A star lily

It's not often that I get a whole weekend with no commitments but, partly as a result of the continued awful weather, that was the situation this weekend. So what to do at this time of year? Well I could (and probably should) have spent the weekend staring down a microscope at my backlog of unidentified insects but I'd much sooner get out in the field and there is a plant that is flowering at the moment that I have wanted to see for quite a while. No contest.

The Early Star-of-Bethlehem (aka Radnor Lily - the name that I prefer) Gagea bohemica is only found in Britain at a single site, Stanner Rocks NNR in Radnorshire. I have a particular affection for Radnorshire, having visited many times when a friend worked for the Wildlife Trust there, and have driven past Stanner Rocks on a number of occasions. However, Stanner Rocks is a closed reserve. Normally this would be sufficient encouragement for me to trespass but in this case there are genuine reasons for restricted access as there are a number of rare plants, mosses and lichens which could be damaged by an ill-informed footstep.

Having decided during the week that I wanted to visit to look for the Radnor Lily, the question was whether I could obtain permission and instructions in time. Fortunately I know someone who visited last year so I asked her if she could put me in touch with the right person to ask. This she kindly did, and her contact was immensely helpful, providing lots of detailed information about where and how to find the lily without causing damage as well as lots of other information about interesting species on the reserve.

So I made a 4 am start to avoid the traffic and hopefully get there before the predicted poor weather. This proved to be a good choice as it was already blowing a gale and spitting with rain when I arrived (and the weather as I drove home was atrocious).

There are only two flowering Radnor Lilies in the accessible part of the reserve this year. One was very easy to find due to the directions provided and the fact that it was in a cage.

I was told that I could remove the cage to photograph the plant as long as I put it back afterwards. As predicted, it was a little past its best.

The other plant which was only found earlier this week was predicted to be in better condition so I was quite keen to see it. However it was in a more sensitive area and despite being provided with a photograph of the location with a big arrow pointing to where to look, I couldn't quite tie up the photograph with what I could see in front of me and I didn't want to go bumbling around the rocks causing all sorts of damage. Eventually I decided to have a quick, careful look and immediately stumbled upon the plant (not literally!). The flower wasn't fully open, perhaps due to the weather, but it complemented the first one nicely.

Most of the interesting species at Stanner Rocks at this time of year are lower plants and I was left feeling frustrated by my incompetence in this area. I did find what I believe to be the rare liverwort Riccia beyrichiana however.

A huge thank you to Megan and Andy for facilitating my visit and providing invaluable information.

A very rare hopper

I rarely feature invertebrates on this blog apart from fairly big stuff that can be identified in the field. Part of the reason for this is that my microscope camera (which it took two years to get the supplier to send me all the bits to make it work!) doesn't work with Windows 8.

Last week a friend recommended the Eyecam, sold by Brunel Microscopes. At under £60, I decided to take the plunge and ordered one on Wednesday evening. It arrived first thing on Friday which was a nice contrast with the previous company. I haven't had the time (or inclination) to read the instructions yet but just using the basic settings I took the following image of this hopper.

Idiodonus cruentatus

This was swept from a fairly nondescript area of damp heathland in the New Forest in August and I was able to get the identity confirmed at the BENHS hoppers workshop on Saturday. The rather aged key to hoppers doesn't suggest that it is anything special, describing it as local, but the national recording scheme organiser tells me that he only aware of three other records since 1980 and considers it the most declined hopper species in the country.

The James Bond lichen

I joined a Flora Group meeting in Portsmouth which was aimed mainly at recording alien escapes but we started off with a scarce native; Slender Hare's-ear Bupleurum tenuissimum. This is an umbellifer but it doesn't look at all like one, at least superficially. According to my records I have seen this species before but I have no recollection of doing so.

Slender Hare's-ear

Next was a species that is normally thought to be introduced, except in west Cornwall; Bermuda-grass Cynodon dactylon. However, expert opinion is that it is also native on the Isle of Wight and that this Portsmouth colony could also be native.

