Chris - When is a tick not a tick?

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When it’s half a tick. Or a quarter. Or lots rolled into one. You see, the trouble with ecology is that it’s bound and limited, like physics, by the philosophy of science. Bear with me on this. What I mean is that reality does not consciously operate in accordance with natural laws. My Nissan Micra, as it gently disintegrates with age in the absence of an external energy source (such as an expensive mechanic), is not contemplating the second law of thermodynamics. Similarly, I somewhat doubt that the Common or Ring-necked pheasant, Phasianus colchicus, is thinking to itself ‘aha! I’m a pheasant! Not a partridge, but a pheasant!’ as it plods about its daily business of pecking, gazing about vacantly, being startled, and trying to get run over. I doubt they are thinking anything much of substance at all, in fact, but that’s just me picking on pheasants and is somewhat irrelevant to my argument. Which is, in a true and biological nutshell, that the idea of a ‘species’ is a completely made-up one. Useful, but does it actually exist? Or are the boundaries always somewhat more blurry than we’d like?

The other similarity with physics is that the more arcane corners of ecology are often comprehensible only by the experts. There’s a lovely example in the latest RSPB magazine, in which Connor Jameson writes delightfully about dance flies performing over his front lawn. But by his own admission he can’t hope to identify the actual species involved from one of the 350-plus occurring in Britain. (Truly, the mind boggles.) Perhaps the international dance fly expert could.*

That doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t have some sort of meaningful, enjoyable encounter with whatever perplexing creature is before us. But it makes setting the ‘rules’ of Biolisting somewhat tricky. I expect to identify many non-birds to family level only this year, if even that accurate. Then what? To get a grand list total, as birders like me are wont to want, do I simply add the number of invertebrate and plant families, where identification to species level was impossible, to a total number of bird species? What about subspecies, if, like last year, I see both pied and white wagtails? Or dark- and pale-bellied Brent geese? Different colour morphs of the harlequin ladybird?** Speaking of which, what about native / non-native rules for non-bird taxa? Is there a bug equivalent of the official British Birdlist, for example? A bit of a pickle. Lots to learn. Just as well this isn’t a very serious business…

*He or she must be great at parties – it would certainly make a great job title on a name badge. “Hi, my name’s Cornelius and I’m the world dance fly expert. Shall we?”

**We have most of them hibernating in our house, well, at least the orange one with lots of black dots, black ones with two red dots, and black ones with four red dots. To use the technical terms. I have been known to eject them back into the ‘wild’ via the bedroom window, though it occurred to me this might technically be in contravention of the Wildlife and Countryside Act. Oops.