Sally - A BioBlitzing we will go...

“The time has come”, the Blogger mused,

“To write of many things:

Of bugs – and bees – and butterflies –

Of harvestmen – and – fleas

And why the weather’s up the spout –

And what to have for tea.”

(With apologies to Lewis Carroll)

Hello my little blog-friend, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?  I do hope you and the family are keeping well.  Eek, what to write – or perhaps that should be ‘how to write’, given the number of mistakes I’m making as I type.  But…  less of my personal failings and hang-ups - on with the job-in-hand.

In the land of BioListing, recording and the generally wonderful-but-perhaps-a-little-bit-nerdy world in which I’ve chosen to live, the past few months have been dominated by BioBlitzes – 24-hour events during which a given space is surveyed in order to find, identify and record as many wild species as possible*.

The first such event was the inaugural Tremough Bioblitz, which took place at the Combined Universities in Cornwall Tremough Campus in Penryn, and was admirably organised by University of Exeter Centre for Ecology & Conservation undergraduates.   A highly organised event, which was open to the public for only some of the 24 hours, as a so-called ‘expert’, I’d been enlisted to lead a number of walks.  Despite the best-laid plans, these turned into just the one walk, with the remainder of the time spent going about the usual business of wandering around, rummaging here, there and everywhere, with senses on full alert.   Disappointingly, the weather left a little to be desired, so it was definitely a case of nipping outside between downpours.  It was all a rather hectic yet fun experience, with some new species to add to the list: aphids, millipedes and plants, and some lovely new people met.  And, needless to say, one of the additional highlights of the event was the presence of a certain Nick Baker…

The Small Person with Nick Baker at Tremough BioBlitz

Next up was the third Rosewarne BioBlitz – a thoroughly enjoyable low-key event at Duchy College, Rosewarne near Camborne, where the usual suspects (plus a handful of extras) were on hand to get stuck into the job of seeking out all things wild and wonderful that reside on the extensive college site.  For once, the sun was shining, and we really couldn’t have asked for a nicer day, encompassing some inspirational botanising, dragonfly- and butterfly-pursuing antics in the wildlife garden, a relaxed sojourn by the wildlife pond, a group venture to the site’s outer limits, and some frantic moth-recording by means of a light and white sheet.  Highlights are too numerous to list in full but include the first ever Common Lizards Zootoca vivipara for the site, some lovely bugs, and some rather comical Screech Beetles Hygrobia hermanni.

Common Lizard Zootoca vivipara at Rosewarne BioBlitz

Then, the weekend of July 21-22 saw another inaugural event – the Garden BioBlitz: http://www.naturewatched.org/gbb.html  A combination of very little notice and having prior commitments meant that I was unable to give this the level of attention that I would have liked to.  However, on the Saturday, I did manage to spend a couple of (very hot) hours in my tiny, tiny jungle before being whisked away to experience the joys of Lafrowda Day in St. Just in the far, far west (as opposed to simply the far west), whilst on the Sunday, a far more concerted effort was made in fellow BioLister Brenda’s larger outdoor space.

What it lacks in area, our little garden certainly makes up for in species diversity, so despite only managing a couple of hours of investigating, all manner of goodies were uncovered.  Having a certain inclination towards the smaller, multi-legged creatures of this world, I took great delight in observing multiple colonies of five different aphid species, one of which was new to me: Cavariella pastinacae – found busy at work on the Parsnip plants leftover from last year’s vegetable-growing efforts.  Other new species included a single Lacehopper Cixius nervosus, a vast quantity of mines on Aquilegia produced by the dipteran larvae Phytomyza minuscula, and a previously-unnoticed rust Puccinia pulverulenta on the omnipresent Broad-leaved Willowherb Epilobium montanum.

Macrosiphum rosae on Teasel Dipsacus fullonum Garden BioBlitz

Blitzing Brenda’s garden proved to be equally (if not more) rewarding, perhaps notably due to the excitement of finding a thriving population of the Pittosporum psyllid Trioza vitreoradiata, hanging out, rather appropriately on Pittosporum bushes.  Admittedly, psyllids aren’t or wouldn’t be everybody’s cup of tea but each to their own, I guess!  In addition to my rather lovely psyllid, I was able to add another new bug to my list, this time a late instar Field Damsel Bug Nabis ferus, which was merrily wandering around Brenda’s mini-meadow, as were Common Green Capsids Lygocoris pabulinus and a good number of bouncy Common Froghoppers Philaenus spumarius.

