Chris: In the Beginning was The List

“The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field.”*

Did being able to name the deer we saw resting in Macclesfield Forest on New Year’s Day add to the thrill of seeing them? Undoubtedly. And I think most of our small walking party was quite interested to know that these were Red deer, living wild in a small group of young males, a powerful living organism resolved and clarified from an otherwise generic mush of ‘deer’.

Was the sight of a female lesser-spotted woodpecker foraging at the foot of a tree trunk sharpened by knowing it was the first I’d seen clearly after more than two years of searching in vain, and the irony of it being one day too late to count as a 2011 tick? Absolutely. Two red grouse squatting on the moor’s edge made better by them being the first I’d ever seen? Undisputedly. (We got incredibly wet in the half hour that followed. Note to readers: horizontal hail and exposed 400-500m open moorland is even less fun than it sounds and put a literal dampener on the rest of the day’s listing.)

We list to make things known. Because it’s good to know what they are: it enhances pleasure at a sighting, and aids in conservation of the very things you’re enjoying. It’s very hard to protect biodiversity if you don’t have a clue what it’s made up of locally, and therefore, how it might work. We list because it helps you to become a better natural historian and ecologist, which we trust will eventually lead to excellent careers all round.

We list because it helps you to sit up and pay attention – especially in this early part of the year, no bird or beast will be allowed to go ignored and slip by if it could be named and ticked. (Though I’m of the opinion that poking at plants and peering at insects can mostly wait until the weather warms a little.) But most of all, we list because we’re geeks. Hopeless, infatuated, spreadsheet-creating geeks. We just can’t help ourselves – we see things, list them, and declare them to be good.

Keep watching this space and, with any luck, see our lists grow.  

*Genesis 2:20a, NRSV