NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

...I will not look at mosses ...I will not attempt liverworts ...I will not be snared into lichen temptation ...I will not forget that this natural history lark IS MEANT TO BE ENJOYABLE ...I will not forget to write things down and send in my records ...I will be more friendly to my fellow naturalist ...I will learn how to take proper images with my grown-up DSLR ...I will not suffer blogging envy ...I will visit Ranscombe Farm in Kent ...I will go back to the New Forest and have a pan-species blitz ...I will find a half-decent bird (it's about bloody time I did that again) ...I will, I promise, give micro moths a proper go ...and use my new plume moth guide ...and my big thick hoverfly book ...but not my mosses, liverworts and lichens guides Whatever you are aiming to do next year, may you be successful. Keep well, be happy and if you do manage to have moments of natural history pleasure, cherish them.

Today I visited Selborne in Hampshire. This is woodland at the top of the hangar, made famous by a naturalist clergyman, who, among other things, was the first person to use field skills to identify our commoner phylloscopus warblers. Here he watched and listened to Chiffchaffs, Willow Warblers and Wood Warblers.  This is the front of his house in the village. Today it was closed. Therefore I cannot tell you much about it. Try Google...  The parish church of St. Mary is where he had four spells as curate. He was buried here in 1793. This is a detail from a modern stained glass window in the church that depicts his life through natural history images and as a celebration of his world famous book 'The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne'. In the churchyard is one of the 50 designated 'Great Trees of Britain' - or, more accurately, what is left of it after the 1990 storm - the famous Selborne Yew.

If you have had the good fortune to have visited there, those two words - Taman Negara - will have shaken a multitude of thoughts and emotions awake within you. It is, quite simply, one of the best places on earth to experience birding in the rainforest. Slap bang in the middle of peninsular Malaysia, it is a vast reserve. I visited back in 1994. As part of a three-week birding holiday with two friends, we spent 10 days at Kuala Tahan, the reserve HQ, staying in a level of luxury that would be scoffed at by the likes of Rajah Brookes and Sir Rannulph Feinnes. To reach the HQ required a three-hour drive from Kuala Lumpur to then catch a boat that required a further two hours to speed its way along the river. There were a series of trails that snaked away from the HQ, and the bravest of birders could walk for days to reach the park interior (to see Crested Argus required such a trek with a guide). However, if trekking was not your cup of tea, then the birds came to you. There were ...

No, I haven't been spending Christmas in Asia and burning up those gems of the rainforest, the pittas. But a man that spent a year searching for every one of these beauties has enlivened my Christmas with his tales of the quest. 'The Jewel Hunter' by Chris Gooddie is a book that is as much a rare thing as the birds that it is partly about - a well-written account of the modern birder in action. Chris packed in a successful career whilst in his mid-forties to try and see every species of pitta in a calendar year. As someone who dreams of making similar grand plans (but never will) and who loves pittas (I have actually seen three species - Hooded, Banded, Blue-winged) and heard a further one (Mangrove), this book appeals to me on many levels. The writing style is one that accepts that most of the readers will be birders but never the less makes it accessible to those who are not. Part travel book, part social commentary, part natural history documentation, all intelligently ...

A couple of days ago I posted a link to a comment piece that appeared on Birdguides which refered to the autumn statement that was given by the Chancellor, George Osborne. Now I am making anybody who reads this post aware of an RSPB call to arms to try and stop the harm that could come from the Chancellor's anti-habitat sentiments expressed in that statement. Please read and act by clicking here . I will try and keep my dignity and humility by not bad-mouthing this politician who obviously values his 'mates' business opportunities above the safeguarding of our natural habitats;  above the welfare of those species that are dependent on them; and above our enjoyment of them and of the future generations to come. After all, how much money can you milk an Adonis Blue, Turtle Dove or Marsh Helleborine for?