A few unidentified odds and ends (mainly spiders and flies) notwithstanding, nearly 80 species were recorded for my little garden and about 150 for Brenda’s – not a bad weekend’s work, especially considering we had no moth trap to hand and lacked the time to have a really hardcore rummage in the undergrowth, let alone a decent delve into the soily depths.  Who knows how many more species we might have unearthed!

Common Frog(let) Rana temporaria Garden BioBlitz

Then, a mere week later, it was time for the long-awaited Windmill Farm BioBliz, when BioList members and other interested parties got together to do their stuff at Windmill Farm Nature Reserve (CWT/CBWPS) on the Lizard, here in Cornwall.  As others have already produced event retrospectives (see: http://wfarmnaturereserve.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/bioblitzed.html and http://consideringbirds.wordpress.com/2012/07/31/big-bioblitz-weekend-part-1/ et al.), I’ll try not to whitter on at length (I know, don’t hold your breath!).

So, the sun was shining, the tent was packed, some strange cakes had been made, and off we headed to Lizard Land, with Brenda in tow.  Itching to get started, we unloaded our stuff and took up residence in what was to be our home for the weekend.  It wasn’t long before other participants turned up, although the Up Country component didn’t make it for about another hour, and at 2pm, it was time to get started.  But where to begin?  I’d been eyeing up the nearby large patch of nettles and thistles, so for me it was easy, even if it did mean losing my starting companions, who headed off across a field towards one of the ponds/scrapes.  However, my nettle-poking efforts were soon interrupted by Warden-Andy and the invitation to accompany him in checking the known Adder Vipera berus sites.  How could I resist such an offer?!  After being rewarded with the find of several Adders (all female) enjoying the warmth provided by sheets of corrugated material, I was drawn to the allure of the dragonfly pond around the corner, whereupon I was greeted by the sight of Dragonfly-Steve thigh-deep in the water, busy collecting dragonfly and damselfly exuviae, which must have numbered in their hundreds.  Rather reluctantly, I managed to tear myself away from the dragonfly pond and all its glistening winged jewels, and headed off to the remarkably dry wet woodland, via a meadow alive with grasshoppers, butterflies and all manner of buzzing insects.

A Froghopper Neophilaenus lineatus Windmill Farm BioBlitz

Now, BioBlitzing certainly takes its toll, and after totting up a good number of species, reuniting with lost companions and greeting friends from afar, it was time to head back for a breather and to sort out notes, sort out unidentified finds, and generally recompose oneself. 

After a continuation of much of the same, mainly involving sweeping through vegetation, turning over leaves and beating trees, it wasn’t soon before the sun began to set (rather beautifully) and talk turned rather animatedly, to moth-traps.  I’m not entirely sure how many moth-traps were put in place around the site that evening but they numbered at least five.  Some rather intrepid BioBlitzers spent most of the night in the vicinity of one particular trap, interspersed with the odd 40 winks every now and again, in an attempt to record moths that decided to drop in for a passing visit only.  Despite protestations of low night-time temperatures and moth numbers being low generally, come the morning, there was a good variety of furry, winged beasties on which to feast our eyes.

Drinker Euthrix potatoria Windmill Farm BioBlitz

Then it was back out there in an effort to up numbers before our 24 hours were up.  All-in-all, an excellent time seemed to be had by all (even if I did spend the next couple of days prostrate on the settee, hurting from head to toe), with 400+ species being recorded.  The big question is, when and where will the next one be?  Bring it on, I say!

*For some general info on BioBlitzes, take a look here: http://www.bnhc.org.uk/home/bioblitz/

Chris: A Modest Garden Bioblitz

A typically blurry addition to the day's list, sat on our garden wall.

I only heard about the 2012 Garden Bioblitz via twitter last week – the medium by which modern naturalists now learn everything, it seems. But I shouldn’t have been surprised that unbeknownst to me, one of our number was involved in organising the event.  We’re a diverse, interesting bunch, I like to think. And I suppose that’s the only excuse I can offer for this blog not exactly taking off*:  that we’re too busy ferreting away at the myriad other things Biolisters are involved in, from blitzes to PhDs to the most dedicated amateur wildlife recording work you could imagine. And I can say that without being immodest, because thus far my own recording is of a much more limited and haphazard nature.

When I do pop up here and contribute a post it’s normally because I’ve had a sudden revelation about the wonders of a species group I’d hardly considered before, or because of inspirational events like Garden Bioblitz.

