NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

Climate change - the massive Elephant in the room. As a lifelong champion of the natural world, my awareness of what is happening to our wildlife and the climate is finely tuned. By actively seeking out information on these subjects, by following fellow champions on social media and being able to formulate some kind of considered opinion from these sources, I am in a good position to have a handle on 'what is going on'. And as such it can be baffling to look around at my fellow man (women are also available) and witness a complete apathy, nay ignorance, as to the situation that is before us. Historically high temperatures. Sudden, violent flash floods. Desertification. Out of control fires. Melting glaciers and permafrost. Disappearing ice-caps. Crop failures. Collapse in invertebrate and mammal populations. Species extinctions. The creation of more economic refugees and of populations on the move where they were least expected to need to be moving. All this was the doom-monger...

There was a time when I would post with wild abandon on this blog, sometimes 200+ posts a year - admittedly, some of these posts would not pass a quality control filter but never the less it was an enjoyable process to come up with a subject matter, gather together a few words, select an image or two and send the whole package off into cyberspace. I was lucky enough to have a loyal band of visitors, many of whom would leave comments which sometimes created their own threads, some of these becoming a virtual game of tennis where words rather than balls would be metaphorically knocked back and forth over a net. Traffic to the blog was, as times, very healthy indeed, and although I was never in this blogging lark for the numbers game it was quite humbling to know that what was being created had an audience. Things started to quieten down a couple of years ago. The first sign of my partial withdrawal was to close down of the ability for visitors to comment. This was a result of an increasi...

When I first started to take an interest in moths over 40 years ago, there were certain species that appeared to me wrapped in myth and awe - I would stare at the colour plates in my two volumes of 'South' and wonder if I would ever be fortunate enough to see them - the pairing of Dark Crimson and Light Crimson Underwings were amongst them. Both of these species were large beasts, whose hidden underwings displayed shocks of red. Part of their allure rested in the fact that they were rare residents, the only chance of discovery being if you visited the New Forest after dark, and even then only if you were privy to local knowledge. They seemed to come more readily to tree trunks that had been 'sugared', a dark art that involved the lepidopterist painting a strip of liquid concocted with all sorts of wondrous provisions - black treacle, beer, brown sugar - with such recipes being closely guarded secrets. I had visions of being lead blindfold down a forest clearing at midni...

When I was growing up there was a common question - in real life and on the TV - that was asked of older relatives and family friends, and that was "What did you do in the war?" It would not surprise me if future generations have their own version of this, that along the lines of "What did you do during the climate crisis?" And, if you are going to be asked that question, what do you think your answer will be? Most people, sad to say, are not really interested in the drivers of climate change. They might be nudged into some sort of response when something directly affects them - the shops run out of ice cream and cold drinks if it's too hot; their fence gets blown down when it's too windy; or there's a hosepipe ban because it's too dry. When these irritations stop (which, at the moment, they do) all talk of a climate crisis is then relegated to media chatter, becoming just a background noise to be ignored alongside Brexit, boats crossing the channel ...

Most people who run a moth trap in their garden will have a list of species that they believe will 'one day' come and visit them. After 36 years of switching on the MV here in Banstead quite a few of these have come to pass. Last night another species joined them. Red-necked Footman is quite a striking creature - slim winged, coal black, save for a reddish-orange collar and abdomen. It has undergone a range expansion in the UK in recent years and is considered, at times, also an immigrant. With a recent influx of moths from the continent this could be a part of that immigration. This is the 648th species of moth recorded in the garden, with 411 of those being macros. The hot weather is due to continue for a few days yet. With quite a few migrant moths wandering southern England at the moment there will still be a chance to pull out a prize in this lepidopteran lucky dip.

The project came about when I was considering a day trip to Wiltshire to try and find some elusive day-flying moths. My intended targets included The Forester and Scarce Forester. I had already recorded Cistus Forester, but those other two species had defied several attempts to see them. They differ little in appearance and identification is down to minuscule size-differences and the tip of the antennae. The more I thought about it the more ridiculous it seemed to me that I was considering a 200-mile round trip to try and find almost identical moths to one that I had seen before. Admittedly, there would have been more to such a trip than Forester moths, but it got me thinking. I do like a project, something to hang my observations on, to give my time in the field some sort of added meaning beyond just random enjoyment. In light of many things - climate change, low-carbon footprint, biodiversity collapse - I am increasingly questioning what I do and how I do it, particularly how I condu...

On May 3rd I put on my walking boots, opened the front door, and ventured out into the (almost) dawn. It was 03.45hrs and the start of a carefully planned circuitous birding walk. The aims were simple really, to see what could be found across a large swathe of the Uberpatch. I wasn't expecting much, as the 'properly' birdy areas of my extended patch (Beddington and Holmethorpe) were not being visited, as these areas are well covered by others, and I have perversely taken it upon myself to travel on 'those roads less birded'. It would be fair for others to question why any sane birder would remove themselves from such proven honeypots, and I'd largely agree, but we all get our ornithological kicks in different ways, and the older I get the more left-field they have become. Call it self-denial, self-harming or just plain stupid, but to me these 'forgotten' patches can - an do - spring surprises. Just not all that regularly. To cut a long story short - a 34...