Sunday, 29 January 2012

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!

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