The Grass is Always Greener...

It's about this time each year that I have the same old argument debate with my boss. We stand on the main lawn behind the hotel, usually upslope of the wych elms. He puts his hands in his pockets and so it begins. 

Grass is growing again, Seth. Starting to get long. 

Yup, it's really starting to look lovely again, don't you think?

Lots of daisies and buttercups everywhere, Seth. Time to dust off the ol' mower.

Lesser Celandines, not buttercups. 

Huh?

The yellow ones, they're Lesser Celandines. Do you remember me telling you that last year?

Maybe. Anyway, they need to go. And the daisies. They make the place look like a pikey site.

Mmmm. So you been to many pikey sites then, boss?

And so it goes. Luckily I'd already dug out the mower and strimmer the day before, reassembled them and made sure they were working. So today was spent making the place look less of 'a pikey site' and back into a boring, sterile, green desert. Luckily the mower blades don't lower quite far enough to completely eradicate all forms of life, and it'll recover soon enough anyway. 

Horrible overgrown pikey site to the left, barren and desolate (yet neat) to the right...

There is one obvious advantage to cutting the grass short. The resultant clippings!

The first three wheelie bins of clippings added to the old stuff

Whilst we're in indefinite lockdown, several of the live-in staff have decided to grow their own produce. They've covered an area of unused grass in cardboard boxes and are gleefully watching me fill wheelie bin after wheelie bin with clippings which they are then spreading across the cardboard. This is common practice in Poland, apparently. The cardboard kills the growth beneath then rots away whilst the clippings are used as compost as they rot down, then the veggies go in - simple! I'm hoping I get a share of the produce seeing as I'm the one carting the clippings up the hill whilst they're all furloughed in the sunshine with beers and music...

But they aren't getting the front lawn clippings, those are mine (plus I'm buggered if I'm dragging several wheelie bins' worth full of clippings from the front driveway to the staff accommodation, that's a coupla hundred metres - all uphill). Those are added to the pile in the picture above, and I'm impatiently waiting for it to start fermenting so I can start sieving it for beetles. I also have a second (and a third and a fourth, in fact) pile of clippings beneath some trees that I doubt the other staff have ever noticed before. Those will all be getting topped up with fresh stuff over the next few months and I shall be there with my sieve, tray and pooter - plus reading glasses, sadly - ready to snap up whatever I find within. Coz yeah, I'm now officially blind. The beetles I extract from the clippings are usually between 1mm and 4mm in length. I can still see them alright, even the 1mm featherwings - from about 40cm away. But I have to get in closer than that with my pooter and if they suddenly stop moving I tend to lose them in amongst the debris. It's really, really annoying, I used to have such terrific eyesight too. 

Here's a hefty beetle I sieved from the old clippings last week, one I've never seen before

Scydmaenus tarsatus - rocking in at a whopping great 2.1mm

And a couple of flies for you, both associated with those horrid 'buttercups'

A female Platycheirus albimanus - a common springtime hoverfly

A male Eristalis pertinax - another very common springtime hoverfly

And finally, a sneak preview into the nest of a Song Thrush. Last year a pair nested in the open fronted logstore next to the staff smoking area. They became very used to people walking and chatting within a couple of metres of the nest and successfully fledged two broods. This year the nest has moved maybe eight feet closer to the smoking area (they've got a nicotine habit to feed now!) and I've been keeping an eye on the birds, making sure nobody gets too close or lingers too long. Anyway, I watched the incubating bird fly off for a bathe in the nearby burn and, seeing as I had my camera in my pocket, quickly snuck in, took a few shots and hoped for the best before sneaking off again. Of the three pics taken, this was the best

Home tweet home...

The BTO have this nest record scheme which is perfect for lockdown birding. Reading through the do's and don'ts it seems that Song Thrushes are one of the species known to exhibit "exploding chicks", which essentially means that the young birds rapidly burst out of the nest, all in different directions, if a predator (or BTO volunteer) pokes their head in unexpectedly. I think these individuals will be well habituated towards humans, but obviously I still need to be careful. There's that nesting Blackbird in the woodshed too...

