Eype SY 44 91, first 2018 visit

I spent 5 hours yesterday walking the beach and various footpaths of the square. In total I recorded 104 species which was a fairly good start to the year by my standards.
Totals were; Higher plants 70, Bryrophytes 4, Lichens 6, Birds 22 and mammals 2.

Although I have walked around the square many times over the years I have previously only recorded birds and higher plants in it. This has made it a bit difficult to project species group targets for the square but the following table is my attempt at doing so.

Group	2018 target
Algae	5
Lichens	30
Fungi	100
Bryrophytes	15
Plants	250
Molluscs	40
Annelid worms	10
Arachnids	30
Myriapods	5
Crustacea	10
Odonata	5
Orthoptera	10
Hemiptera	50
Hymenoptera	40
Coleoptera	80
Diptera	50
Butterflies	20
Moths	150
Other insects	5
Fish	5
Amphibia	1
Reptiles	1
Birds	80
Mammals	5
Totals	1002

Skye - Under Rocks

Managed to add new species every day of the year so far. Highlights have been regular sightings of an Iceland Gull at the beach, joined a couple of days ago by a Glaucous Gull - both self-found and sucessfully twitched by several Skye birders. There's a Black Guillemot that is already in quite an advanced state of moult. No sign of any mammals at all yet, apart from human. Buzzard has gone from being almost always in sight to remarkably elusive in the space of a week. I've had just a single sighting so far, a dusk flyby. 

Today I went to the beach, spun quite a few boulders and cobbles and found a few nice bits

Strigamia maritima being photobombed by an Aepus marinus

Both of these air-breathing animals are to be found beneath rocks that are entirely submerged at high tide, surviving in tiny air pockets until the water recedes once more. Quite an incredible niche! 

I headed into the woods and continued turning over boulders, finding a really nice selection of inverts

Kontikia andersoni - a non-native terrestrial flatworm

Microplana terrestris - this terrestrial flatworm is a native species

Microplana scharffi - another native terrestrial flatworm, with Anurida springtails, maybe???

Geophilus alpinus (insculptus) - Uig Wood is still the only known site on Skye for these!

Cylindroiulus punctatus - I think I disturbed its beauty sleep

I have another six species to find by end of play tomorrow, then I'll be quarter of the way to the 1000 in the opening week. Not that it's a race, but that'd be really rather satisfying on a purely personal level.

Dalgety Bay, Fife - 140

Investigated a new piece of territory today by way of Ross Plantation. This is a nice wet woodland with alders and a lot of Rhodedendron (boo!) which has a nice burn (Scots for brook/stream) running through it before becoming marshy boggy bulrushy loveliness. A nice change of pace from last year where fresh water was at a premium.

Should be over 150 by end of play today once I've named a few bits and pieces from pots and boxes.Starting to look semi-respectable with a target of 250 by end January

Ross Plantation - woodland west of the bay

Dalgety Bay, NT1683

New Year, New Square!

Still in Dalgety Bay, but this time including my house for easier recording. In theory. The square includes the actual bay of Dalgety Bay which is good for birds but cuts off a bit of marine and migrants because it's slightly more inland. That's not ideal. Already found some new species to me (Spotted Medick, a chironomid whose name I've forgotten for the moment)

87 species so far with not much effort. Still hopeful for a better January total than last year.

Also since I want to use the same blog I've renamed it. So now it's here...

Dalgety Bay Nature

Anyway, that'll do by way of introduction. I'm still recovering from yesterday's mega Humpback Whale sighting.

Happy New Year!
Ali

bird		28
chromist		1
fern		1
flowering plant		27
fungus		2
insect - moth		1
insect - true bug (Hemiptera)		1
insect - true fly (Diptera)		3
lichen		7
liverwort		4
marine mammal		1
moss		8
springtail (Collembola)		2
terrestrial mammal		2

Yeovil, first day back

First day back at work and a brief look round the square totalled 86 species.
Mammals 3, Birds 22, Higher plants 43, Fungi 3, Bryrophytes 1, lichen 11 and fungi 3.
Could of added enough higher plants in the vegetative state to get over 100 but prefer to count them when flowering. As Ali says what's the rush!

