Team Grayling 2018 Update

July 22nd 2018

2018 has got of to a good start with more Grayling sightings posted in the first 10 days since their emergence this year, than in the whole of 2017 and 2018 combined. We would like to thank all those who have made the effort to visit Deep Dene and Windover Hill and record Grayling.

It is too early to tell if 2018 is going to be a good year for Graylings, and to be honest the lack of recording data from previous years makes difficult to make the assessment. What we know is that in a good year the Graylings push out from their core site at Deep Dene into the surrounding area, most notably Windover Hill and Ewe Dean.

The next phase of our monitoring involves understanding how the Grayling is using Deep Dean and what areas it is breaking out into. We have divided the Deep Dean and the surrounding district into survey areas and would like recorders to report back on these specific areas.

When Grayling please record

The survey area
The time of day
The temperature
The amount of cloud cover
Number of butterflies seen

It would be helpful if you could record the sex of the butterfly. It is also vital to record zero counts from a survey area. You can see from the table below that we have no sightings from Ewe Dean since 2009. It is not clear if this is because there have been no Grayling there or because no one went to look for them after 2009.

The Sussex Biodiversity Record Centre have kindly provided us with two maps of historic Grayling sightings in both the Deep Dene area and Sussex as a whole. It is clear that over the past twenty years the Deep Dean/Windover complex has become first the primary and latterly the sole location for Graylings. The collapse of the Grayling population in Lullington Heath was due to environmental factors and it is unlikely that we will see the Grayling return there in the near future.

Downloads

Deep Dean and Windover survey areas

Graylings in Windover area: 1998 -2017

Graylings in Sussex: 1998 -2017

Graylings in East Sussex: 1990 -2014

EastSussexGrayling2014.jpg

East Sussex Grayling Recording by Year

The following table represents the number of accurate records by site and year.

Year	Deep Dean	Ewe Dean	Folkington Hill	Friston Forest	High and Over	Lullington Heath	Ouse Estuary	Windover
1998	11	1		1		5		4
1999	12	1				10		2
2000	10	1				3		3
2001	1					2		3
2002						7
2003	3					6
2004	4	1				2
2005	2	3		1		4		5
2006	10	1		4		3		4
2007	31				1	2		8
2008	14	1				1		6
2009	8					2	3	11
2010	4							1
2011								2
2012					1			2
2013	1		3					7
2014	4							5
2015	6				1			2
2016	8							1
2017	7							1
	130	9	3	6	3	47	3	67

The following sites have only one record of a sighting in the past 20 years and possible represent transitory butterflies.

Beachy Head

Butts Brow

Cuckmere Valle

Fairlight

Frog Firle Farm

Hastings Country Park

Icklesham

Newhaven

Rye Bay

Seaford Head

Willingdon

East Sussex Grayling Butterfly Counts by Year

Some records had a range of values (eg 10 to 30) and in these cases the lowest value was taken.

Year	Butts Brow	Deep Dean	Ewe Dean	Folkington Hill	Friston Forest	High and Over	Lullington Heath	Ouse Estuary	Windover
1998		63	30		1		52		31
1999		45	10				151		12
2000		112	30				3		22
2001		10					32
2002							28
2003		58					45
2004		24	59				11
2005		81	6		1		81		7
2006		37	1		5		8		6
2007	12	138				2	2		41
2008		166	1				1		20
2009		53					2	3	23
2010		78							6
2011									2
2012						2			5
2013		1		3					121
2014		109							158
2015		38				2			14
2016		55							1
2017		10							1
	12	1069	137	3	7	6	416	3	470