The Lyons Share

Yesterday was the ten year year anniversary of my first ever blog post. A thousand posts and over a half a million hits later and here we are. It's been a hoot, so much has changed for me in the last decade. Pan-species listing being a big feature of my natural history adventures which in turn led to becoming an entomologist and eventually going fully freelance and leaving Sussex Wildlife Trust. Working on those reserves though was an incredible experience and three of top ten were on Trust reserves. 

When I first put my list together I had only seen 2748 species, as of today I am on 7648 species, that's almost tripled. I must admit I do love blogging, it's a nice way to inspire other naturalists as well as acting like a journal and a photo library. Oh and gripping friends off of course. I am at present however limiting my time on social media as it feels healthy to do so in this crisis.  That said I put the 24th April in my diary at the start of the year so I wouldn't miss this date. 

Before I get to the top ten of of top tens, I must say a huge thank you to Jo Knell for encouraging me to start the blog. Jo is sadly no longer with us and without her encouragement I doubt I would have started it. Here is the link to my first post which was about an encounter with a Snow Bunting we had at the top of Snowdon during a holiday. I've been blogging for so long now I can't remember not blogging.

Now for the top ten in reverse order. ALL of these encounters were in Sussex. If you didn't read these the first time round or need refreshing, I have included the links to the original posts, please do follow these as there are plenty of anecdotes for each encounter.

10). Pardosa paludicola

In April 2017 I found a healthy colony of this incredibly rare and impressive wolf spider at Butcherlands, Sussex Wildlife Trust's rewilding project, this being only the 8th site in the UK for this  species. I have since found it another site. Read more here.

9). Columbus Crabs

In February 2016, after watching reports online, I had a hunch that I might find these crabs on Brighton beach after a storm and low and behold, there they were. This species lives in goose barnacles and floats across the oceans. These were the first records for the county.

8). Portuguese Man o' War

As above, there were reports about these washing up along the south west coast after storms in October 2017 and I really wanted to find the first Sussex one. I wasn't quite quick enough but did find my own one on Portslade beach.

7). Melodious Warbler

Last June, when I was finishing up a bird survey at Butcherlands that I had been doing for nearly a decade, I had a WTF moment when I heard a warbler singing I didn't recognise. After nearly losing it, I got a good view and a sound recording. So exciting. The fastest bird song I have ever heard. I loved that site and that survey. Butcherlands features twice in this list!

6). Philodromus fallax

The spider year listing challenge of 2019 was extremely fun and by October I had almost given up. Right at the end of a day of recording in Camber Dunes, a spider I had long given up hope of finding popped out! What a beautiful spider.

5). Polycera quadrilineata

2019 was probably my best overall year for natural history, so it's not surprising that four of the top ten are from this year. In March at the spring tide, I usually try and get down to the Pound at Holywell. This time Evan Jones and I had an amazing evening with four sea slug lifers, Evan found most of them but this one I found by netting sea weed, the tropical looking Polycera quadrilineata. See the rest of the blog for the other species.

4). Crimson Speckled

The oldest post here from October 2011. Michael Blencowe and I trapping at Beachy Head. We very nearly never even saw this moth that was resting in a bush, not the trap. I will never forget shouting CRIMSON SPECKLED!!!

3). Large Tortoiseshell 

A lunch time walk at Woods Mill in March 2018 produced a Large Tortoiseshell. It's a terrible photo but just enough to clinch the ID. Another one that almost didn't happen as it flew off so quickly.

2). Coptosoma scutellata

My first first for Britain and an entirely new family of shieldbug at that. This was from Marline in July  2019, Where DO the wings go?!

1). Calosoma sycophanta

Stumbling across this beauty in an arable field at Bishopstone in June 2016 is going to take some beating. It really was mind-blowingly lucky. Big, beautiful, rare. It ticks all the boxes.

So that's it. Ten years reduced into one post. What a decade. So now what for the Lyons Share? Is it time to call it a day?

I don't think so. I'm not done. Not yet. 

So here's to the next decade.

Well about an hours drive away. Just before I left my seven years at the RSPB, one of the last thigs I did was a load of monitoring at Broadwater Warren RSPB reserve, a recently acquired conifer plantation with some isolated pockets of heath, acid-grassland and mire. I did a baseline NVC survey but also put out a series of pitfall traps and pan traps in the existing habitat. I didn't know how to identify any of this stuff back than, 12.5 years ago. The spiders were passed to Ian Dawson but because the records were in the SxBRC, when I set up my database, the records were synced with my database. 

So I have frustratingly a number of records for spiders that I have technically seen but don't feel like I have and won't count them on my own personal list. Including some goodies, like the only Sussex record of Jacksonella falconeri, our smallest spider and loads of records of Walckenaeria furcillata, what must be my most wanted spider. All in all, there were 82 species recorded and 8 of these have status (a respectable 9.8%). I am sure that more spiders have been recorded since but I sued this as the site species list and headed back there yesterday. Probably my only day out in March.