Inspirational why? Well, listing everything is no mean undertaking, as I’m sure I’ve pointed out. One couldn’t hope to build a good set of records cobbled together from chance sightings, photographs, and vague memories, but that’s essentially what I’ve been doing, most of the year. Like I said, haphazard. Where my listing has profited is when I dedicate an hour or three to really searching for things, identifying as I go where possible, and getting as many notes and pictures together as possible. The Garden Bioblitz (do visit its website) is basically a well-organised excuse to do so, with the added bonus of lots of other people doing it at the same time.

So I kitted up – sunhat, camera, binoculars, pen and paper and field guides to insects and flowering plants all stowed in my ‘man-bag’ – and headed out into the wilds of our shared garden. “You look like you’re going on an expedition,” my wife told me. And of course, I was. Because looking, and I mean really looking at the unsung, retiring stars of your garden’s wildlife will almost guarantee you a feeling of adventure and discovery. Simply by thinking to check the large bank of tall daisies next to where I usually just park my car, I saw my first ruby-tailed wasp, an astounding confection of metallic pink, green and blue. I have absolutely no idea what the spider below is, but it’s also not bad looking, and I’m looking forward to attempting to find out roughly what it is. 

Ok, I don’t have that many more examples. A lack of knowledge of what is a fairly limited garden, a lack of patience with intransigent flighty bees and hoverflies, and the distinct lack of juice in my camera battery combined to give me a fairly modest total of around 40 species.** I’m still working on the identity of many of them.  But the experience of putting together an ‘ordered’ list was invaluable. The few species which were new to me are now, hopefully, stored in my mental catalogue so that I’ll recognise them in future.   

And lastly, it’s renewed my determination to persevere with my overall year lists and coax them into some sort of order, at least by Christmas. At which point I’ll be well placed to start over and do the whole thing properly next time. Biolist 2013, anyone?

*For more regular biolisting inspiration – more often referred to in the wider wildlife watching  world as pan-listing, I understand – I’d suggest following the Talking Naturally team’s efforts on their blog, or the pan-species listing pages on Mark Telfer’s website. At least one individual has seen over 10,000 species in the UK, which is quite frankly ridiculous!

**I’ve seen most impressive scores of 176 and 146 from other Biolisters, and I hope I can coax them onto the blog with some nice words about some of them (pictures too, if we’re lucky!).

The Lesser of Two

Wildlife. Brilliant, isn’t it? Making lists – also brilliant. So what’s not to like about the concept of listing everything one sees in a year, whether it flies, crawls, bounds, squirms, or inches? Or maybe even sashays? Not much, I’d still say, with one large caveat – one quickly gets out of one’s depth.

Now, with birds, I’m OK. I’m a bird fan, I’ve liked birds for a long time, I generally know what something is the moment I get a good look. Even if it’s something I’ve never seen before: if I half expected to ever see one, I’ll hopefully have done my research and know what ID features to look for. Butterflies, too, are just about OK, with a slightly heavier reliance on the field guide. There aren’t so many to get to grips with, they’re brightly coloured, and if they stay still, you can generally get a photograph to refer to later.

However, move on to something less familiar, and I’m soon floundering. Take weevils for example. (Or leave them, if you prefer.) Until a few years ago, I’m not even sure I knew how to recognise a weevil. Now, I do. Although, saying that, all I can tell you about how to do so without cheating is that they are the beetles with the preposterous proboscises. Apart from these two brownish weevils below which don’t have particularly funny noses – yet I still look at them and think ‘huh, weevils’. Why they are weevils is a technical definition I should probably look up*, but one thing I can say for Bio-Listing is that it’s at least doing wonders for my ‘what order/family?’ skills.  

Still, I had a go at these two, and after a bit of internet digging and flicking through the ever excellent Chinery (Insects of Britain and Western Europe – highly recommended as an entomological jumping off point**) I concluded that the one on the left is probably in the Polydrusus  genus, and that the one perched on my van’s windscreen on the right is, despite looking very similar, actually a pea weevil.***

So weevil identification is possible. But, apart from myself, who have I just helped? The presence of one pea weevil along one hedgerow in Kent is of little biological relevance by itself. My records need to be plugged into the national network to be of any use, and ideally, to have been collected in a more rigorous, systematic fashion. That’s the direction our group is nudging each other in, and many of us are already submitting vast amounts of high quality data, often concerning organisms I know even less about than I do weevils – marine organisms, for example. It’s a whole other world.

But there are so many things to look at, and so much is new to me, I still find all the animal and plant groups distract from each other too much to have a concerted go at any one, birds aside. This was to have been the year of moths – but during the warm dry spell (now a distant memory) I got distracted by bees, wasps and wildflowers, then flies, a brief flirtation with the year’s first few butterflies, a side-step briefly into moths, my original intention, then lately back to plants in general. And bees again. And now weevils. Or spiders. Or the beautiful, bright orange fungus I saw this morning. One day, I’ll either settle down to just a few groups – knowing everything is probably a bit too much to ask. A master of biodiversity – now, wouldn’t that be something?

