NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

‘ Pan Species Listing - How to Become a Super-naturalist’ has recently been published by Pelagic and is authored by Graeme Lyons. Regular visitors to ND&B will be familiar with Graeme as his blog appears in my blog list (found to the left) and he has featured on these very pages more than once. I think that I can safely refer to Graeme as a friend as we have spent time in the field together on several occasions (including some one-to-one sessions) and have conversed on subjects beyond those of natural history. I was therefore more than intrigued to find out what form his book on the subject would take. When he told me that he had been commissioned to write it I assumed that it would be mainly about his personal journey - I was wrong. Having now read the book and lived with it for a few weeks I feel in a position to review it. Putting it simply, it is a book that all naturalists should invest in whether they are a pan-species lister or not. It might only be late March but I feel co...

One of the 114 - the striking and migratory hoverfly Helophilus trivittatus Last Sunday's field trip to Chipstead Bottom with Graeme Lyons produced a (provisional) total of 200 species. Of these I had not seen 114 of them - these comprising Bees (6), Ants (4), Wasps (3), Spiders (25), Beetles (20), Flies (9), Harvestmen (3), Bugs (24), Hoppers (5), Millipedes (1), Midges (1), Snails (5), Lacewings (2), Grasshoppers (1), Pseudoscorpions (1) and Springtails (2). It came as no surprise to me that there were so many 'lifers' as I rarely look at these groups and certainly do not possess the knowledge or patience of a professional field ecologist. As an aside, I still maintain my Pan-species list, although I rarely chase it. Recently Mark 'Skev' Skevington and I have been enjoying a friendly rivalry as we keep hopping over each other in the league table, but it is a bit of fun with a blunt competitive edge. I did, however, feel a tad guilty at adding such a substan...