An alien being? Something from the Jetsons? I spent a wonderful morning tramping over one of my old patches - Holmethorpe Sand Pits. Apart from a wintery shower it remained clement. The birding wasn't too bad, with a good collection of wildfowl (including a Goldeneye), Water Rail, plus good feeding flocks of Stock Doves and finches on the farmland. But, highlight was without doubt the four Earthstars that local birder Graham James had alerted me to. These strange fungi are a family that I had been wanting to see these past few months and I was not disappointed. A stranger thing you'd be hard pushed to find. Geiger-esque. I reckon that they are Barometer Earthstars (Astraeus hygrometricus) and my photos match those on Roger Phillip's website pretty closely.

This opinion piece is worth a read. The country is in safe hands...not.

Cambridge University has revealed how buttercups are able to shine a yellow light under our chins when a flowerhead is placed close to it. It's great that some of these old childhood games involving plants are still being discussed. Do children still make daisy chains? Do boys pelt each other with burdock burrs? Do bindweed flowers still get popped, conkers still get smashed and do girls pick petals off of anything to hand reciting 'he loves me, he loves me not'?

Colley Hill - part of 'North Downs and beyond' Birds: Most of my time was spent locally, with Beddington Sewage Farm the normal choice of destination. The year began with my seeing Waxwings in Redhill, Cheam and Canons Farm, the latter site providing a flock of 60+. Common Redpolls were in the company of many flocks of Lessers. An Eider on a sandpit near Buckland was a stunning local record. Spring came early - March, April and May were dry, sunny and warm. Canons Farm produced for me Ring Ouzel, Grasshopper Warbler and a singing Quail that I actually managed to see. Not to be outdone, Beddington came back with two Common Cranes that flew through, calling noisily, in mid-April. The fact that I couldn't see them was down  to the fact that a thousand gulls were circling above me at the time rather than my incompetence. A week at Sandwich Bay in June was like stepping back in time. The farmland there still is home to breeding Corn Buntings, Grey Partridges, Yellow Wagtails...

Seeing 'the bird' doesn't always guarantee joy, as I alluded to at the end of my last post. A poor view and nothing more can set all sorts of doubts of in your mind, such as 'was that enough to tick?' through to 'did I actually see the bird?' More than once I've come away from a twitch wrestling the problem of 'to tick or not to tick'. That scenario always ended the same - the knowledge that by asking the question in the first place really meant that the only response could be NO. Sometimes I've seen the bird really well and felt underwhelmed. Twice this has happened when seeing the rarest of the rare, a first for Britain.The Pallid Swift at Stodmarsh in May 1977 zipped around me within touching distance, but to my untrained eye I really did have to convince myself that the bird really was what the experts said it was. October 1978 saw me on St. Agnes looking at a Ringed Plover that I was being told was a Semipalmated Plover. I'd travel...

I couldn't help but experience a half-forgotten chill run down my spine when I read this post on Devilbirder's blog. It is a tale of dipping, magnified by the rarity of the species that he had hoped to see, plus the distance that he had travelled to see it. Increased distance (with a cost and time factor) does not always make dipping worse - a local failure can be far more personal and painful. I started to think back to the days when I too picked up the twitching baton and ran with it. Were all my dips as painful? And come to that, were all of my successes pleasurable? 'No' and 'no' were my concluding answers to those questions. Painful dipping The bird that hurt me the most was a Great Spotted Cuckoo at Dungeness in the summer of 1989. I was in the grip of 'Dungeness fever' and liked nothing more than a Dungeness tick. At the time, this would have also been a UK lifer. The call came through to me soon after the bird had been found, and at the ver...