The posts from pan traps are almost all still in place, despite so much grazing! Even a bit of solidified raspberry net was still in place, what I used to pin the traps down.

I recorded 34 species yesterday in half a day. Most of the action was in the bog. A lifer for me was this diminutive Hahnia pusilla (NS) sieved from Sphagnum. Only the 2nd Sussex record, and the first since 1969.

I was struck by how many of the species recorded yesterday were not picked up in the pitfalls in 2007, albeit they were in the summer so it's not that surprising. All in all 21 new species and six of these had status, bringing the records I have for the site to 103 and 14 with status (13.6%), suggesting the assemblage is improving, which marries up with observation on site.

The other goody was my first Sussex Walckenaeria nodosa, and the first in Sussex since 1969 also! The other new species with status were Cercidia prominens, Sintula corniger and the ubiquitous Meioneta mollis.

I went to have a look at this W5 Alder carr, I was expecting great thing from the tussocks but for some reason they were not very rich but I did get Theridiosoma gemmosum from them.

The huge changes on this site though are the great expanses of open heathland, all this was under conifers 12.5 years ago, a remarkable achievement. Woodlark were singing away nearby.

Once every 1461 days we get a 29th February and a chance to see a 'leap frog' (this isn't a thing, I made it up). By a total coincidence I did exactly that today and got a new amphibian thanks to James Harding-Morris, Seth Gibson and Mark Telfer. I had a long overdue day off and headed to the butterfly house again at Whipsnade Zoo. All that will have to wait as it was rather eclipsed by these beauties at the end of the day in Bedfordshire. This is the Midwife Toad Alytes obstetricans. What a smart little beast and a great scientific name too. Introduced but apparently not a major threat being a poor disperser. James found three very quickly and I indulged in some shots.

Such incredible eyes on them. The rather sickly colour and texture of the skin reminds me of the zombies from the Walking Dead! Such pleasing proportions too and great to see them next to Common Toad. This little one really showed the lines of red warts that are really distinctive.

Yes I did just make a word up as a tenuous attempt at a pun. Live with it. Last November I went spidering to the New Forest with Mark Gurney to a National Trust site called Ibsley Common. We found some nice things that had not been seen in the Forest for some time, such as Hypselistes, Taranuncus and Notioscopus. All nice bog species but not much that I hadn't already seen that year. In fact my only year tick I think was Oedothorax fuscus. But I did sweep a smart looking immature Philodromus from Bog Myrtle in a bog under some pines. I became convinced that it was going to be Philodromus emarginatus despite that the fact that I had never seen it. Maybe it was the large flock of Hawfinches that just made you feel like everything there was going to be rare but I had a nagging hunch that I couldn't shift.

Here is the photo of I took in the field at the end of November.

I consulted a few people but knew what the answer was going to be. I needed to get it to adulthood. Further to this Peter Harvey said "I can see nothing much to see emarginatus is a strong contender". So, I HAD to get it to maturity, as I really felt like this was very different to all the Philodromus I had seen before, including the washed out margaritatus that occur at Graffham Common. Perhaps buxi was closest but that was a long way away in London and given that there were two records of emarginatus from the exact same 10 km square, that seemed most likely. Occam's Razor and all that.

I fed the little fella up on springtails from leaf litter in the garden and it did really well, surprisingly reaching adulthood today. The frustrating thing is that the left palp did not come out of the skin when it last shed its skin (it shed its skin twice by the way). So here are some more shots of the nationally rare and Vulnerable Philodromus emarginatus, the 392nd spider I saw last year but the one I can't count either on last year's list, or this year's. Man, this is one gorgeous spider.

Persistence always pays off. Looking at the SRS page it's not been recorded since 2015 and Mark Gurney says the only other records for a National Trust site were from Lavington in West Sussex where it was last seen in 1996. The last Hampshire and New Forest record was from the same 10 km square in 1999. Very cool and the only good thing about the 31st January 2020. Now I wish I had got that female Enoplognatha from Cornwall to adulthood all those years ago but that's another story...

Before I found myself sucked into the inescapable gravitational pull of Black Hole at Burton Pond, I headed to Iping Common to MAX OUT ON MY SPIDER YEAR LIST! There, I've said it. I'm year-listing spiders again apparently. Anyway yesterday was awesome. From Iping and Burton I recorded 65 species of spider which from mid winter on a frosty day I think is pretty smart. I got TWO lifers out of it. Neither were from Iping. Iping was great for some big impressive spiders I would normally expect to see in autumn, such as an adult Ero tuberculata above (looks like another new record for January). This adult female Agroeca proxima. 

Other charismatic mega fauna included Marpissa muscosa.

Nuctenea umbratica. I don't think I have ever noticed their weird eye arrangement before.

Clubiona corticalis with the above two on the same tree.

And a Cream-streaked Ladybird just to keep my eye in with the beetles.

I had collected tons of linys which it turned out were going to be mostly unexciting species. The Sphagnum areas at Iping were yielding nothing so by about 1.30 pm I found myself sucked into the Black Hole at Burton Pond.

