Sunday, 24 August 2008

23 August 2008 - Surrey Heaths

With an evening visit to Portsmouth on the cards, the Good Lady Wiff persuaded me to stop en route and attempt to find reptiles on the Surrey Heaths.

Suffice to say that our reptile hunting wasn't overly successful, though a count of several yound Common Lizards, 3x Slow worms and an Adder wasn't bad - but it also wasn't our target species (Smooth Snake & Sand Lizard). Oh, well.

My first photo of a Common Toad was an unexpected highlight...

Better was this female Bog Cricket. Possibly a new Orthoptera for me - I really must jump to it and count the spacies I've seen.

Possible Leopard Slug - but possibly not.
Fox Moth caterpillar - several seen on the heaths.


Devil's Matches - and very many thanks to Greenie for saving my blushes and pointing out that this is a litchen and not a fungi at all.

Common Earth-ball (Scleroderma citrinum)


Birch Polypore (Piptoporus betulinus)


Probable - Bay boletus (Boletus badius)
And I'm very grateful to Greenie for all these latter corrections to my misidentifications. I seems just as well that I hadn't started to eat many of the above (or given them to The Good Lady Wiff for that matter...) - though this last Boletus may have been a missed opportunity for a free meal.

2 comments:

Mike said...

Nice shots you have here, well inpressed with the bat shots they're just too fast for me. Mike.

Greenie said...

If it's any help -
The red toppped species is a lichen , don't know proper name . common name - Devil's Matches .
Next - Common Earth-ball - Scleroderma citrinum .
Next - on Silver Birch -Birch Polypore- Piptoporus betulinus .
Lastly (probable) - Bay Boletus-Boletus badius .
I'd go with Leopard slug too .