A cool morning was spent at Beddington Sewage Farm, the south-westerly breeze picking up and getting cooler as the hours ticked by. I stayed close to the hide, scanning both the north and south lakes without too much joy, 2 Shelduck, 18 Gadwall, 40 Shoveler, 150 Teal and 47 Lapwings being the pick. The morning was saved by a low-flying flock of redpolls, that alighted in a nearby Silver Birch. Scoping revealed a smart Common Redpoll amongst the Lessers. These birds were very flighty and after 20 minutes seemed to leave the area. Only myself and Steve Thomas saw the bird. This is not a regular species at Beddington. This autumn has seen a remarkable proportion of 'redpolls' being identified as Commons in Kent and Surrey, with ringing at Leith Hill providing record breaking numbers for the latter county. In the north part of Surrey we have struggled to find them even though most 'redpoll' flocks have been grilled (from such diverse sites as Holmethorpe, Canons Farm and...

I know that it isn't December until this coming Thursday, but my mind is already wandering towards 2012. So much for carpe diem ... What I'm thinking about is this. Where do I concentrate my efforts next year? So far my choices are: Pan-listing: go for it. Blast the hell out of everything on offer, blitz the list and assault 3500. The downside would be plenty of stringing and a feeling of treating natural history as a product to consume and spit out. Beddington love-in: embrace the smelly plot and study its undoubted wildlife in a celebration of urban diversity. The downside would be getting very muddy and possibly having to endure plenty of gripping off from the hard-core birders skywatching from the hide as I potter about looking at the ground mostly. Go birding: Do I remember that? The days when I looked at birds and little else? I could finally get over 400 and look at some of the upstarts in the face again. Downside? I don't like many birders... Botanical ...

I was flicking through a field guide to trees last night when I came across this description of the smell of the fallen leaves of the Tree-of-heaven: 'old tennis shoes' This quaint and twee statement had me looking at the front of the book to see when it was written (surely in the 1930s) but was surprised to find out it was in 1982 - more like 1882 I reckon with such a turn of phrase. Why tennis shoes? Does the author distinguish this niff from 'old ballroom pumps' or 'tired businessmen's brogues'? He could have been more elitist and original with the description such as 'wet labrador dog in front of a log fire' or 'matron's apron after a morning washing old bed linen' If I were to update the guide then I could bring it bang up to date with a more accurate and less polite description. The Tree-of-heaven, at a certain time of year has about it the unmistakable smell of 'vomit'.

After all of that pan-species malarky I thought that I'd better get back out birding before my bins and scope were confiscated and I was publicly pronounced 'lapsed'. Beddingtom Sewage Farm was my venue of choice. The birding reflected the weather, being non-descript and dull with the odd bright spell. A single Water Pipit gave itself up along with 7 Green Sandpipers. A feature of the farm these days is the gathering of feeding and loafing Grey Herons, no fewer than 88 being on show, mostly on the islands of the north lake. As always, Tree Sparrows took advantage of the well-stocked feeders. I did grill the gulls although nothing got the pulse racing. I read two colour rings - TJ6T black lettering on red, left leg of an adult Lesser BB Gull - plus AV71 black lettering on orange, left leg of a first-winter Herring - but my quick look on the European colour ringing website failed to identify where they might have been ringed. The first-winter Common Gull (above) is a ...

English bird names just haven’t had the same amount ofimagination or free-form thinking   put into them as some other natural history orders have. Moths   ( The Alchemist, Merveille du Jour , The Suspected) and fungi (Destroying Angel, Slippery Jack, Dead Man’s Fingers) certainly have. They sound like characters from the works of Tolkien and Dickens. Compare them to Dunnock. What a dull name. It is, it must be said, not a remarkable bird to look at even if it has a very interesting sex life (look it up if you are curious). The derivation of the name ‘Dunnock’ is, according to Wikipedia: “this usage(Dunnock) has much to be said for it, based as it is on the oldest known name for any of the species (old English dun-, brown, + - ock, small bird: "little brown bird"), and a much more euphonious name than the contrived "Accentor". So, in some ways Dunnock does exactly what it says on the tin. But we can do better than that. What about Dusty Lurker. Or Drab-coated Da...