Bermuda-grass

A slight diversion was made to the world of lower plants when we were shown the Golden-eye Lichen Teloschistes chrysophthalmus. This was a mega-rarity, having not been seen in the area for over 100 years but it now appears to be spreading rapidly on the coast of central southern England. It has also been spreading in Brittany. Presumably it has recolonised from the continent but the fact that it has reappeared in the same area that it was known from in the 19th century is interesting, could it have hung on in Britain unnoticed for all that time?

Teloschistes chrysophthalmus

On the same bush was a lichen that I had not seen before; Physcia stellaris. This appears to be quite scarce in southern and eastern England but is fairly common elsewhere.

Physcia stellaris

A brief lesson in bramble identification produced a new species for me in the form of Rubus tuberculatus. One member of the Flora Group is working on a web site for identifying brambles which will hopefully make them more accessible in due course.

We then reverted to looking at alien plants. This provided me with a number of new species such as Grape-vine Vitis vinifera and Chinese Mugwort Artemisia verlotiorum but I cannot say that such ticks give me much satisfaction.

Chinese Mugwort

Aliens on the island

A friend wanted to see the stick insect Bacillus rossius which occurs on Hayling Island so I arranged to show him where I had seen it in previous years. He couldn't make it till lunchtime so in the morning I went to the east coast of the island. I wanted to look for Dwarf Eelgrass Zostera noltei which I have not seen before. The usual traffic chaos held me up and the tide was rising rapidly when I arrived but I had a fairly precise grid reference so I was able to find the plant quite quickly - a good thing as another 15 minutes or so and it would have been in water over wellie depth.

Dwarf Eelgrass with close-up of leaf showing notched tip

Another thing that I wanted to do whilst at this site was to look for the larval cases of Coleophora aestuariella and C. deviella on Annual Sea-blite. A friend and I found both these species new to Hampshire back in 1996 but I have never been back to look for them since. I found C. aestuariella quite quickly but a search throughout the area of our original find produced no deviella cases. By coincidence, the friend with whom I made the original find, also visited the site a couple of days later and had the same results. It is of some concern that neither of us could refind deviella but it was much scarcer than aestuariella in 1996 and it is to be hoped that it can be refound in future years.

Coleophora aestuariella larval case

 I went off to meet my friend but he was running late so I had a look for the alien escape Cock's-eggs Salpichroa origanifolia which is well known in the area. I saw a likely looking patch of plants and headed towards it but before I got there I almost trod on another garden escape which I had not seen before; Pink-sorrel Oxalis articulata.

Pink-sorrel

Cock's-eggs

My friend had now arrived and we spent some time searching the bramble patches around the beach huts for the stick insect. Sadly there were none to be found, with a few Knot Grass Acronicta rumicis larvae being the only herbivores seen.

Knot Grass larva

We moved to Sandy Point where I was able to show my friend the scarce Sea Knotgrass Polygonum maritimum.

Sea Knotgrass

 Despite having been in this area on numerous occasions, I had never previously noticed that there was a Monterey Cypress Cupressus macrocarpa sapling just a few metres away. Having found one, we then proceeded to find several more. It's amazing how blind you can be.

Monterey Cypress sapling

Finally we walked down to Black Point where we found several Spanish Broom Spartium junceum bushes, another alien plant that I have not seen previously.

Spanish Broom

Earwig bum-face

Back in late September I collected some Horse Chestnut leaves which contained lots of mines created by the micro-moth Cameraria ohridella. The aim was to see what parasites emerged from the mines so I placed the leaves in a clear plastic bag. The first thing to appear in the bag was not a parasite but I had no idea what it was. In retrospect I really should have known, or at least been able to work it out, but sometimes neither brain cell is working and after searching the internet for some time I resorted to posting an image in the Pan-species Listing Facebook group, asking if anyone knew what this strange thing with an earwig's bum stuck on it's face was.

From the flood of responses it was clear that everybody apart from me knew that it was a lacewing larva. One correspondent stated that it was one of the brown lacewings as the green ones don't have the assorted detritus on their back.

The following day I went to look for a new plant for me, and this time I could identify it. There were a number of Henbane plants growing in a game cover strip in an arable field near Up Marden. I managed to squeeze records from two tetrads.

