December 2014

In December, the television schedules start being padded out with lots of ‘review of the year’ shows, so I’m going to do a quick review of my year.  In April, I set myself a task to record as many species as possible in our own small patch of garden.  As if that wasn’t hard enough, I didn’t want to record anything that I couldn’t photograph – not just for the challenge of doing it, but so that as many as possible could be verified by experts.

Red Wasp - Vespula rufa

As you may be aware, the average garden will contain or be visited by thousands of different species during the year but I have recorded only a fraction of that.  There are many reasons for this, one of the main ones is that wildlife doesn’t generally pose for the camera.  I would have recorded the pair of black redstarts that appeared in the garden a couple of weeks ago.  On 3 occasions they gave me time to get the camera ready, but not enough time to click the shutter, or even frame the shot.  Black redstarts are easy to identify, but a number of small warblers passed through the garden on their way to Africa and even if I was quick enough with the camera, my twitching skills probably wouldn’t have been up to identifying them.  Even things I could identify, like the orange-tip butterfly that I chased round the garden, never landed, so no photograph.  The identification problem means that many groups of species haven’t been recorded.  I know that there are several species of earthworm in the garden, and it would be nice to know which species predominate – I have a book that would help with identification, but it would take a week to study it, and more time digging up worms and I just didn’t get round to it.  There are more subtle reasons that some have escaped identification.  I have recorded about 230 species of moth.  In the main they are easy to identify, but there are several groups that entomologists call gen. det. jobs.  These, in common with many other insects require genital examination to be certain of their species, and that means killing the insect which I wouldn’t do just to satisfy my curiosity.

Another reason for not identifying or photographing species is that they are far too small.  The majority of insect species are less than 3mm long. I would need a good microscope even to see one clearly, and there aren’t many field guides that include anything as small as that.  And I haven’t any chance at all of identifying any of the thousands of species of microbes and fungi that help us with the compost and the fertility of the vegetable patch.

14-spot Ladybird - Propylea quattuordecimpunctata

So having told you a lot of reasons for not recording species, what did I manage to record?  The list includes 231 moths, of which 57 are micro-moths, 12 butterflies, 13 beetles, of which 5 were ladybirds, 7 bumblebees, 3 social wasps, 2 solitary wasps,3 dragonflies, 2 woodlice, 4 spiders, 2 mammals – a rabbit and a brown rat, (the vole and mouse are still unidentified), 60 plants (non-cultivars) of which 4 were grasses, 3 grasshoppers or crickets, 10 hoverflies, 10 shield bugs or capsid bugs, 15 birds, and one species each of slugs, earwigs, harvestmen, robber flies, scorpion flies, sawflies and mayflies.  If my arithmetic is correct (unlikely!) that makes a total of 384 species. 

All the numbers above refer to species and not individuals, of course.  The records have all been lodged with Sussex Wildlife Trust (SWT) using iRecord.  They are available to view, using iRecord (you will need to register with iRecord) by searching for the location ‘Glebe Cottages’.  And Sussex Wildlife Trust would be very happy for you to record your own sightings, I can recommend doing it.  iRecord can be found at www.brc.ac.uk/irecord.

Canary Grass - Phalaris canariensis

Eyed Hawkmoth - Smerinthus ocellata