Anyway its a start.

Due to the lack of daylight at this time of the year visits to my other square SY 44 91 will have to wait until the weekend. This square is centred around the small village of Eype, near Bridport, DORSET. I hope to update on this square and post my targets for the year this week-end.

Skye - Hello 2018

Yup, I'm here again for another crack at the madness!

I'm going to cheat and simply whack up a link to my own blog, I need to be at work in a few minutes (no rest for the wicked...) but I won't be making a habit of throwing out links in this fashion.

Managed to drum up 171 species on 1st January, nothing particularly unexpected yet, nothing that I didn't record in 2017. But give it time!

Here's a pic of Neobisium carcinoides, found sheltering on the underside of a stone in a wall

ROAAARRRR!!!!!! What a cracking wee beast!

Anyway, read about it on my blog here.

Need some more folks to join up, though! C'mon guys, what you all waiting for? 

Yeovil end of year summary

One last update for 2017 for the Yeovil ST52 17  square. The following table shows my targets for the square (set in January, these were on the safe-side and I mostly made all of them), the actual result (which gives 634 as the final tally) and my targets for 2018. So if I can attain most of the targets I should actually get to 1000 for the square in 2018. We shall see!

Secondly I hope that a few more people will give the challenge a go next year. Its not about topping the table (ask a Rochdale fan - longest non-winning streak in the football league, 107 years and counting!) but it really does challenge you to look harder and to try and understand more about wildlife. This year I added 522 species to my total UK Pan Species List of which 94 came from this square. (that is, nearly a fifth of all my total UK lifers for the year came from one very ordinary 1km square - amazing!)

Finally I plan to continue with this square, which is near where I work, next year. I also plan to do a different square nearer to where I live but plan to post details about that square later.

Happy New Year to all who took part

Group	2017 target	2017 result	2018 target
Lichens	5	14	30
Fungi	50	42	110
Bryrophytes	10	5	20
Plants	150	226	250
Molluscs	10	10	30
Annelid worms	5	3	10
Arachnids	10	13	30
Myriapods	0	2	10
Crustacea	5	2	10
Odonata	9	12	12
Orthoptera	10	5	10
Hemiptera	10	18	40
Hymenoptera	30	27	40
Coleoptera	50	25	50
Diptera	50	33	50
Butterflies	10	17	17
Moths	70	103	200
Other insects	2	3	10
Fish	1	1	1
Amphibia	3	3	3
Birds	61	61	61
Mammals	10	9	9
Totals	566	634	1003

Skye - Slimy Velvet

There's a whole week left of the year, so I'm just going to keep on and see how far I get. I'm working throughout, even on xmas day itself but will have my usual couple of random days off before the year is up. 

These stunners have suddenly started appearing on logs and fallen branches, seems quite incongruous after seeing nothing but micro-fungi, candlesnuff, crusts and the odd bit of Yellow Brain for the past few weeks. Then BANG these big beauties appear, seemingly out of nowhere and in late December too!

Flammulina velutipes - Velvet Shank

I didn't have a clue as to what they were (not very good with macro fungi...) but I had help from a reader of my blog who named them for me. Turns out they're common up here, common everywhere really, I just haven't noticed them before.

So, that's 1001 for the Challenge with hopefully a few more to come too.

1000 for Skye!

Well, I took my own sweet time but have finally managed to arrive at the thousand species mark. Phew! In the end it came down to two moths that I'd somehow neglected to add to the list (realised that just yesterday) and the 1000th species being a freshwater snail that I found today, hiding amongst a water-weed sample that I'd brought indoors to inspect for micro-algae. It's a pretty grim pic, but please may I present to you Species 1000.... Jenkin's Spire Shell!!!!