Henbane

At the weekend I went out with a local fungus group to Witley Common in Surrey. It was by far the most productive fungus meeting I have been to and there was really too much going on to keep up with all the finds but I did manage to see a number of new species, a couple of which were the Redspored Dapperling Melanophyllum haematospermum with it's characteristic reddish gills

Melanophyllum haematospermum

and the Stinking Earthfan Thelephora palmata which reputedly has a 'repulsive smell of putrid garlic'. After my experience with Stinking Goosefoot earlier this year, I decided not to test this description.

Thelephora palmata

On the way home I stopped in at a heath in north Hampshire to look for the St Dabeoc's Heath Daboecia cantabrica. As a native in the British Isles it is only known from two counties in southern Ireland but it is occasionally found as an escape / introduction in southern England. Although it was only recently discovered at this site, I suspect that it may have originally got there during the second world war when there was considerable military activity on the site, with much planting of alien species around buildings, etc.

St Dabeoc's Heath

Entering the Lyons Den

One of my favourite wildlife blogs (albeit almost as quiet as this one in recent times) is The Lyons Den, written by a Sussex ecologist. Today we entered Lyon country in the hope of catching up with one of the Sussex-bred Long-tailed Blues that has been emerging recently. I tried several times during the last Long-tailed Blue invasion but my only reward was a 'probable' at a range of about 20 metres that flew off, never to be seen again. During the last invasion I spent a lot of time staring at Broad-leaved Everlasting-pea at the derelict Shoreham cement works so I was rather dismayed to be told by my local contact that this was the best place to try this time. A sense of deja vu quickly descended as the only butterflies to be seen were a couple of Speckled Wood. My contact was racing around various sites where he had seen the butterfly but was having a similar level of success.

Just when it all seemed futile, a message came through saying 'get yourself to Southwick Basin asap'. My contact had not only found one but he kept his shadow over it so that it didn't fly off before we got there.

Once the sun was allowed to fall on the butterfly, it opened its wings for a couple of minutes before flying and vanishing into thin air.

So a huge debt of thanks is owed to this person, not only for finding the butterfly but for having the presence of mind to keep it shaded long enough for us to see it.

A bunch of useless twonks

It's been a while since my last rant and my reader is keen that I have a go about this so.......

Back in 2013 I found the ichneumon wasp Lymantrichneumon disparis new to Britain. It was found on an RSPB reserve and they were keen to issue a press release about the find but I insisted that nothing was done before the discovery was properly published in a relevant journal. This took some time but the paper was eventually published a couple of months ago so I gave the RSPB the go-ahead to do the press release. They consulted me on the draft and I made a few changes so that it was factually correct. I put up with the cheesy quote attributed to me, even though it bore no relation to anything that I did or would say. It seems that all press releases have to have some sort of naff quote of this sort.

Neither I nor the RSPB expected the press release to be picked up by more than the odd local newspaper but it must have been a slow news week as it was used by at least 13 local and regional newspapers, plus two nationals; the Guardian and Express. I haven't looked at the local coverage but did look at the two nationals. Both reproduced the press release almost word for word but added little bits. The Guardian added that the site it was found at was in Kent (wrong) and that I am a butterfly collector (Seriously? What in the press release gave you that idea? Look at who I work for you ignorant prat). The Express went a little bit further and their accompanying pictures and captions are just so hysterical that it is worth having a look. I will of course now be carrying out all fieldwork wearing a 1950's suit and will start hunting for rare butterflies over the sea.

I suppose I shouldn't have expected any better as the standard of the British media is so awful these days but when the topic is something so innocuous, with no political connotations that certain sections of the media would want to put their right- or left-wing slant on, one has to question how they can make such a mess of the article. This isn't just an isolated incident as I see it every time I have any involvement with a press release.

So, one has to pose a question. What is the point of journalists? If they had just copied and pasted the press release it would have been accurate and would have conveyed to the readers all the information that was in the final article. All that the journalist has added is some nonsense about me collecting butterflies - despite the fact that the press release says that I was undertaking moth monitoring (of larvae as it happens) and that I was working for Butterfly Conservation. How did they take those pieces of information and come up with the claim that I was a butterfly collector? Presumably they had to read the press release so the only conclusion is that they have such a poor understanding of the subject that the words 'butterfly' and 'net' have only one meaning.

I cannot think of another profession (apart from politician) where such a level of incompetence would be tolerated.