Adios 2019

If there's one thing you're pretty much guaranteed to find at this time of year, it's a whole bunch of wildlife bloggers churning out their Annual Review posts. Why do we do this? Are we joyfully sharing all of our good times, of the best species seen in the wildest places, of those found during our wackiest adventures? Or are we just bragging about what we achieved during the previous twelve months? Why do we write down anything at all, I wonder.

I blog far too infrequently nowadays (you may disagree...) and often only when I've found something unexpected (bragging), when I get stuck trying to identify something and work my way through the keying process here (hopefully educational) or when I have success in a new field technique, such as leaf litter sifting for hoverfly larvae (inspiring others, maybe). 

And then there's the Annual Review itself. The highlights of the year just finished, the best bits, the proper juicy stuff. Well, if you want to see how an Annual Review really should be written up, take a look at Andy Musgrove's website, he certainly does a far better job of it than ever I could. Than most of us could, in fact, and all without a single sniff of a brag to be had, the guy is a legend!   

But back to me........ 

In 2019 I managed 381 lifers, ending the year with a PSL of 5756 species. 

In 2018 I managed a huge 518 lifers. 2017 added 354 species and 2016 added 258 species. 

The result being that in the last four years I have added a smidge over 1500 lifers (bragging!) though less than two thirds of them were self-found/identified (the simple truth).

2019 was supposed to be my Bugs, Beetles & Flies Year. By concentrating my natural history efforts on these three groups, I planned to develop a greater confidence, skill and understanding of each. Well....

I quickly discovered the truth of what I'd long suspected - that I'm really not at all interested in bugs. In 2019 I managed a paltry 29 hemipteran lifers, twenty nine! Appalling, up from 199 to 228 - that's just crap. If a workable Mirid key ever comes along, I may get into bugs. Maybe (but only once I've exhausted absolutely everything else, ha!)

However, I did manage 95 new beetles in 2019 and gained a greater familiarity with others I have seen before. That may sound quietly impressive, but the truth is that over half of the 95 were seen in a few short days spent in the company of grandmaster coleopterist Mark 'The Tree Tonker' Telfer. In reality all I did was hold on for the ride. But I have made my own slow progress, in fits and starts, leaps and bounds. I'm no longer phased at attempting to card 1.5mm beetles. It's definitely something I've still to master, but I'm improving nonetheless. And yeah, I'm now carding everything, rather than pinning. I've arranged my storeboxes so that the families run in systematic order. They may still resemble the crazed workings of a lunatic mind, but they're not as bad as they once were. 

But my biggest surprise was the flies. I really enjoyed keying through selected families - the calliphorids, syrphids, sepsids, bibionids, scatophagids and stratiomyids for starters. Standing beside sunlit logs, tree trunks and walls waiting for sunning flies to gather in the weak spring sunlight was one of my highlights in 2019. Swiping through a dancing cloud of 'winter gnats' on a still, sunny morning will be one of my first highlights in 2020. Trichocera, now there's a genus I plan to explore next year, one of many! 

My other success of 2019 were the plants. Of my 20 bryophyte ticks, I think 19 were shown to me by Nick 'Mossman Chronicles' Hodgetts. Definitely acres of room for improvement there! But I had a far higher success rate with the vascular plants. I added 45 higher plants to my PSL in 2019, a fair few being self-found with most of the rest being pointed out by the inexhaustible Stephen 'Indiana Jones of the North' Bungard. I've now seen over 1300 species of vascular plants in Britain. I doubt I'll attain anything approaching 1400 in 2020, not unless I spend the entire summer/autumn touring the south of England, but it will be fun trying to get that little bit closer. 

Way back in 2017, I planned a month-by-month blow of the forthcoming year in natural history. I mentioned then that only an injury or a love interest could jeopardise my plans. In the end, those plans failed for many reasons, though injury was not one of them. A little over three months ago now, I find that love has finally re-entered my life. Neither of us are entirely certain where we are heading, Skye could become a fast-disappearing blur in the rearview mirror or it could be our home for years to come, we simply just don't know. 

So for now I have several goals in mind for 2020; get into plants properly now that the square-bashing for Atlas 2020 is over - keying, pressing, learning grasses and sedges, seeking out high altitude stuff and twitching selected rares. Continue improving my keying and carding of beetles, try new sampling techniques and become more competent in beetle family recognition. Catch a shedload more flies than I did in 2019, key every single one of them to family, and to species where I have access to a key. And most importantly of all, spend time with the Princess of Armadaleshire. PSL is a huge part of my life, there's no changing that, it always has been and it always will be. But love is stronger, my love for Lisa and her love for me, that will be what defines 2020 for me.

I have one more post left in this year, but if I miss saying it before you next read this - I hope 2019 was a great year for you and that 2020 will surpass it in unexpected and delightful ways.