More mowing and strimming tomorrow, then it'll be back to the maintenance for at least a few days until those blasted 'buttercups' and daisies sprout up again. My bait trap (I have three dead mice in the bottom of a bottle trap) has so far failed to deliver the goods. Probably need to start decomposing a bit more first, they still look remarkably fresh despite being dead for over a week. Maybe I should place them in full sunlight.

THIS is the song that I'm in love with at the moment, obscure lyrics and a slightly weird video, but what a track. Hope you enjoy it! 

120 Required within 11 Weeks

So far this year, I've seen 120 species that I've never previously identified. I now have 5880 species on my British PSL. That's pretty good going, it really doesn't seem all that long ago that I recorded my 5000th species, Rock Whitebeam on Raasay. You can read the crippling account of that day here. 

So that's 120 species added this year with just 120 more to go before I hit 6000...

Rock Whitebeam Sorbus rupicola for the 5K

The required 120 should hopefully fall sometime this coming summer. The obvious limitation is that I'm effectively Uig-bound and will be venturing forth entirely solo for the foreseeable. It's no coincidence that my PSL increases in leaps and bounds every time I venture south into England and meet up with The Ghost or Mark Telfer; they are phenomenal naturalists and between us we find a shedload of species across a wide taxonomic scope. I learn (and try not to instantly forget...) loads of stuff whenever I'm out with these guys.   

My PSL stood at 4500 species at the start of January 2017. It took me seventeen months to gain the next 500 species, with 5000 being attained the end of May 2018. The next block of 500 new species took me almost exactly one year to achieve, with my PSL hitting 5500 in late May 2019. That's 1000 additions to my PSL in under two and a half years!

In the grand scheme of things this won't ever be an important or remarkable achievement, but on a personal level it would be amazing if I could add the required 120 species by the end of June 2020. That would be 1500 additions in just three and a half years which, for me at least, would be deeply satisfying.

I have eleven weeks to come up with 120 species, which equates to eleven lifers per week between now and the end of June. All in Uig. Solo. That's definitely almost entirely possible...

I've been enjoying this bunch lately, they make for a pleasantly chilled background noise whilst I'm busy pinning/carding/keying specimens from the 2020 Backlog Box.

War of the Worlds

Anybody here a fan of H.G.Wells' War of the Worlds? I am. I read the book, I watched the films, I owned the double CD. I watched the documentary regards Orson Welles' 1938 radio broadcast across a widely panicked America. I bought and proudly wore the t-shirt, I watched Jeff Wayne conduct it live at Brighton. Heck, I've even been to the sandpit on Horsell Common (lots of Eyed Ladybirds in the pines, as I recall). I love it, an epic story if ever there was.

Anybody here remember how an apparently doomed mankind was spared from certain eradication at the hands of the Martians? By a bacteria. A virus, in fact. It was mankind's very darkest hour and yet, despite us throwing the full might of our war machines at the Martians, we owed our continuing existence to a tiny invisible thing. The seemingly all-powerful Martians were overcome with infection and quickly died, allowing mankind to survive and witness a new age dawning over a radically changed world. 

All of this was written over 120 years ago between 1895 and 1897, long before planes or television or phones were invented. Wells truly was an incredible man. 

And now our PM is in intensive care, brought to his powerful knees by a tiny invisible thing. I feel that I ought to show some sort of sympathy or sadness towards our glorious leader's undoubtedly unpleasant situation. Instead I merely hope he succumbs quickly. I hope that many of the others that he names colleagues also succumb quickly. Were I a believer, I would pray that the mighty prick across the pond would succumb quickly too. But I don't pray, I haven't done since childhood and I'm not about to restart now. I just hope the tiny invisible thing finds certain people soon. 

There are some very dangerous people out there in this world, many of whom hold positions of great power and might. Maybe it's as well there aren't really any malevolent Martians out there, looking to harvest us for food. And maybe it's a necessary evil that this tiny invisible thing is happening to us at this moment in time. 

Give your locked-down ears at treat, this will be one hour and 44 minutes of your life well spent

"It seems totally incredible to me now, that everyone spent that evening as if it were just like any other..."