NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

What do you do with all of your sightings? After you have spent a day out in the field you will return home with a notebook (possibly) and a head (certainly) full of species, numbers, places and a hundred-and-one other snippets of information. What then? We all differ at this point I’m sure. For the record I take my field notebook and make a computerised record of the day, possibly adding a bit of narrative (if the mood takes me). If I have recorded a particularly early or late date for a migrant, a high count or a ‘new’ species for a site/county, then these will be entered into another data base. If I’m involved in any survey then the records will be uploaded via the relevant software. Photographic mages that I have taken will also be sorted and filed. I try to do this on the very same day, so as not to get a backlog as much as to ensure that I remember to actually do it. I have a cupboard full of notebooks, trip reports and lists. It is a personal history of my time in the fi...

There's a lot of anger out there! Stewart , Alan and Gavin are not happy boys at all, and they represent but a small sample of the 'middle-aged blogger' out there (sorry boys, anyone over 35 years old counts in my definition of that particular demographic). It's almost a given, a universal law, that us human beings think that the younger generations get it wrong, that they don't know how well off they are, and do not hold dear such old cherished values as manners, dignity and gratefulness that we elders still clutch tightly to our chests. It's also the way of the older and more experienced practitioner to look down at the newcomers and Johnny-come-lately's as if they are in need of pity, ridicule and - even more damning - to be ignored altogether. Not everyone thinks this way, but enough do to make it far from uncommon. This is where it has all gone horribly wrong. Why should a newcomer or youngster want to follow such miserable old gits into this life of ...