*”A weevil is any beetle from the Curculionoidea superfamily.” – Thanks, Wikipedia! But why is a weevil a weevil?!

** Available here, though you may want to wait until September for the new edition – the old one is likely to prove pricey until then. Neither Michael Chinery nor his publisher pays me any commission, by the way!

**Without keys for each order, I usually struggle to do so well, and end up feeling more like one of the three incompetent entomologists. See no weevil, catch no weevil, ID no weevil…

Bird Tracking

When listing is more than just an indulgence

This ‘Bio Listing’ lark. Birding. Mammal spotting. Botanising. Whatever it is you do. It’s all just a jolly, right? A bit of fun, a competition: a bunch of geeks, showing off what we know. Maybe so, though it’s not like there’s anything wrong with enjoying yourself. Everybody is out for a good time: who can blame us?

But luckily for our consciences (and our egos), it just so happens that you can make (wait for the pun) your listing count. Oh yes. There are ways without end to share your biological records with somebody else who would like to know, and perhaps even with a scientist who will crunch the numbers and make some sense of it all. From big, annual projects like the Big Garden Birdwatch or Big Butterfly Count, or the less well known Moth Night, to year-round efforts such as BTO’s Garden Birdwatch or, indeed, recording schemes for any organism you could care to imagine, which I’ve no doubt would welcome ‘amateur’ records : see http://www.brc.ac.uk/recording_schemes.asp.

These might be familiar. I’m sure all are worth your involvement. But plug of the day is for the increasingly excellent Bird Track site, run by the BTO. I don’t use it nearly as often as that excellence deserves. Used well, it not only makes use of your birding but will give back – encouraging you to go out and bird even more, especially at local sites that may be under watched by others. The ‘Explore my Records’ feature enables you to see your sightings portrayed on a table, graph or map, filtered by date, location or species, and export data to a spreadsheet. You can compare year lists, generate graphs that show a species’ recording rate changing through the year, view spring arrival dates for swallows and other seasonal indicators. And all those records from thousands of birders, taken together, makes for an enormously useful data set that, as the name suggests, tracks birds in real time.

I should be making the most of its wonders – and if you bird, so should you. So let’s resolve together to make 2012 the year of Bird Tracking. I’ll be aiming to submit at least three complete lists a week (when you enter every species you saw at a particular site, along with start and end times to give an indication of effort – the most useful records for analysis), which will blow my previous recording rates out of the water. And coming back full circle, will lead to an awful lot of pleasing graph- and map-based opportunities for bird-nerdery by the end of the year. Win-win!

Confessions Of A Bird Watcher

“Hello everybody. My name is Richard Smedley and I…am a birdwatcher!”

It’s funny how every time I say it to different people it comes out slightly different yet the reaction I get is almost always the same…

“Oh”

Then closely followed with…

“What’s your favourite bird?”

I’ll reply the way I always do, something along the lines of “They are all my favourites”. Each and every one has something different about them that I find interesting. I don’t know what it is about our feathered friends which capture my amazement in such a way. Even as a simple passive birdwatcher I would find myself staring at them in utter awe as they fly and swoop over my head. Parrots started me on the road to inevitable active bird watching. The colours, shapes and sizes. In my final years of primary school, we had to prepare a 3 minute talk on a subject of our choice and present it to our peers. Once a year, mine would be on birds. Just trying to share my knowledge and love and to show people that these weren’t just things, they were amazing and beautiful creatures. A feeling I still have now, maybe stronger than ever.

Last year I was presented with a question:

“What don’t you like?”

This was a master’s level question and at that stage in my life I really should have a pet hate. But my mind went blank. What don’t I like? Well right up there are bank managers and the Inland Revenue but I hardly thought that was the type of answer required. I hate it when I misjudge a corner and stub my toe, but again, not really what I was searching for.

“Nothing” I exclaimed. “I think everything is great and what I don’t particularly like is more down to my uneducated view of it rather than not liking it. If anything, I dislike my lack of knowledge on all matters and can grow to like pretty much anything if I was shown it and told about it…”

“Bollocks!” was the reply and the next victim of this enquiry was chosen.

