Hello folks, welcome to my shiny new blog!
This site acts as an accompaniment to my other blog, PSL - Skye's the Limit which deals with my everyday activities as a pan-species lister living on the Isle of Skye.
The difference with this blog, is that I'm using it purely for my '2019 Challenge' (as I've just this very moment dubbed it). I'm stepping away from the fun-filled but crazy headrush that is Andy Musgrove's 1000 in a 1KSQ Challenge and focussing on just three insect orders. I say just three, but they are all huge and I'm crap at all of them - should be an interesting year!
After starting the 1KSQ Challenge on 1st January 2017, and not stopping until October 2018, I've amassed a rather sizeable species list for NG3963, my beloved monad. But scanning down through that list, I find myself baffled as to what some of them are. A what? A which? When was that then? Too many species (well over 1400) in too short a time, my head has been spinning for nearly two whole years trying to keep up with myself. Lots of the ID knowledge has been lost, forgotten or has become muddled up.
So I'm drawing a line in the sand and changing tactics. I still have an incredible desire to discover, but I have an equally incredible desire to be able to remember what I've found and to then recognise it again in the future.
The three orders I've chosen to focus on are Coleoptera (beetles), Hemiptera (bugs) and Diptera (true flies). I've seen a very low percentage of the British fauna for each of these groups, so I'm going to be doing an awful lot of learning, and undoubtedly a lot of head-scratching too.
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| Rhagio scolopaceus - the rather handsome Downlooker Snipefly |
I've set up pages for each group, which I plan to populate with photo-essays of the ID process as well as stunning images of the beasts in their habitat and a running tally of the species encountered and identified. Ha, so I best start saving up for a new camera, I've rather trashed this one.
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| Elasmucha grisea - the Parent Bug |
I expect I'll slowly start losing the plot before too long, then run screaming for the hills when everything bursts into life around May time. We'll just have to wait and see...
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| Oreodytes sanmarkii - a pair in cop, swimming in the nearby river |
