The Lyons Share

I spend a lot of time outside and over the years I have found lots of skulls of many different species so I thought I would post a Halloween themed blog showing you some of the more interesting ones I have stumbled across  The first one is pretty obvious, probably a Hebridean ram. (they are ping-pong balls by the way). This one I found at Stedham earlier this year and there were still feathers nearby to clinch the ID, it's a Kestrel.

Another bird and this one's a Tawny Owl found dead at Woods Mill a few years ago. Note how big the eye cavities are.

Back to the mammals now and these should be fairly familiar. From the top to the bottom we have Rabbit, Badger, Fox and Roe Deer.

Not much natural history goin' on this weekend, I've got my head down writing up some freelance work from Frensham Great Pond. Here is me in September, picking through masses of the alien, invasive, Canadian Waterweed in the vain hope of finding the odd native aquatic macrophyte. It's so sad that  it's thought that the second greatest threat to wildlife on this planet is from introduced alien species.  Anyway, this post was supposed to be about mucking about in boats...

More pond fun, this time in Sussex back in 2005/06 I think when I was working for the RSPB but little did I know it at the time I would be working for the site owners (Sussex Wildlife Trust) one day, it's Castle Water. The site where in five years of  electro-fishing we caught the biggest Eel we had ever seen and it was about twice as big as the next biggest one we had ever seen, and we had caught and weighed thousands! (My dreads are not growing backwards by the way, I cut them off and then grew them back!).

I think by the look of that tail fin I am measuring a Tench. Here is Old Scarface, the biggest Eel I ever did see!

Thanks to Steve Webster for the top photo and Matt Self for the bottom two. I have loads of old photos of fish from the electro-fishing days so I may do another post over the winter.

I finally got there, the 3000th species! It's not Feathered Thorn, although an impressive moth it's pretty common and I've seen loads before, watch out for a big furry orange triangle at this time of year. I got to Frensham early and checked out what had been attracted to the lights on the walls overnight. I also saw this Mottled Umber which means it really is the end of the year but that wasn't my 3000th species either...

No, the 3000th species is something far duller. Not only is it a micro moth, it's an introduced micro moth that feeds on human and animal detritus. It has an English name according to the NBN Gateway which is Wakely's Dowd Blastobasis lacticolella. Dowdy (unfashionable and without style), my 3000th British species. Hmph! Oh well, it's not exactly a Rose-coloured Starling or a Purse-web Spider but they all helped the tiny, insignificant, Wakely's Dowd scramble to 3000th place! I am pretty pleased I got there two months in advance of my target, that gives me 14 months to try and get to 4000. Bring it on!

I thought I had got to 3000 today but when I got home I realised that I had actually seen Elfin Saddle Helvella lacunosa before (the photos didn't come out very well). I have been at Frensham in Surrey and didn't venture much further than the office as I was digitising an NVC map. Whilst I was getting some grub  from the kiosk I had a look around the lights for moths etc. but it was a very unpleasant evening last night so all I found was this Brick, a very boring moth. I am  always pleased when I get a Brick through my window though. There was also this one legged Speckled Bush-cricket. If I don't get to 3000 by the weekend I may have to twitch the nearest bird I have not seen to break the tension!

Oli and I nipped out to Arlington to look for the Pectoral Sandpiper and it was behaving very nicely, walking up and down right in front of the hide! Despite the best efforts of several delinquent children waving their hands around outside the hide and in front of my telescope, the bird remained unspooked. I think this is the fourth or fifth one I have seen, being perhaps the most frequent American vagrant, I often wonder at the ultimate fate of these transatlantic anomalies (Martin F pointed out that they also breed over much of Asia so it could also come from that direction). I would be surprised though if any of them made the crossing twice. We also saw a Green Sandpiper and heard a Brambling. Slightly better than my usual attempts to take photos through my scope but certainly not anything I am proud of! UPDATE: I had no idea that Pectoral Sandpipers had recently started breeding in Scotland?!

So no ticks today but last night whilst I was watching Harry Hill I suddenly remembered another species that I have seen, many years ago, the Head Louse. That brings me to 2999, tantalisingly close!

On a more frustrating note, as I write this I am watching Ridley Scott's version of Robin Hood and was very annoyed to see a flock of CGI Canada Geese flying along the Thames Estuary in the 12th century. That pretty much sets the scene for the rest of the film. Grrrrrr!

I posted three moths ago, The Lyons Den is three months old today, so I will continue to provide a three monthly update (the three month update stats are posted behind the six month stats in brackets). OK, so the total number of unique visitors has gone up quite a bit to 2565 (601) which I am pretty pleased with. There have been 7251 (2915) visits and 13430 (2915) page views. I have 56 (29) followers but it would be great to get even more! You have viewed the blog from 45 countries (25). This is the 186th post (84). Can anyone identify themselves from the back of their heads in the above photo?

