NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

Dryad's Saddle Yesterday I had the bright idea of spring-cleaning (or should that be autumn-cleaning) my Pan-species list (PSL). If you want to find out more about this PSL madness have a look here.  My PSL 'career' has been one of bursts of enthusiasm, followed by troughs of neglect, but the list has always been steadily maintained even if not actively pursued. Even before Mark Telfer launched the PSL initiative, I had already been keeping such a list (all taxa species personally recorded in the UK), and it was a pleasant surprise to find out that others were also doing so. My Top Ten listing in the first 'league' table was a false dawn as I soon started to fall down the ladder as others joined in  - many of them professional ecologists. Even now, hovering around 40th position, is not a true reflection on who has seen what in the UK, as I know of many naturalists who have recorded far more than I but who do not appear. I do not keep an all-encompassing database of ...

My last post, on the subject of listing, has certainly caused a bit of a stir - it has become one the most visited posts on ND&B of the year, and apart from the comments left on the blog itself has also drawn some private correspondence on Twitter and email. Thank you all for adding to the debate. I had better come clean. A lot of the last post was written tongue-in-cheek with a large dollop of Devil’s advocate thrown in for good measure. I’m not suggesting that listing is futile. I do keep lists, and lots of them. But rather than chase them I just maintain them. They are not the reason why I go out into the field, I do not do so to seek out another tick, but if one comes along then it adds a bit of excitement to proceedings. My lists are just handy places to manage my observations, a tidying mechanism, aide memoirs, and a bit of fun. I doubt that even the biggest supporter of listing would disagree that if you take listing to extremes it can cause problems. I know of relations...

Back in 1975 I purchased a medium sized hard-backed notebook, narrow feint of line and blue of colour. It became my 'book of lists'. One such list was my bird species total for each year. Across an open spread I drew columns, each a centimetre wide, and after allowing for a generous space in which to write the bird species name, there were 26 columns - the first being for that current year, 1975. I was 16 at the time, and all of those blank columns represented to me a vast period of time - they would take me up to the year 2000, which sounded back then like a construct of science fiction, and the year in which I would celebrate my 42nd birthday. It was so far away that it really didn't warrant any thought at all. They were just there. The years slowly passed, and they then picked up speed as they do when you grow older. Life happened. I left college. I started a career. I got married. We had children. And shortly before those columns were due to be finally filled, I becam...

Chinese Pond Heron... Dalmatian Pelican... and now Purple Gallinule (or Swamphen, if you prefer). These are all birds that have 'arrived' in the UK, whose identification is beyond doubt, and yet whose credentials have (or are) being questioned. "Can we count them?" "Are they wild?" "Where are they kept in captivity?" "Do they breed ferally on mainland Europe?" All perfectly good questions that are asked whenever a 'contentious' species turns up. It's funny how certain species, some screaming rarities, do not elicit any such responses. Mainly passerines, waders and seabirds. They presumably pass some sort of 'acceptance filter', an unwritten and unacknowledged component wired into most birders' brains. The same cannot be said for wildfowl... But back to the Purple Gallinule/Swamphen. This is a species that does get caught in the 'acceptance filter'. It's not a species that is considered a w...

Only a couple of posts ago  I laid bare my Dungeness bird list on the back of my reconnection with the shingle peninsula. Although there have been 'Dungeness ticks' that I could have gone for in recent months, they have either not been terribly rare or highly mobile. So there really hasn't been the need or the opportunity to do so. Listing can be a corrosive infliction. If taken too seriously you can become irrational, tetchy and ultimately unfulfilled. It's all OK when the listing behaves itself, and you connect with all the possible targets, in that case life is brilliant. But when you dip, things can go dark. I wondered how I would react when a real stonker turned up at Dungeness. Well, at 10.00hrs this morning I found out... "Dungeness mega. Empidonax Flycatcher at the fishing boats now. Showing well" That little gem of information appeared on Twitter via Martin Casemore. I took it all in with more than a little wonder and a feeling of pleasure for the...