But is that not true? Does anyone love something, truly feel inspired by something, that they don’t know? And does a little bit of knowledge not thrust us forward to try and get more? When they asked Neil Armstrong what the moon was like, he didn’t say “Kind of floaty” and NASA left it there. They kept sending people up. I feel it is within our nature to want to gain and understand more…

So it is with that growth and adventurous spirit that I decided to have a go at Biolist 2012! I thought that with additional knowledge and guidance from a group of like minded and very interesting people that I would pick up a few hints and tips on the world around me. The only real big challenge ahead of me…I now reside in another country. Not only do I have to learn about all these new and exciting beasties but I have to learn them for over here. The worse thing of all though is this…even the people over here don’t fully know what they are!!

I’m now spending a considerable amount of time in rice fields, so I can pick up things here and there. But ultimately the rest of the country is unexplored. A recent ecological survey of rainforest in the Southern Island of Mindanao found over 10 previously undiscovered species, including 3 new species of bird!! The reason they found these was because they looked.

Readers of my blog will know that on the two occasions I have gone up mountains whilst here I have found some incredibly rare birds! No one is that lucky by chance. I have also been lucky enough to see wild macaques and, upon telling my fellow researchers today, was not believed. They have not been seen up the mountain for a long time, I must have been mistaken. But I wasn’t. I recognise non-birds to a certain degree of accuracy. That and I wasn’t alone in this rare spot.

What I am trying to say, in my own roundabout kind of way, is that I am trying to spot new things. I am trying to learn about the creepy crawlies and the things that fall off of trees and suck your blood. In fact I found myself particularly interested in a type of spider the other day. These are all, in my own view, a very positive step forward in noticing the world around me, no matter how small.

But at this very moment in time, my eyes are to the skies. The guides for the avian life in the area are vague and a mere suggestion of what could be found and where. So I am starting with what I am familiar with. I’m trying to learn the birds and hopefully pass this knowledge on in the future. Like my primary school attending self, I am trying to show people in 3 minutes what birds I have found; but now I also emphasize the importance of good agricultural practice for both conservation of biodiversity and food security. I think I know how I will start…

“Hello everybody. My name is Richard Smedley and I…am a birdwatcher!”

My name is Richard Smedley and I am a PhD student investigating Avian Biodiversity within Rice fields of South East Asia with the University of Reading and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). I am currently based in the Philippines. You can follow my blog of adventures at www.ricebirder.wordpress.com

This blog was kindly uploaded by Chris Foster (Hat Birder). Thanks boss.

The uses of Bio-listing #432

I’m irresistible to insects. More specifically, the flesh-piercing, blood-sucking kind. They love me and want to be near me, or at least find me a convenient source of a good meal. I’m afraid the feeling is not mutual – insects are fascinating, wonderful, often beautiful creatures, but not when they’re eating me. So here’s a use for Bio Listing I hadn’t thought of before this week: figuring out whether or not I can sleep easily in my bed. A sinister, dangerous-looking mosquito-type thing had settled on the bedroom wall, ominously close to my pillows, but a quick glance through Chinery (the insect field guide of choice) suggested it was a non-biting midge. I looked at the little creature in a new light, and considered that his dark fluffy antenna and jaunty posture were not so threatening after all.

Elsewhere I’m starting to pick up on more things that aren’t birds. My mammal list is now formatted and up to a whole six species. Six! Heady stuff. I remembered to identify the catkin I bought home from a walk the other day (hazel, which I should have figured out from the tree it came from), and I’m slowly remembering some of the other, easier trees and starting to assemble a tree list. Oh, and I saw a fish. I’ve put it down as a brown trout, of which I’m fairly certain – sleek, streamlined nose, lightly spotted, zipping under a bridge near the mouth of Hampshire’s River Test.  Which is so good for fly fishing that even US presidents have tried their hand here: it’s a beautiful river, although consequentially this means large stretches of its banks are private and sadly out of bounds to the bio-listing likes of me. 

This morning I’ve been taking part in an altogether larger listing enterprise, the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch.* If you’ve not yet taken an hour to see what visits your garden, I recommend it, and you still have until dark today. I almost always see something new for my garden (goldcrest one year, siskin the next), as it’s rare for me to gaze out the window for quite that long a spell, although I’m not sure I’ve yet watched the same garden more than once. What a nomadic lifestyle I’ve been leading. If you’re reading this too late, well, never fear, the RSPB recently initiated a summer version in July, with more than just birds on the menu. Or why not take up watching the garden regularly? Bedroom walls, rivers, gardens, a patch of weeds growing up through a crack in the pavement – there’s nowhere you can’t Bio List. 

*Full rundown to come at Considering Birds (link). You lucky, lucky people!