It may not be a spectacular looking species, but Bitter Bracket became my 3,000th pan-species yesterday morning whilst on the hunt at Reigate Heath. I would have liked that honour to have gone to Ceratiomyxa fraticulosa , a species of slime mould that I was rather taken with, but that came in at 2,998. That's it to right of Sir Winston (above). Before any of you go thinking that I've suddenly become an expert in slime moulds, I haven't. I know as much about them as I do 19th century Russian ballerinas - it just so happens that this species is illustrated in a mycology book that I own, and my double-checking online suggests that the identification is correct. Reigate Heath also supplied White Brain, Liver Milkcap, Yellow Fieldcap and Turf Mottlegill. Above all of this fungi action, two male Crossbills entertained me feeding in conifers only yards away. I then went on to Juniper Bottom, taking in Box Hill and Juniper Top. The new fungi species kept on coming, with Cabbage ...

To prove that I haven't given up looking at anything that isn't a fungus, here is a Scarce Umber that I put up whilst at Ebernoe Common last Saturday. I followed its weak flight for maybe thirty seconds until it alighted on the leaf litter. Trawling of photographs has yielded further new species of fungi, but this has its limitations as I cannot possibly check all the salient details to clinch certain identification on many. 2995 now....

The dry spell for much of southern of England has ended, and I have been seeing quite a bit of fungi springing up. Mindful of the possibility of night frosts killing off what fungi are currently on show I thought I would make a return trip to Ebernoe Common in West Sussex. Any regular visitor to this blog will know that I have adopted fungi as my 'new passion' this autumn and have managed to progress from a complete mushroom novice to a partial mushroom novice. I'm slowly getting to the point where I can find a place in the field guide where the mushroom that I am looking at will be found (at least to a family - but not all the time!). I can appreciate the need to note cap, gill and stipe colour, texture, and form, plus to take in what the fungi is growing on and the habitat that I'm in (that last point is the easiest to answer...) I was lucky to bump into a knowledgable mycologist in the middle of the afternoon who was helpful in helping...

Graham Lyons posed the following question in his latest post - could he tick a potted Red-headed Chestnut on show at a moth group meeting? He suggested not and for what it's worth I agree with him. However, it opens up a dilemma attached to any listing that we might get involved in, and that is one of having clear rules to what we can - and cannot - count on a list. I have two rules for listing. The first is that I can count whatever I want to on my closed, private list. Rule two is that if I keep a competitive list, where other peoples lists are also taken into consideration, then I need to abide by the rules of that particular group. For example, the Beddington Birders maintain a league table of birds seen on the site. On this list I have not included Common Redpoll, because when I saw my only Beddington sighting in 1980 I did not submit it, so it was never formally accepted. Only formally accepted records c...

This is an earthtongue, that I reckon is Geoglossum cookeanum , based on the fact that it hasn't got a hairy, tapered stem. Just in case a knowledgable mycologist has stumbled across this humble twaddle, and they think that I'm incorrect, please let me know. This is a new species of fungi for me, and was found growing out of the soil in a pot where a Viburnum tinus is planted, only yards from the back door. This handily demonstrates one of the positives of pan-listing - you can always find something that you haven't identified before even where you live. You needn't go outside!! This week I've found a spider and three species of fungi in the back garden that I've not knowingly seen before, although all are common and no doubt previously ignored/overlooked. I was too busy (couldn't be bothered) to look critically at a few snails and slugs that came out during the recent wet weather, but I suspect a few of them might be new. With the total creeping up to ...

I've added a page to this blog, called 'Beddington birds'. Not surprisingly this is a list of the bird species recorded at the world famous sewage farm, with my own personal list highlighted in red. There are four birders who have seen over 200 species there, which is no mean feat for a London sewage farm. You will find some top class rarities among them - Glaucous-winged Gull and Killdeer being the stand-outs. However, there is still no record of Slavonian Grebe or Nightjar. One or two others, that were easily seen when I first trod the paths, are now gone - Grey Partridge and Willow Tit - maybe to never return. Patch watching is, of course, more than a list. Blogger pages become too difficult to manipulate if they have too much data loaded onto them, otherwise I would bombard you with further Beddington info.