After all of the ornithological highs that I've bombarded you with regarding my time spent at Dungeness, time for a few lows... they did exist! Dungeness Jan-Dec 1986 This year has been something of a non-event at Dungeness both ornithologically and socially. I’ve put the time in but little has been on offer – hardly any rarities (with the exception of a Collared Pratincole in June), few falls and it’s hard to look back with any satisfaction over the last 12 months. It’s had its moments – a January day when a teeming mass of gulls on the patch included two Glaucous and an immaculate Iceland; two spring male Ortolan Buntings; confiding autumnal Red-backed Shrike and Wryneck; and a vocal flyover Snow Bunting that somehow captured my imagination and elevated its status beyond its true worth on a sedate November morning, but…there has been a sense of doing things by numbers this year. For example, visiting the pits in January with a role-call of wintering species to ‘tick-off’ t...

This morning, on the Rare Birds of Britain and Ireland Facebook group, Simon Smethurst pointed out  that, although certain species can become our bogey birds (with frequent dips), there are others that we cannot but help connecting with. He has seen three different Green Herons in the UK. What rare multiples do others have, he asked? The response was revealing: Multiple American Robins, Yellow-browed Buntings, Mourning Doves, Scop's Owls, Alder Flycatchers, American Redstarts, Yellow-billed Cuckoos, Thick-billed Warblers, Tengmalm's Owls (that's just being greedy, Martin Gray!) and - I had to mention them again - my two WALLCREEPERS... I then posed the question, if these birds could be traded like football cards and stickers, what would I be offered for my spare Wallcreeper? The best offer came from Martin Goodey, who upped his initial offer of a spare Scarlet Tanager to also include a Cliff Swallow and a Northern Waterthrush. I'd be tempted! How did he know I needed...

"It's all about the list" I have heard this little gem from many birders over the years. At times I've even agreed with it. But age has mellowed me. A list is just a number and that number is meaningless. It really is. What is your British bird list? How many species of butterfly have you seen in your home county? And what of orchids? If you know the exact numbers (which I'm sure many of you do), does that make you a better person than somebody with fewer? A higher number doesn't even suggest somebody with more experience or more knowledge. It is, after all, just a number. A bit of fun. My time spent in the field is increasingly one of enjoyment in marvelling at what I come across. I get more pleasure in seeing something on my doorstep than I do a proper rarity miles away. It's a good place to be. Pan-listing, rather than being at odds with this, actually helps my state of mind. It's enough to come across a beetle, realise it's a click beet...

Spotted Rock Rose - I've only seen it on Jersey, SO HANDS OFF!!! There's been a bit of a Twitter discussion this evening, between a few of the Surrey/Middlesex based birders, on where it is permissible for you to count a bird tick, as regards your British/UK/GB list. Simply put:  The British Isles are England, Wales, Scotland, Eire, Northern Ireland, Isle of Man and the Channel Islands The United Kingdom is England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland only.  Great Britain is England Wales and Scotland only. The correct answer is, of course, you can count what you want, where you want. A list based on political divisions is an area that has been carved up over the centuries and will always be in a state of flux - imagine having been a big Yugoslavian lister before the country shattered into many pieces. I bet they wept when they had to start again. I have a bit of a mish-mash as to my wildlife recording areas: My pathetic bird list is a UK one (although ...

Some people are surprised that my UK bird list is so modest. It currently stands at 376 which, considering I've been an active birder since 1974, is pretty mediocre. My attempts to chase a list (and actively twitch) were limited to the late 1970s and early 1980s, with brief spurts of enthusiasm since (but these spurts really were brief, believe me). I hit the 300 mark in 1981. I thought my march to 400 was just a matter of time. Not thirty-odd years worth of time. I've become reconciled to the fact that, if I continue gathering lifers at my current rate, I will never reach 400. I'm not worried by that at all. The last bird I truly twitched was a drake Canvasback at Dungeness. The year? 2000. So that means that I haven't gone for a bird for over thirteen years. I have had the odd tick however - a couple of Scottish lifers on botanical forays, a few armchair splits and a White-tailed Plover that happened to turn up at Dungeness while I was there. So, why did I abandon...

