Today Dan and I went down to Penzance to meet up with fellow PSLer Sally Luker. Sally is doing a PhD on non-native bugs found on non-native plants and how they may be interacting with native bugs and potentially outcompeting them or spreading pathogens. Her chosen specialities are aphids, psyllids, psocids and scales (well someone has to show an interest in 'em, lol) Anyway, during her adventures she's found some goodies including one new to Britain. Our first target species was a very local psocid, one which just happens to live on a headstone in Sally's local churchyard. Naturally, we were über keen to see the little critter! We set off and headed for the churchyard. The very first headstone we checked had a couple of them on it - success! Atlantopsocus adustus hurled itself dreckly onto our lists, as the locals would say. In Britain this is only known from Ireland and Cornwall, and a long-legged chunky wee thing it is too. Ours were all nymphs, Sally says they get to be almost a centimetre long (and it turned out to be pretty much the largest invert lifer of the day, lol) The next headstone across held dozens of Bristly Millipedes hiding under flaking stonework. I've only seen one of these before so to see whole huddles of them was a joy!

Sally suggested we check the Italian Alders down the road for a speciality aphid that occurs on the leaves. En route we ticked off large groups of RED CAMPION APHID Brachycaudus klugkisti on their foodplant. I've seen these dense clusters of black aphids on Red Campion before, so it was satisfying to put a name to them at last. A quick check of the underside of Atlantic Ivy leaves revealed a few VIBURNUM CUSHION SCALE Lichtensia viburni before we reached the Italian Alders. At the trees we started scrutinising the leaves and soon found a small number of the aphids present on this plant. These were all nymphs and looked nothing like a typical aphid, more like a flat semi-transparent scale in fact. These were ITALIAN ALDER APHIDS Crypturaphis grassii at a known site. Somehow we got chatting about the Eden Project biomes (Sally has found loads of interesting stuff in there!!) and I discovered I had a retrospective lifer thanks to Sally's knowledge - WHITE-FOOTED ANT Technomyrmex albipes which is all over the tropical biome and doing rather too well for itself. Nice one!

Sally knew a nearby site for a liverwort we both needed so we shot off to Newlyn where we duly ticked off a huge patch of GREAT SCENTED LIVERWORT Conocephalum conicum plus I ticked off BLACK MUSTARD Brassica nigra, bit of a tart's tick but hey ho, they all count! I lifted a few storm-tossed slabs of rock and found an ant nest with tiny white things scampering around all over the place. Sally took some home and tracked them down as the ant-associating springtail Cyphoderus albinus - suitably tiny and very nice indeed! A pair of Ravens low overhead were by far the largest things of interest I saw all day.

Next we went into Penzance to twitch a Psyllid at its only British locality (heh heh, we've twitched some weird things before, me and Dan, but never a Psyllid!) I spotted an Oxalis growing down an alleyway, it looked like a Pink Sorrel with large pale flowers. It was a lifer, the rather unimaginatively named PALE PINK-SORREL Oxalis incarnata. We entered Morrab Gardens, a 3-acre subtropical public park where Sally has found a haul of interesting "non-native munchers" as she calls them. First up we checked out the Tetrapanax and soon found a few FATSIA PSYLLIDS Cacopsylla fatsiae as hoped for, success again! Sally was keen to show us a few more of her 'friends' so we followed her around the park finding HOLLY SCALE Dynaspidiotus britannicus on Spotted Laurel, Bamboo Aphid Takecallis arundinariae on bamboo (lifer for Dan) and thousands and thousands of WILLOW SCALE Chionaspis salicis covering the bark of a solitary Pittosporum.

We quit Penzance and headed to Marazion in search of a monster plant - Sea Daffodil. Sally knew the spot so we had high hopes of success. First up was an unfamiliar snail in Alexanders all along the base of a wall. Sally, bless her cotton socks, knew exactly what they were, HEATH SNAIL Helicella itala. We found more snails yet to be 100% identified but probably Cochlicella barbara plus some root aphids under a rock and being attended by ants. Sally took a few away and has provisionally IDed them as Forda formicaria. We had an abortive attempt to find a few grasses on the beach but had more luck when we suddenly stopped at a clump of SEA DAFFODIL Pancratium maritimum!!!! Brilliant, this had been my main target here and, despite the fact that half of the dunes were washed away in the winter storms, we found 17 plants in several discrete clumps - all in the same general area. More plants that I rarely get to see included Sea Rocket in full flower, Sea Holly and Sea Spurge.

We moved into the Marazion RSPB reserve noting my first massively overdue House and Sand Martins of the year amongst the Swallows, a few Reed Warblers were singing from the reedbeds and Cetti's shouted at us at regular intervals. Sally pointed out some fungal leafspots on figwort which was FIGWORT LEAFSPOT Septoria scrophulariae and new for me. Best of all though, and my 200th species of fungus was when she called over, "have you seen Campion Anther Smut, Seth?" Er, say what?!?!? I hurried across and found myself looking at Red Campion flowers that had the anthers covered in a brownish sooty substance, CAMPION ANTHER SMUT Microbotryum violaceum. Sounds pretty crap but actually very tasty indeed! A memorable 200th :)

We dropped Sally back home again and thanked her for a very interesting day, being shown stuff we'd not ordinarily attempt to identify by ourselves. This type of joint PSLers outings are a great way of discovering new search techniques and seeing new species. Dan and I went home and got drunk to celebrate.