, I beg my hometown not to screw themselves over voting to make their lives worse. Vote Labour in Rugeley again, get the Tories out!
I think this video by George Monbiot sums it up so well. Please watch this if you are undecided.
Brexit isn't worth it. Our country has been screwed by Tory austerity and not EU membership. Brexit just isn't worth voting Tory for. There is another way we can be governed. Please do the right thing.
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