With a self-imposed target of my pan-species list reaching 3000 by the end of the year, and currently falling a little bit short, I decided to target mosses. I've got the book to help me and a fine book it is to (Atherton, Bosanquet and Lawley). The trouble is, there are so many of the pesky things and a lot of them look the same. With a brave face and after giving myself a good speaking to (to inject enthusiasm and conviction into my doubting self) I entered the field yesterday to give them (another) go. Well. After time spent at Beddington and Walton Heath, I added the grand total of....none. I tried. I really did. But I couldn't in all honesty confidently name anything. My mosses and liverworts list will remain low for some time to come I'm afraid. I did add a few fungi to the list (which now stands at 2951). It's touch and go if I get to the magic figure before the year's end. I've also got the Dobson lichen guide. There are thousands of possibilities ...

I recently visited Rye Harbour Nature Reserve on the East Sussex coast, within a couple of gull's wing flaps from the Kent border. There have been great things happening at Rye. What used to be Rye Harbour Farm is slowly being turned into saltmarsh , capable of supporting breeding and roosting birds. This is part of a grand 50-year plan called the 'Romney Marshes Living Landscape Partnership'. What is being constructed is an almost unbroken mosaic of wetland habitat stretching from Hastings in the west through to New Romney in the east, taking in Pett, Icklesham, Rye, Walland and Romney Marshes, Dungeness and Lade. Really exciting times. When I was staying at Sandwich Bay back in June, I was similarly impressed by local plans for turning a large area of Worth Marshes back into exactly that - marshes. This would created a similar run of habitat all the way back westwards along the Stour Valley to Canterbury. When I was wandering around the newly created paths at Rye, whi...

I couldn't resist it any longer - after having read so much about the delights of Ebernoe Common on Graeme Lyon's excellent blog  I decided to go along and take a look for myself. I persuaded my old mate Gordon Hay to come along for the experience. Neither of us are fungi experts, but on arrival headed straight for the churchyard where I knew an easy to identify species should be present. It was, but just the one... Pink Waxcap! I was pleased with that. We wandered around for a couple of hours and saw, amongst others, Dead Moll's Fingers, Brown Birch Bolete, Tawny Funnel, Field Blewit, Chanterelle, Powdery Brittlegill and Poisonpie. The more familiar Fly Agaric, Lilac Bonnet and yellow Stagshorn were also on show. A number of fungi photographers were also combing the area, on of whom reckoned that the numbers present were very poor due to the dry weather. We were not disappointed with what we had seen however. After this we went onto Pulborough Brooks (2 Ruff) and ...

The thin slither of silver that you can see in the centre of the picture above is the sea. No big deal to you, maybe, but to me this was one of those golden moments. I was standing in Surrey and I could see the sea! There was something about that which was rather special. Squint as I might, but I couldn't make out any seabird passage, although it was a bit hazy. Also the 30 mile distance may not have helped. I think the gap in the South Downs that allows us Surreyites to get a salty sea view is where the River Adur empties itself into the Channel at Shoreham. But I maybe wrong. Where was I? Leith Hill.

This is Colley Hill, on the North Downs. We are facing eastwards and that's Reigate nestling down like the sleepy little leafy town that it is. The scarp and bowl look far more dramatic in real life than it does in a photograph - the perspective and vertiginous slopes have the life squeezed out of them. The North Downs is a different beast to the South Downs. The latter appear wilder, more remote and grander. Both are of similar height, although because the adjacent land is already pretty high, the North Downs does not give the impression of being as lofty as that southern bit of chalk. Having plenty of cloaking woodland also adds a softness to the north. Back to Colley Hill. I have spent a lot of time here over the years. It is a place of family walks and picnics and also one that I do venture onto for plants (Meadow Clary!), butterflies (good numbers of Silver-spotted Skippers) and birds... well, when I say birds I really mean in expectation of them. To me it...