A year on I was very much aware how much my spider field craft, especially with money spiders, had moved on. I was ticking off things such a Sintula corniger, Taranuncus setosus, even female Notioscopus sarcinatus (I did check these). In addition immature Theridiosoma gemmosum and Rugathodes instabilis. Black Hole really is a gem and recent work that Jane Willmott has done there is clearly having a great benefit to the site by keeping it more open. An an adult Platnickina tincta was a bit of a surprise too.

Oh and Demetrias monostigma. If you are finding this beetle, you are on a good site for spiders. And beetles. I only ever see it in old Greater Tussock-sedge and Marram tussocks.

It wasn't until I got home though that I realised I had found something rather good.

Here is Centromerus brevivulvatus. Last seen in the UK in West Sussex in 1998 by Dick Jones at Durford Heath. It's Endangered and Nationally Rare. Only ever known from seven 10 km squares, four of which are in Sussex. Interestingly one of these is Iping Common where it was last seen in 1969. This record though is an entirely new 10 km square making eight 10 km squares, five of which are in Sussex! Oddly only this week I assessed this species as a 'Sussex rare species' and thought to myself "I should get out there and have a look at Durford Heath."

Have a look at the SRS page for it here. Here is the map. Look at all those 'x's.

The singularity that is the Black Hole opened up an Einstein-Rosen Bridge to 1998. What was I doing then? This:

I didn't know anything about spiders then, but I did look a lot more like a spider than I do now. I'd have been half way through my astrophysics degree at Sussex Uni at this point (that's not the name of a hipster ale by the way {hipsters didn't exist then} - in the above image I am halfway through a pint of Hoegaarden).

Anyway, back to Black Hole. One of the next spiders I looked at I only recently ticked off up north. I was amazed to find a male Aphileta misera. This seems to be a species new to West Sussex, the last Sussex record from Ashdown Forest was in 1970. So where was I in 1970? Well I was an unconstituted smear of matter across the Staffordshire landscape, with smaller clusters peppered around the world depending on where my mother's food would come from some seven years later. Some of my carbon might even have been sequestered by spiders at that point, probably the bits that would one day make up my neurons. We have all been there!

And also new for me was Diplocephalus permixtus. A species I was expecting to see up north. Turns out this is the first West Sussex record since 1944 and Sussex record since 1999.

Now I did quite a bit of recording at both these sites last year and it really does go to show how important repeat visits are. With just shy of 10% of the UK fauna seen in a single day I will not be doing any recording now until next weekend.

On Monday I went up to see Mark Telfer about buying a microscope off him after discovering quite by chance he was selling one. No point driving 100 miles to see an old friend without some natural history though, so we were soon heading over to Whipsnade Zoo. A month after the Black-throated Thrush was first seen there. I like to think of this as 'danger twitching', waiting as long as you possibly can before going for the bird. It was an effortless twitch and I took this absolutely stunning photo. My first new British bird since the Elegant Tern in 2016. This is a really awesome bird and deserves more than this but this just isn't his story.

Then we went into the butterfly house. Now I have done very little in hothouses, my only attempt was at the BMIG excursion to Wisley Garden Centre. I was a little bewildered by how many species Mark was finding, such as these impressive molluscs which Mark identified as Subulina octona. My completely steamed up camera and hand lens were making me feel out of my depth.

The spiders seemed a bit more do-able. A single large Ulobrous plumipes and dozens of Achaearanea tepidariorum (with some adults of both sexes) were present along with a few familiar Pholcus phalangiodes. Mark picked up a couple of little orange things that looked very like Oonops which I suggested they were. I couldn't find one beyond a very small immature. Then I noticed something scrambling around in the leaf litter. Possibly a parasitic wasp, I just about got it into a tube to see it was a tiny ant mimic type thing that was clearly an adult male. I vaguely remembered there being something of this shape in the new book and a quick look through and I thought I wouldn't be far off calling this Coleosoma floridanum.

I was very excited to get home and see it hadn't been seen since 2005. What a strange beast, hard to believe it's a theridiid. This animal was just over 2 mm long. It has a strange peg on the underside of the abdomen, two serrated projections at the front of the abdomen, a strange cleft in the top and two undulations underneath. 

Yet the fun didn't stop there, turns out the Oonops type things were not one of our two Oonops. Mark thinks it could possibly be Triaeris stenaspis. The really odd looking abdomen and long patella of the first leg would add up. It's turned up in hothouses in Europe and apparently at some point in the UK. Thanks to Mark for this research, image and an awesome day! I do think it would be great if the SRS had distribution maps for all spiders that are surviving in places like this in the UK. They might not be able to survive outside but they are very much breeding here and not under anyone's control (i.e. they are not pets). Are they really any different to Uloborus plumipes? I can see the appeal now and I think I will be doing some more hothouses soon!

Which leaves one question: Hypothetically speaking, if one was year-listing spiders, would this species count on one's list? Hypothetically speaking obviously.

(One is on 38 species).