OK, OK so it's been a long time since I updated my list and I've had a couple of 1KSQers ask me "what's happened, have you quit?" Nope, I definitely haven't quit. Lots has happened, I'm finding it difficult to even get to my square since moving house a couple of months ago and my day's off work seem to be filled with chores rather than seeing me running gleefully through the square swooshing my net at anything that moves and searching for leafmines (a pet fave of mine. Nobody ever said I was normal, lol!)
I've managed just two short forays into TQ1960 this past month and have been stunned at how quickly the bracken and brambles have blocked my previously uninhibited access through the wooded areas. Flowering plants seem thinner on the ground than they should be, umbellifer heads seem to be mostly lacking the usual assemblages of feeding insects and dodging mums with prams and yappy dogs is getting harder and harder now the weather has improved. My one big regret is not having a moth trap, a single good session could easily leapfrog me forward a hundred odd species. Ho hum
Enough bitching though, I've had plenty of new species for the list, and quite a few new for my lifelist too. Undoubted highlight was a flyover Red Kite, not amazingly rare in Surrey nowadays but one I've been long anticipating over my patch and it didn't disappoint!!! My 124th species of bird for Epsom Common, not bad for a patch of inland secondary woodland with a lake.
Additions are 10 beetles (4 lifers), 1 bird, 6 bugs (2 lifers), 3 butterflies, 9 flies (3 lifers), 1 fungus (lifer), 1 liverwort, 1 mite, 16 moths, 1 grasshopper, 4 plants (1 lifer) and 2 spiders (both lifers).
My current total now stands at 703 species. I'm aiming to hit 800 by the end of the month. Right, best get back out there and find some more stuff....
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