4,000

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, -plant and -lepidoptera can be blamed on Graeme Lyon's recent publication (reviewed here). He has inflated my enthusiasm of 'all things pan' and made me renew my efforts to reach that magical 4,000 species total. I have added close to 40 species over the past 10 days. With four days pencilled in next week to be spent searching out the local wildlife I reckon that by this time next week I may well have reached it.

By the way, the image above is of the fly Conops vesicularis one of my recent additions. A smart beast and one that would have bypassed me had it not been for such meanderings around the nether regions of our wonderful wildlife.

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