NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

It was but a month ago that I suggested that staying at Dungeness Bird Observatory (DBO) might be a thing of the past for me. Seeing that I have just returned from a week’s residency at that very same establishment proves that I really do not know my a*** from my elbow… And what an enjoyable week it was. There may not have been the volume of migrants that were hoped for,  but there was rarity, there was a more than passable passage at sea, the invertebrates were forthcoming and the pleasure to be gained from meeting up with friends old and new was priceless. It will come as no surprise to even the most casual of visitors to this blog that the shingle, once again, burrowed its way deep inside of me and on more than a few occasions I found myself stopping in my tracks to take in special moments - I will try to put these moments into words, although words can rarely evoke the feelings that these jolts of joy produce. Star billing went to Dungeness’s third Iberian Chiffchaff, found sin...

I'm a great believer in living for, and in, the moment. To not worry about the where, the what or the need to put that moment down on paper, on a computer spreadsheet or manifest itself as an assemblage of pixels on a memory card. But sometimes, if you have a camera on you - and you utilise it -  you can capture that moment in a meaningful way. And a reviewing of that captured image can help you relive that moment in a far more vivid way - it isn't always the case and rarely does it happen. The following images are not necessarily pin-sharp (almost certainly not so!) but can convey, to me at least, something beyond them being but a record shot. There will be others, these being the first in a series. The captions should be self explanatory. Dungeness, Kent: in recent years the Cormorant has become a plague bird - thousands wintering on the point, roosting on the RSPB reserve and flying out to feed over the sea across Rye and Lade Bays. They have - at least to my eyes - become a...

In the spring of 1999 I was walking westwards along the North Downs Way at the base of the scarp slope, just past Juniper Hill. In the distance I could see a patch of vivid inky-blue which I assumed would be a grounded helium balloon or, less exotically, a plastic bag. As I got closer this colouration revealed itself to be a small group of large gentian flowers. They did not match anything in my botanical field guide so I took some photos and carried on walking, perplexed as to what these gentians could be. Later in the day I was able to refer to some literature - and it was Stace's second edition of his 'New Flora of the British Isles' that solved the puzzle - they were revealed as being Gentiana clusii (Trumpet Gentian)*, planted and naturalised along that very same section of the Surrey North Downs since 1960. Since then I have, on a number of occasions, revisited this clump of gentians, plus another patch (some half-a-mile further west and higher up the scarp slope) - e...

In the last post I suggested that I might be going all out to get to 4,000 species for my UK Pan-species list. This morning saw me out in the garden, holding a washing up bowl in one hand and beating Ivy and Pieris with a stick in the other. Had I gone mad? Maybe, but the result was - apart from a bit of vegetative debris - a number of invertebrates in the bowl, including several new species! All common, but it just goes to show that there is plenty of low hanging fruit literally on one's doorstep.  This afternoon I walked up to Banstead Downs with one species firmly on my radar. Local naturalist Neil had recorded several White-shouldered Shieldbugs where the Lixus iridis weevils are, and this was an invert that I was keen on seeing! However, after two hours searching I had to make do with a number of Dock Bugs, Brassica Bugs, Woundwort Shieldbugs and a single Tortoise Shieldbug. I'll be back soon. I was, however able to add a further six species to my pan-species list that has...

To be honest, that headline claim of 4,000 is not correct - 3,970 is the actual figure and that is the number of species that I have identified in the United Kingdom, my pan-species total. There are some people who will ask why I bother to count up the number of species that I have recorded, what does it mean in the grand scheme of things and my reply to that will be somewhat cryptic - it means absolutely nothing and absolutely everything in equal measure. Absolutely nothing? Just look around at the social and political landscape of the world at the moment and tell me that my seeing a new species of nomad bee this week means anything at all. Absolutely everything? Without us recording what species are present and where they occur we cannot possibly have a baseline to inform ourselves on the state of the planet's wildlife - and, as just a single species on this planet's surface we are no more important than a weevil, smut or lacewing.  My current embrace of all things non-bird, ...

One evening, many years ago, I was in a pub with work colleagues when out of the blue one of them stood up (slightly the worse for wear) and let rip in a strong, deep, Northern Irish voice: "It's alright for you feckers, you know where you come from. Me? I've got a Belgian father, a French mother, was brought up in Belfast and have lived most of my adult life in London. What does that make me? Who the feck am I?" He had a point. He didn't feel an affiliation to any one single place, let alone a country. It got me thinking, and 35 years later I still think back to that outburst and how, when I came to consider the question of belonging, realised that I too would find it hard to pin myself firmly to one spot. The more time I spent weighing up the past the stronger came the realisation that I had in fact attached myself to several. The ease with which I have done so suggests that I'm easily persuaded and that my patronage is not hard to secure. Shall we look at t...