The Lyons Share

I've been at Cowdray all day today with Mark Telfer carrying out part of a deadwood beetle survey for the West Weald Landscape Project. We saw A LOT of good stuff and even with the small number of things I managed to identify I ended the day on 3420 species! We were finding beetles pretty much all day long, I didn't leave the site feeling at all like we had found everything! 

The above beetle is the quite stunning longhorn Phymatodes testaceus which I have never come across before, Mark found it on a Beech tree. I didn't manage to take many photos because I was too busy finding rare and scarce beetles and much of what we saw today was actually quite small. However, a tiny, well-marked, very flat beetle that I found only one specimen of on a fallen Beech looks like it is going to be of note. It's gonna have to wait until tomorrow though as I'm shattered! Watch this space for part two of this blog which will actually have some species names in I promise. Too much to take in for one day!