The Lyons Share

Until today I had only ever seen two earthstars, Collared and Sessile. Now I've seen four. Yet I'm not sure which four. So how did all this start? Well, with a sneeze of course. Tuesday morning I sneezed and put my back out so I've had a rough week with it. No training. Two walks to the GP's the only exercise in four days and then come Friday it got worse. Walking to the GP's, I got an email from Jim and Dawn Langiwicz asking about the Cedar Cups in Midhurst. He couldn't find them but had found what he thought was Arched Earthstar Geastrum fornicatum in a churchyard nearby. He was starting to think he had two species though and I agreed from his photos. So Tony, Heather and I went across this afternoon to have a look and it didn't take long to find the species on the right which we knew wasn't Arched Earthstar. We were pretty convinced it was Beaked Earthstar Geastrum pectinatum. We looked for the second (the left-hand one) which we were (and still are) convinced is Arched Earthstar Geastrum fornicatum. Here's a close up of that one.

Apart from the obvious colour differences, they seemed more upright, with a stouter collar, more 'blocky' spore capsule (Tony pointed out the two species had different spores too), they lacked a distinct beak and also lacked the raised rim around the beak of the other species.

Here is the other species showing a rounder spore capsule. Badgers have been so busy in the cemetery that they had dug a few of the Arched Earthstars up, so I took one over (the above photo) for direct comparison.

So I'm having an exciting night in identifying things when Tony chirps up saying he thinks we've got Rayed Earthstar Geastrum quadrifidum. I think he's right. The beak looks too short for beaked, which also lacks the raised pale area around the beak. The neck seams a little stouter too. We'll have to wait and see what the mycologists say. Either way, I've always wanted to see one of these cracking little things and was pretty stoked to see two within 20 metres of each other.

In the morning we had a walk around Ambersham. Nice to things like Brismtones and Green Tiger Beetles out but the highlight for me was seeing my first Sussex Uloborus walckenaerius. Ambersham is one of only two sites in West Sussex for this RDB3 spider and I beat three from heather along the side of a south-facing path.

I also saw the first new beetle I've seen in a while, I beat two Sphaeriestes castaneus off a pine tree. Lovely to get back out in the field and to feel like I'm on the mend again! A big thanks to Jim and Dawn too for the earthstars, the first real cool day out in the field in 2015!

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!

A couple of weeks ago at the annual Sussex Biological Recorder's Seminar I was approached by Brad Scott (above) during lunch who said "thanks ever so much for that course on Grasses, Sedges and Rushes that you ran several years ago, it really kick-started my interest in natural history." Now if I tell you that since this course, Brad has been on my Common Woodland Bryophytes course and has almost seen more mosses and liverworts than me now (have a look at the PSL rankings for bryophytes) it starts to put things in perspective. Yet this is just the start of Brad's natural history adventures!

It's exactly this kind of inspiration that I always hope my courses will provide. It's certainly not going to be everyone that gets the bug like this but even if we reach one or two people a year in this way we are making a difference. So, I asked Brad if he would mind writing a few words about his experience with the Trust's courses and this is what he put together...

So why not book on one of the many fantastic courses Sussex Wildlife Trust has to offer? I can't promise that you'll become a Ghostbuster but you will certainly learn something about the amazing wildlife of Sussex and have a great time in the process. Call 01273 497561 for more info (I resisted saying it!).

Ten months ago during an invertebrate survey at Flatropers Wood, we (Alice Parfitt, Chris Bentley and I) collected a specimen of a female Andrena (mining bees) that remained unidentified, until now. Bear in mind that last year was the year I first attempted keying out solitary bees, so it was with some trepidation that I keyed this particular bee out to Andrena ferox, an RDB1 BAP species with one record in Sussex 70 years ago!!! Basically the rarest Andrena in the country. I keyed it out again after sleeping on it and it came out to the same species (thanks to Dave Gibbs for his help). Then I keyed it out with James Power at work and we got it to the same species. Finally today, county recorder and bee wizard Mike Edwards took a look at it and confirmed it as this species. This is by far my best find of 2014. It's the jewel in the crown of the invertebrate fauna of Flatropers Wood, a site that I should add is not even an SNCI. If you want to read more about Andrena ferox, have a look at the BWARS page and Steven Falk's excellent flickr stream. It looks like many other bees but it has bright orange hind femora, which are themselves covered in orange hairs. Other bees do share this feature though, so again it comes down to microscopic features.

We have so far recorded 610 species of invertebrate from Flatropers during the survey, 297 of which were recorded from the Pylon Ride where Andrena ferox was recorded on the 24th April 2014. We've recorded 32 species of aculeate (bees, ants and wasps) and 27 of these are from this ride. The ride really is where much of the interest of the site is but it was particularly good in the spring and the autumn, showing how important early and late visits are to these kind of surveys. It's produced some really great finds, have a look through some of the highlights here.

So what next for this bee? Well we will go and have another look if we can find more individuals and perhaps find the nesting aggregations in April but I hear this bee is incredibly hard to find (apparently, or am I just really lucky?!) and we may never record another one. We can however take a good look at the site and knowing the bee's requirements, see if there is any management we can put in place, if any, to improve its chances there. It's a very welcome return to our invertebrate fauna and just goes to show how you can make significant finds with relatively limited experience if you adopt the right approach!

2014 was a great year of natural history for me. My database now stands at nearly 26,000 records, over 5000 added in 2014 so far. So here is my annual top ten highlights of the year in reverse order.

10) Spending some time in sand dunes

There isn't much good sand dune habitat in Sussex, so I had to go further afield.

Here is a selection being from top to bottom: Dalman's Leatherbug, Dune Waxcap, Marpissa nivoyi,  Fallen's Leatherbug and Marram Grass Chelifer.

