NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

So, 'scientists' reckon that the total number of species to be found on earth is likely to be close to 8.7 million. Whilst idly chatting to Steve Thomas at Beddington this morning, he speculated on how long it would take to see them all. Needless to say, that would be an impossible task. However, if you could be presented with each species, one at a time, for a thirty second peek (this taking place for a twelve hour period each day, seven days a week), it will take almost 17 years to see the lot - (1,440 per day, 525,600 per year). This is what birders do in idle moments...

So, you fancy broadening your natural history horizons. You've spent many happy days in the company of birds and as a by product of this have taken notice of the butterflies and dragonflies that you see buzzing around. Moths are a natural progression and of course you start to take an interest in their food plants, so you add botany to your wildlife arsenal. And now it all gets a bit tricky. I have started (and stopped) and started again to look at other things. Hoverflies. Fungi. Mosses and liverworts. Spiders. The truth is, they just aren't like the other families that I have studied. For a start, there are not fully comprehensive field guides to guide you through the species that you will find. You will be given a firm push towards which family or genus that the organism before you belongs to, but to be confident of identifying it to species level - well, that will now involve complicated keys (which are either obscure or a devil to use), microscopes and a dictionary (to fin...