The most viewed post is by far the one where the White Stork landed in front of us at the Cuckmere. This post had considerably more views than the next most viewed post by far at 340 visits. (this is what happens when Paul James puts a link to your blog on the SOS sightings page!). After this it is interestingly the label plants that gets the next most hits, then the label TV. The next most viewed post is bizarrely Strawberry Fields at 152. This was originally posted on 14th July, before I did the last update and has been a slow burner, with a steady trickle of hits. I think this is probably one person who has saved the link though as it is quite unlike the pattern of most other posts. After this we have the Raspberry Clearwing encounter, the Polecat incident and the narrowly avoided Octopus Stinkhorn induced vomiting session (I bet no one has ever written down that sentence before!). Interestingly, Listing gets in the top 10 with 98 hits. Who says people don't like listing hey?

I still don't get a lot of comments though, I get far more on Twitter and Facebook but I would love it if these could all go on the blog instead so they are all in one place! A lot of people often ask me how do I find the time. Well, I love doing it so the time is not hard to give (although there are times when Jo wishes she had never encouraged me to do it in the first place!). I am always out anyway so I don't really alter my behaviour and I do a lot of driving in my job and that is when I put the stories together. Although I write this in my own time a lot of the content is relevant to the Trust. I spend a lot of time on the 33 Sussex Wildlife Trust sites that I help to manage by providing ecological advice based on scientifically robust monitoring so it is inevitable that the majority of posts will be from Trust reserves. It's a personal blog but I avoid the difficult issues that I deal with at work because I want this to be about the wildlife. I think it is the best place to find out about some of the more unusual creatures we have on our reserves (and the wider Sussex countryside). I get a great kick out of it and it benefits the trust too, everyone's happy!

The listing element has developed since the last update and that has changed my behaviour a little. It is a great motivator to target what I go looking for in my spare time and I am definitely seeing more new things now. The benefits of this to me as a naturalist are immense and it's great to share that with other people. There is no better way to learn than teaching.

That just leaves me to say a big thank you to all the people who follow this blog! If you find anything unusual in Sussex I may be interested in covering the story if I can come and get a photo so please get in touch.

Within seconds, a young Cormorant flew over and did a double take and someone mentioned that an Eel was seen swimming down the river only twenty minutes after it was opened up. I can't wait to see it develop into a natural looking stream and we might get some more migrant birds too. There were already a a couple of Yellowhammers feeding on the bare ground there today.

Just as I finished work this afternoon I got a phone call from Nick Hunt saying he had found a FEMALE Purse-web Spider Atypus affinis in Woodvale Crematorium. I have found the webs there and Nick has seen two males already but I really wanted to see a big female. I legged it back to Brighton  as fast as I could and was there within 30 minutes. This spider is something else, look at the size of its jaws! This spider is the only species in the sub-order Orthognatha, the same order as tarantulas! The chelicerae (jaws) which are visible in these shots and the video are arranged to move up and down (like a pick-axe it states in Roberts) and I would hate to be on the wrong end of them.

It was quite a clumsy spider and seemed very sluggish as it fell over a few times The females are meant to spend most of their time in the webs underground so I was really surprised to see a female. at all The jaws are so large that the eyes are raised to see over them. What a beast and a really awesome end to the week. Only two species to go now...

I get asked a lot what camera I use so I thought I should do a blog about it. I use the Nikon Coolpix 4500, it's a (roughly) ten year old camera that I bought five and a half years ago for about £150. It is  essentially a 'point and press' with only about 4 megapixels and has been out of production for many years. It's fairly small (weighs under a pound) and I can carry it with me everywhere. The opportunistic approach is key to how I take photographs, I rarely have an agenda (except at weekends when I tend to go looking for species) and will photograph and write about whatever I bump into. I was discussing upgrading but I think it would result in less photographs, albeit perhaps better photographs but I think if I had large, bulky equipment there are a lot of things I would miss from not carrying it as often. 

You see the Coolpix 4500 has a few things that I have not seen in other cameras that are brilliant for macro work. Firstly, the way the body swivels is incredibly handy, I don't think that this feature must have been very popular as I have never seen a more modern digital with this design. (when people see this camera for the first time they often assume it is a new design!). Secondly it can focus on things at a distance of only 2 cm, this is something that most cameras do not do and I don't know how I would adapt if I didn't have either of these things in a camera. I have also spoken to some naturalists who upgraded and then went back to the Coolpix for macro work. It's only 4 megapixels but it certainly comes up with the goods.

I should say that I have not explored all the functions and add-ons of this camera. There are also some things I don't like. It's pretty slow from the point of pressing to taking the photo. This can be REALLY annoying when you are fully zoomed in on something small when it tracks all the way out and then back in again before taking the shot. It also does not recognise purple very well, violets and bellflowers don't look quite right. I also seem to be rubbish at taking landscape shots, I think the camera has become short-sighted from all the macro work.

So I am gonna stick to the Coolpix 4500 and I would probably even go as far as getting another second hand one when this one eventually breaks. I would probably have to bury it and get a headstone made up if that ever happened though.