This is a Stinkhorn, one of the more phallic looking fungi. No doubt this sort of species was covered up by Victorian naturalists to save the honour of any passing women. Mind you, if it does remind you of a penis, and you are a man, I suggest that you make an appointment with your doctor urgently and get yours checked out. They are supposed to smell to such an extent that you can detect their whereabouts with your nostrils before your eyes have a chance to do so. I bent down to sniff the tip of this particular specimen (I did feel a bit perverted doing so) and can reveal that it was sickly sweet. All this eroticism was taking place at Thundry Meadows, a Surrey Wildlife Trust reserve close to Elstead. It is an interesting reserve of Alder Carr, grassland and mixed woodland along a stretch of the River Wey. The picture below is looking across the river away from the reserve. Pretty... I carried on afterwards to Thursley Common. In glorious weather and with a mere breeze, ...

Thankyou all for coming along to this, the first North Downs and Beyond AGM. It's been just over a year now since the blog was relaunched, and visitor numbers have never been higher. No doubt this is due to the high standard of posting that the readers receive. if I can... Hold on! Aren't we getting high numbers of hits purely down to a number of 'odd' sites sending traffic this way? Er, I ... Sites like Google Correction, Shineads and SendPTP? Ok, yes. I'll admit it. 400-600 hits a day was quite a shock. The best previous day was 300, but they were genuine. But it's normally aroung 70-100 isn't it? Yes. But all's not lost. The blog that sent the largest volume of traffic to this particular blog was always Not Quite Scilly and they've opened again. That should bump the numbers up again, just you wait and see! But it's not just about numbers is it. And we've got some things to address, haven't we? Have we? Yes, like the c...

The Dryad's Saddle (above), was found in Nonsuch Park, Cheam, this afternoon. It's a much better specimen than the one I saw yesterday in Banstead Woods. A small child could easily sit on it (although I wouldn't recommend it as they would fall straight through it). I'm getting quite excited by fungiat the moment and seem to spend far more time looking on the ground for them than anything else natural history related at the moment.

 Oyster Mushroom Dryad's Saddle Porcelain Fungus All of the fungi pictured above were found on fallen trees in Banstead Woods. There was only a single Dryad's Saddle, and a small amount of Oyster Mushroom, but the Porcelain Fungus was quite common and varied enormously in shape, from long-stalked bonnets to the flat slippery plates pictured above.

Another morning, and another bleary-eyed one courtesy of more Rugby World Cup. The moth trap was a little livelier than yesterday, but the Green-brindled Crescent (above) was the only species that got a brief 'ahhh' from me as I turned the egg boxes over. In an attempt to get to 3,000 before the year's end (I've left it too late I think), I wandered around the garden and added no fewer than three species (courtesy of slugs and snails). All common, and all overlooked by me as I've basically never looked at them before. My fellow pan-listers must despair of my efforts... I reckon there are quite a few more to be had in my humble plot. As I was doing this, three noisy Crossbills flew over.

No Crimson Speckled, Flame Brocade or Ni Moth... instead just 3 macros on a coldish night. They were Silver Y, Brown-spot Pinion and the ever-welcome Merveille du Jour (above). Pan-listing was not ignored as   I was able to string/identify Lepthyphantes minutus , a common spider. What with Redwings flying overhead yesterday and a distinct chilliness in the air, it was without doubt autumnal. But hold on ... apparently it's going to be 70 degrees F tomorrow - get those shorts and suncream out again!

http://notquitescilly.blogspot.com/ He just cannot keep away. Welcome back.

Well, Blogger finally caught up with me. I was taken to a 'correction centre' and made to realise that I could no longer go under the guise of a naturalist if I persisted in my ways. I was made to watch ALL previous episodes of Springwatch and Autumnwatch to re-establish a relationship with British wildlife. I wasn't keen at first, but they had ways of making me (see picture above). After that I was sent out into the wild and told to write down what I saw and have all sightings verified by a celebrity naturalist who officiates in such ocassions. I felt that Miss Humble was rather harsh in rejecting my claim of an overflying Sandhill Crane. She did, however, allow my Loch Ness Monster - I bet that's one that even Jonty Denton hasn't seen! I've got the next fortnight off of work, so will hope - in between bouts of watching the Rugby World Cup and decorating - to get out into the field ... you never know, I might just blog about it.