Potamopyrgus antipodarum aka Jenkin's Spire Shell

Here's the breakdown as per PSL categories, with the totals alongside the numbers I projected at the start of the year. As can be seen, I was pretty close on some but a long way off the mark with others!

Algae - 45 species (25 predicted) 33 lifers!
Slime Moulds - 2 species (2 predicted) 1 lifer

Protists - 1 species (5 predicted) 1 lifer, it being my very first protist

Lichens - 55 species (60 predicted) 16 lifers

Fungi - 96 species (50 predicted) 37 lifers
Bryophytes - 55 species (60 predicted) 22 lifers

Vascular plants - 273 species (140 predicted) 19 lifers
Sponges - 1 species (2 predicted)
Cnidarians - 3 species (5 predicted)

Molluscs - 40 species (50 predicted) 8 lifers
Bryozoans - 8 species (8 predicted) 2 lifers
Annelids - 9 species (15 predicted) 4 lifers
Platyhelminths - 6 species (7 predicted) 2 lifers
Arachnids - 26 species (20 predicted) 4 lifers
Myriapods - 12 species (15 predicted) 2 lifers

Crustaceans - 10 species (20 predicted) 1 lifer

Springtails - 4 species (4 predicted) 1 lifer
Bristletails - 1 species (1 predicted)

Odonata - 1 species (3 predicted)

Orthoptera - 1 species (4 predicted)

Hemiptera - 22 species (45 predicted) 11 lifers

Hymenoptera - 12 species (40 predicted) 10 lifers

Coleoptera - 37 species (70 predicted) 19 lifers
Diptera - 62 species (60 predicted) 32 lifers
Butterflies - 5 species (6 predicted)
Moths - 93 species (140 predicted - assuming use of a light-trap, which I didn't have) 12 lifers
Other Insects - eg Lacewings 1, Stoneflies 3, Caddisflies 1 = 5 species (20 predicted) 4 lifers
Echinoderms - 1 species (4 predicted)
Tunicates - 0 species (4 predicted)
Fish - 7 species (10 predicted) 2 lifers

Amphibians - 1 species (2 predicted)

Reptiles - 0 species (2 predicted)

Birds - 94 species (90 predicted)

Mammals - 10 species (10 predicted)

Others (Nemerteans) - 1 species (1 predicted)

Biggest gains have been algae and plants, largest losses have been seashore stuff and hemiptera, hymenoptera and coleoptera. I find it quite staggering that one solitary Common Frog sums up the entire herp activity that I've encountered this year, just one species of dragonfly seen and absolutely no grasshoppers/crickets whatsoever! The sole orthopteroid encountered was Common Earwig. However, I have had some truly blinding species up here. I'm really not complaining at all, just remarking.

Of the 1000 species recorded up to 19th December, 243 have been lifers. One in every four, roughly. That too I find quite staggering, though in a very pleasing way.

Anyway, the year ain't over yet folks. Ali, you better pull yer finger out or I'll leave you behind before New Years' arrives!

I've resumed blogging again, check out my Skye's the Limit blog for fuller details of recent sightings and shenanigans. It looks likely that I'll be doing this craziness again in 2018, should anybody care to join me............. :)

Dalgety Bay, fife - gnats

A couple of fungus gnats I pulled off their pins (and, sadly, apart) which had been languishing since September. Both came up trumps - Boletina nitida (which I misidentified and was corrected!) and Mycetophila unitotata. Both, it goes without saying, are new to me.

I'll keep on at this site and see whether it can make 2000. I already have a bunch from last year, including another fungus gnat which is probably new to Scotland but was taken in 2016 (Megophthalmidia crassicornis).

Only 9 to go for Seth now. Come on!

Boletina nitida

Mycetophila unitotata

Mycetophila unitotata - ID features!

Numbers:

1016	Boletina nitida	A fungus gnat
1017	Mycetophila uninotata	A fungus gnat