I like lists. No, I’ll rephrase that, I love lists. Lots of them reside in my notebooks, on my computer hard disks, inked onto printed pages. Most of them are bird-centric, such as life lists (for the World and every country that I’ve visited), county lists, lists for each month, record counts for each species, earliest and latest dates for migrants. I could go on – OK, I will – patch lists, birds seen in the hand, birds seen dead, birds seen copulating, birds seen defecating (the last two kept when I was a very strange teenager), birds seen on TV – I’ll stop now. I’ve yet to mention my lists for plants, moths, dragonflies, fungi... and, of course,   the ultimate list of lists, the pan-species list. If you are shaking your head in pity at such juvenile behaviour, I understand. But there is one aspect of my listing that other listers just don’t understand. I don’t chase my lists. I am a compiler of them, a keeper and maintainer of them but I do not enjoy having to drop e...

This post is nothing but a round-up of the bits and pieces that are currently in orbit within my head at the moment. So expect the cerebral equivalent of 'carpet sweepings'... Micro-moth field guide . The latest issue of British Wildlife lets slip that 'The Field Guide to the Micro-moths of Great Britain and Ireland' is coming soon! No publication date as yet, but the wording suggests that it will be soon. The team behind it includes Phil Sterling, Mark Parsons and Richard Lewington. Can't wait! Pan-species. At the start of the year I swore that I would leave mosses alone. I've been out in the field a few times and have come across luxurious banks of mosses that look so, so inviting. I'm weakening. I actually want to start on them in earnest. I've got the field guide. I've got a hand lens. I've got small plastic bages to collect them in. Watch this space. Other blogs. I'm going through a bout of blog envy at the moment. It seems to ...

Graham Lyons posed the following question in his latest post - could he tick a potted Red-headed Chestnut on show at a moth group meeting? He suggested not and for what it's worth I agree with him. However, it opens up a dilemma attached to any listing that we might get involved in, and that is one of having clear rules to what we can - and cannot - count on a list. I have two rules for listing. The first is that I can count whatever I want to on my closed, private list. Rule two is that if I keep a competitive list, where other peoples lists are also taken into consideration, then I need to abide by the rules of that particular group. For example, the Beddington Birders maintain a league table of birds seen on the site. On this list I have not included Common Redpoll, because when I saw my only Beddington sighting in 1980 I did not submit it, so it was never formally accepted. Only formally accepted records c...

Stewart Sexton alerted me, via his ever readable blog , to this Birdwatch post regarding the new British Ornithological Union species splits. He can celebrate the addition of two 'armchair' ticks whereas I can only put out the bunting (no pun inteneded) for just the one - Siberian Stonechat. My first was a stunning male that was present on St.Mary's, Isles of Scilly, in October 1979. If memory serves me right, I had just jumped off a boat that had been to St. Agnes (where we had queued to watch a Blyth's Reed Warbler that was, in fact, a Marsh). The second was an immature bird at Spurn, East Yorkshire in October 1985 of which I was a co-finder. We are currently enjoying an era of 'splitterdom', where adding to your British life list while sitting in an armchair is becoming a regular event. Hooded Crow, Water Pipit, Common Redpoll, Yellow-legged Gull, Caspian Gull and the like have all been greedily gobbled up by the birding fraternity - and if you are a big...

This pan-species listing lark (no pun intended) can seriously wreck your natural history 'blueprint'. When I 'only' looked at birds, I was, without any complications, a birder. Identification of what I saw was a fairly straightforward matter and the literature needed to take on the more complicated species was both accessible and plentiful. When I turned my attention to lepidoptera, butterflies were few (and obvious) and moths - as long as I took a circuitous path around the micros - was once again aided by clear identification guides. Even the micros were being increasingly serviced by excellent reference material on the web and in print. Botany came a little later, but I was fortunate in having an embarrasment of books to help me out with those tricky crucifers and sedges. To sum up, with a little patience I could bird, moth and botanise without the need for much head-scratching when coming up with correct identification (although there are always some exceptions....

2624 Flora: 1360 Moths: 675 Butterflies: 50 Birds: 370 Dragonflies: 33 Fungi: 23 Mammals: 32 Marine: 5 Other insects: 39 Amphibians: 5 Reptiles: 4 Fish: 17 Snails: 4 Mosses, lichens, liverworts: 6 Grasshoppers and Crickets: 1 Plenty of room for additions. Just a question of putting in the time to get up to 3000...