Blogger today stepped in to close down ‘North Downs and beyond’ ahead of an investigation into claims that Steve Gale, the site’s owner, is a complete sham. For several months now, regular visitors to the blog have been noticing that there is little original content. ‘We rarely read about what he has actually seen’, claims Graham James from Merstham, ‘all we get is stream of half-baked ideas and lists that a five-year old could have put together.’  Somebody from in the north-east, but who wishes to remain anonymous, was quoted as saying that he’d ‘given up visiting the site ages ago’ and that this had freed up his time to ‘give Bunty more regular walks’. Mark Telfer,  holder of the key to the kingdom of Panlistia and patron saint to White Prominents was relieved that an investigation was under way, as he had harboured doubts as to Steve’s suitability as a pan-lister. ‘He never seems to go out, and suspiciously adds exactly the same species to his list just after a cer...

A post that has no scientific value at all and is just about pointless opinion and league tables. I love 'em... Bird song, bird calls and miscellaneous other bird-made noises are as big a part of the birding experience as looking at the blighters. I started to work out what my favourite UK sounds were in this avian cacophany and even put them in order. I'd like to share them with you. However, before I start honorable mention must be made to those species that didn't quite make the top ten but were in the running. A churring Nightjar instantly brings to mind balmy evenings spent on Surrey heaths; Turtle Doves are stunning lookers already, but add to that the drowsy purr of a singing bird and you could drift off into a warm doze; crisp mornings or foggy afternoons during the colder months are always enlivened by the chuckle overhead of a Fieldfare . But none of them made the final cut. The following, in reverse order, did: 10 BRAMBLING That nasal call coming from a mi...

I might be a bit previous in claiming this, but apart from the finding of larvae it seems as if Beddington Sewage Farm is home to a population of Dewick's Plusia. Several weeks ago Peter Alfrey, whose home borders the farm, had a moth of this species fly into a lit room at a time of little migrant activity. This has been followed by his recording of several more since. Today Johnny Allan found an adult at rest on vegetation close to the birder's hide. A hunt, at the right time, for larvae will be made. Foodplants include Common Nettle, Yarrow and Chamomile. It will be interesting to see how far and quickly this population will spread.

A couple of bird species that have recently turned up in neighbouring Sussex have made me question my birding motives. Both Pallid Harrier and Long-toed Stint would be British lifers. Neither are more than an hours drive. Would I like to see them? Yes, I would. Have I been to see them or even seriously consider going to see them? No I haven't. Then why not? Distance is not an issue. Time and money is not an issue either. I know where to go. I was reading on-line directions to both birds and a familiar wave of nausea washed over me... it's the people that puts me off, and by that I mean the birders. I'd better explain... Both sites where the rarities are/were have finite parking facilities, so immediately there will be a free for all to get those places. Early arrivals will bag them. There will then be an assortment of sympathetic parking and antisocial parking away from those places. The procession of the green clad hordes (first weekend for both since identification ...

I'm sure that most of you have a natural history themed library of books, barging those of your partner or kids out of the way to be in full view for the admiring hoardes to inspect. Sod the gardening and cookery books, make way for the latest New Naturalist!! Send the P D James collection into the cupboard, I want all of my south American field guides on show (in descending order of height, spines all aligned...) Do you stand back and admire them? Do you proudly look on as another new tome shines out from the others, promising hours of dipping into? Do you also recognise those that are showing their age or are in distress due to active service? FADED SPINES My New Naturalist volume on British Thrushes that I purchased on publication in the late 1970s has faded to a ghost image of its original state. The reds are now a pale apricot and the thrush illustration is a vague sketch made in a see-through pencil as opposed to the robust blackness that the art...