Spiders and flowers: we're about so much more than birds

Original post: 22 June. Updated with spider checklist: 27 July.

We held two events here last weekend, designed to encourage more people to discover the nature around us.

On Saturday, Richard Gallon from the British Arachnological Society, gave an excellent introduction to the variety of spiders that you can see in North Wales. The region played a key role in the developing study of spiders during the 19th century, thanks to John Blackwall (1790-1881), who spent the last 50 years of his life living in the Conwy Valley, just south of Llanrwst. Blackwall published the first proper descriptions of 340 British species, and he corresponded with Charles Darwin, who was developing his understanding of evolution. As a result, the spiders in this part of North Wales were well studied, and this continues today thanks to Richard's work with BAS and Cofnod, the local environmental records centre.

Following a short slide presentation, we ventured outside, first checking the nooks and crannies on the outside wall of the Visitor Centre, and the clawdd wall near the Coffee Shop to find a range of spiders. One of these, Amaurobius similis, darted from its hidey hole when Richard used a tuning fork to vibrate the silk, fooling the spider into believing that lunch had just landed in its web. This is just one of the species that John Blackwall described, having found it near Llanrwst, though it has actually proved to be widespread around the northern hemisphere.

Richard demonstrated a variety of techniques, from the simple to the hi-tech, used to survey spiders, and around the nature trails we found a dozen or more species in less than an hour, including the bright green candy-stripe spider. He also showed us the eggs of Tetragnatha striata, bound to a Phragmites leaf by its mother's silk, and one of our less common spiders, found at just three sites in North Wales (and three in the south, including Newport Wetlands). We also looked for the crab spider, Misumena vatia, which Richard found here a couple of years ago, and for which RSPB Conwy is the most northerly site in Britain.

Richard and I have produced a list of spiders, harvestmen and pseudo-scorpions (yes, we have one!) seen at the reserve, which you can download below (pdf). All of our nature checklists can be accessed from this page.

Sunday saw a group out looking for wild flowers on the hottest day of the year. Back in February, I'd come up with the idea of trying to see 50 different flowering species from the reserve trails in one event. But could we find - and correctly identify - 50?

The first 10 were found in the seeded meadow area that we created behind the Coffee Shop in 2013. In just five seasons, it has gone from bare soil to a thriving mix of common flowers, such as black medick, common bird's foot trefoil and corncockle.

Those on the walk really knew their stuff, and were quickly finding and identifying a variety of flowering plants. It was nice to find an open yellow-wort (they usually close their petals after lunch), the first common centaury of the year, and our only white stonecrop, along the estuary path. Although the walk was timed to coincide with peak orchid flowering, recent very dry conditions meant that most of the southern marsh orchids were already over, but with over 2500 to choose from, we were still able to find some smart looking spikes.

Our early marsh orchids are also having a bumper year, with more than 100 flowers around the west end of the Ganol Trail. These are the coccinea form, relatively scarce in North Wales and found at just a handful of other sites. We also saw a few dozen bee orchids, though these are much less abundant than last summer.

I needn't have worried about finding 50 species; between us we found 73, and we were not counting plants we could identify but that were not in flower.

The two events illustrate how diverse the wildlife is, even at a modest size nature reserve such as RSPB Conwy, the land for which didn't even exist 25 years ago. Each year we discover new species, and visitors add their records to these. Summer is the time to see the widest variety of wildlife in the countryside. Make a date to get outside an find it!

Photos: Amaurobius similis (Richard Gallon); yellow-wort and early marsh orchid (Brian Mottershead)