9) Flatropers Wood invertebrate survey

Flatropers isn't even an SNCI and it has shed loads of rare invertebrates. Here we have Xysticus bifasciatus and the two myrmecophiles: the Scarce Seven-spot Ladybird and Clytra quadripunctatus.

8) New Forest antics

I love finding lots of new species in a very small area. Micro-botanising overload.

7) If Darth Maul were a beetle...

Pilemostoma fastuosa. A very cool tortoise beetle from Knepp.

6) Gower power

Rock pooling on the Worm's Head produced this Green Sea Urchin among many other things.

5) Lappet

Always wanted to see one and one finally turned up in the moth trap.

4) Jurassic Carp

A trip with Seth and Tony to Kimmeridge Bay produced my first Cornish Sucker!

3) Burton Pond invertebrate survey

Here we have Xysticus audax, Alder Leaf Beetle (new to Sussex and found by Adrian Holloway) and the beetle Agapanthia villosoviridescens.

2)  Creating the PSL website and article in British Wildlife

It has been a great year for pan-species listing and I'm pleased to have been able to contribute so much to the movement.

1) My first freelance invertebrate surveys struck gold!

Finding only the 7th known site for the rare Pondweed Leafhopper and also plenty of 13-spot Ladybirds was my highlight of the year. This cracking little private nature reserve just is a great example of what can be done to benefit wildlife.

So hopefully I will get back in the saddle in the new year but for the time being I'm still rather estranged from it. It's reminded me how much I love wildlife though writing this post so who knows.

It's been a while, I've been taking a break off natural history of late, partly due to the season and partly due to circumstances. CrossFit has taken up the slack though, I got my first muscle-ups last week! Anyways, this is still a wildlife blog...

During our department Christmas walk I spotted what looked like little earthballs partially buried in the soil. They didn't look quite right for them though, they appeared 'lightly dusted in cocoa powder', like handmade chocolate truffles. I refrained from putting one in my mouth but was struck by how they lacked any suggestion of a stype (stem). In the hand it felt and looked like a really light pebble. I cracked one open and it was full of gooey black stuff.

We are carrying out a great deal of felling, scraping and disturbance at Graffham and it struck me we may have brought these things up from the top soil. Were they a kind of truffle?! Well almost, I believe these are False Truffles Elaphomyces granulatus. Seldom recorded as they grow beneath the surface in pine woods, they are usually spotted by the presence of the Cordyceps fungus that parisitises them. Of course, these ones were brought up by the earth works and probably washed clean by recent showers, giving them the appearance of growing on the surface. The texts say simply edibility unknown...

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.

You might not get that reference. I just can't help quote Frank Herbert every time I go to some sand dunes, which are rapidly becoming my new favourite habitat. On Tuesday I took the day off and went to Camber Sands with county fungi recorder and old RSPB colleague, Martin Allison. The weather was pretty dramatic and we didn't see huge numbers of fungi but Martin has just confirmed this specimen as Dune Waxcap, the species I wanted to see after I thought I found it there a couple of years ago. I spent most of the time taking photos of the strange shifting sands and sculptures created by the tail end of Gonzalo, like these.

The wind was coming straight along the beach from the west and it looked quite impressive.

Back to the fungi. I believe that this tiny little bracket is Phellinus hippophaeicola. It's growing on Sea Buckthorn which is the host plant and there sure is a lot of Sea Buckthorn at Camber!

At the start of our adventure, we went to see Bill Urwin at Shapwick Heath. Now Bill was very kind and sacrificed some of his bacon lardons as bate for the bottle traps he put out. I've never seen these in action and boy are they good at catching large water beetles! I've always been frustrated at never having seen any other Dytiscus other than Dytiscus marginalis so I was pleased to see our biggest Dytiscus, Dytiscus dimidiatus (above). How many more times can I fit Dytiscus in this Dytiscus themed paragraph?! None.

This is Hydaticus transversalis, quite showy for a water beetle. Bright colours and patterns are not much use in a ditch, so water beetles are mostly a drab lot. Not this beast though, what a looker!

The Lesser Silver Water Beetle Hydrochara caraboides wasn't in the bottles, this was netted in an area of Floating Sweet-grass. Three new beetles for me!

It was a cracking few hours and the bottle are definitely something I'll have a go at in the future. A big thanks to Bill and NE for their time. Whenever you're down this way Bill, I'll take you out for the day in Sussex! So there concludes (in reverse order) the posts about our little adventure. Or does it? Next time, the exciting prequel of our trip (it's not that exciting). I'm dragging this out like Peter Jackson's Hobbit!

Last Friday night I found myself wandering around the Forest of Dean in search of the elusive Wild Boar. Seth had been down a few weeks before and saw them and I was amazed at how much rootling had been going on all through the forest. We headed off into the night and within about an hour we stumbled across a small group of around seven Wild Boar. I was surprised at how dark they looked in the torch light, smaller than I was expecting and very angular in silhouette. Several of the group faced us and I was struck by how close together their eyes were face on! What was perhaps most impressive were the noises, you really felt it in the pit of your stomach. There really was something primal about this experience, the closest I think I will ever get to the film Trollhunter! 

This Fallow Deer stag appeared silently and ghost like in front of us for the briefest of moments during a break in the traffic before heading off into the woods. It was quite something. Thanks Danny for the photo!

The next morning we headed the short distance to the Severn to watch the the phenomena that is the Severn Bore. This one was only graded a '2' (top photo) and wasn't quite as impressive as I had hoped but it was well worth it anyway. You can read more about this here or suffer the terrible coverage of a 'grade 5' here: