Juice of the Sphagnum

As mentioned in yesterday's post, I grabbed a small sample of Sphagnum with the intention of checking it beneath a microscope for signs of life. A couple of years back, I was quite 'into' microscopic freshwater algae and Sphagnum pools are always full of them. I fancied refreshing my memory and hoped there would be something interesting to view. 

There certainly was...

These are Euastrum cuneatum - a lifer!

Netrium digitus - very common in this sample with dozens seen

Micrasterias truncata - oddly, the only one of the genus I could find

All of the above are species of desmid, you'll notice that they comprise two mirror-image halves. The largest species are just about visible through a 10x handlens as tiny green flecks suspended in water. These images were taken through my compound microscope, the stereo microscope lacks sufficient magnification. Desmids are my favourite of the microscopic algae, they are pleasing on the eye and some are actually quite easy to identify to species. Others less so...

Probably a Cosmarium. Lots and lots of these, all exceedingly similar to each other.

I fully appreciate that the above are less than wonderful images, I simply hold my camera to the small eyepiece of my compound microscope and zoom in full whack. It's a relatively cheap microscope and optically it leaves rather a lot to be desired. But it's fine for a bumbling amateur like myself. I do need to upgrade at some point; a stereo model with superior lenses and a measuring graticule would allow me to appreciate and identify these things far better than I currently can. 

So that's a small selection of the desmids that I found in just two drops of water from a squeezed strand of Sphagnum. Staying with the same two drops, I noted lots of rotifers wheeling their way through the water column (this being approximately half a millimetre in depth and squished beneath a microscope coverslip...) plus a few weird oval shapes that look a bit like a medieval drinking flask. Like this, in fact

I've seen these before but never sussed what they were. Some look like tiny seeds with reticulated patterns across the surface, others have elongated 'necks', the one above has the rear half bordered by a wide rim which narrows as it nears the open end. I tend to look at these curiously before passing them by, none the wiser as to what they are. 

Then I saw this one and the penny has finally dropped!

Clue: look at the open end....

There is a protuberance oozing its way from the flask, I watched it with a grin on my face - this is an amoeba!!! I'm not sure why, but I find that wildly exciting. If you've ever seen the film The Blob, you'll know what an amoeba is. Admittedly, in real life they don't generally attack townships and eat all the residents, but on a microscopic scale they are awesome beasts and I've wanted to see one since childhood. Here's a short video clip of it doing its thing - very slowly! 

Edit: This is Planocarina carinata, sweet! 

It turns out that these flask-dwelling amoebae are properly known as testate amoebae. They are single-celled animals that dwell within a 'test', which presumably offers them shelter and protection. The amorphous blobby bits waving out the end of this test are the pseudopodia, which are cytoplasm-filled appendages used for locomotion and for grabbing and digesting food. Just writing that fills me with awe, these things are amazing! I have no idea how an animal with just one cell can manage to form and control these pseudopodia, or create the test, but I find it all very exciting! 

As if that wasn't fantastic enough in itself, a pale pink whirring thing suddenly wheeled and spun across my field of view. The heck was that..? A frantic bit of scanning around and I found it again. Extremely poor image now follows

Think of a transparent 2D shark swimming right to left across the screen. With a beard of rapidly beating hairs for propulsion! No, not a shark - a knifefish! Yeah, I knew it reminded me of something. Here's a pic of a knifefish for you

Pretend that the eye is missing and that the tail is the front end instead of the head - and that the long fin on the underside is a row of rapidly beating hairs - and that it is transparent with a pink tint. Oh, and that it is about 100th of a millimetre long. THAT is what the thing is in the image! It's a ciliate named Blepharisma and there are only four species known to occur in Sphagnum. I think I've ruled out one of them, but sadly I can't confidently progress further than genus level. Here's a short clip of it wheeling around in a square millimetre or so of Sphagnum Juice - not easy to keep track of

 

I finally finished watching Blepharisma charging around like a mad thing and took one final sedate scan around my two drops of water. Then I found this, for which I have no explanation or understanding

What the actual feck is that then? I watched it for ages, it never slowed down, it never relented chasing its tail, it never moved from within the bubble. I actually have absolutely no idea what I have captured here. I'm quite into weird stuff like sub-atomics, worlds within worlds, hidden dimensions etc. The whole time I was watching this...thing...I was wondering if I was watching battling demons, fission or the creation of a new world. What would happen if it broke free from its bondage? Would our world end, would some terrible magic be unleashed? What the hell was it? I am still none the wiser, it seems to me that nothing animate would move endlessly like that, so it's some sort of a chemical reaction? Something trapped by surface tension in...an oil bubble? Answers below please! 

I reckon my Sphagnum sample is good for easily another dozen squeezes. I literally have no idea what wonders await within

I've just reviewed this post before publishing. Ha, each of my videos has music in the background. Anybody think they know all three tracks involved? I'll need the artists too for full marks :) 

Amongst The Eelgrass

A couple of weeks back, I took my car in for a pre-MoT check (it failed - low tread on a tyre, a number plate bulb out and a 4cm wide hole in a sill that needed welding). Whilst waiting, I wandered along the nearby riverbank and added a few plants to the monad, some of which local BSBI Recorder Stephen wanted to see for himself. I suggested he join me whilst I was back there having the car fixed. And if we were making an outing of it, we ought really to invite Neil too. Stephen agreed. So the three of us met up outside the repair garage whereupon we began by checked the riverside vegetation, adding yet more plants to the tetrad (and hectad). We accidentally found a tiny seepage that held a small quantity of Sphagnum. Almost as an afterthought, I crammed a small sample of Sphagnum into a glass tube ready for checking once back indoors. You can see what I found in tomorrow's blogpost. It's good... 

I found this tenanted fly mine on a Ragwort leaf, which I mistakenly believed to be Liriomyza strigata. Luckily Barry Warrington on iRecord knows his stuff, it's actually Trypeta zoe (dark central band through the linear mine being the giveaway)

This is the first record I've submitted to iRecord which has been knocked back at me as being incorrect. Plus there was one a couple of weeks back which could have been either of two species, hence was not accepted. My success rate is dropping. Arse.

Anyway, after an hour or so wandering the riverside we were ready for Plan B - which was to hit Harlosh at a super-low tide. Upon our arrival we found several extremely large, and extremely dead, Edible Crabs. All missing their claws but otherwise looking fairly intact. Carnage! We soon found a large black plastic container cable-tied shut in the shallows. A quick shove and the sound of large crabs came from within - presumably the dead ones had been left in the sun for too long and had succumbed? What an utterly stupid waste of life. It's probably as well I didn't have my knife on me (to release them, I mean, not to murder or maim the crabber for negligence...) 

Within minutes we were wading welly-deep through a fantastic eelgrass bed, so utterly fantastic that I neglected to take a single picture of it! By walking very slowly and carefully it was easy to see lots of small fish hiding amongst the floating vegetation. Loads of Two-spot Gobies, quite a few scorpion fish (probably Long-spined. Guess which muppet had left his net in his car back at the garage...) I had a Fifteen-spined Stickleback slowly investigate my wellies, there were lots of Sand Gobies on open patches of gravel which Stephen was amazed to discover will swim full speed into the sand and completely disappear from sight. I also found this goby and managed a few images

I've almost convinced myself that this is a Painted Goby, which would be a new species for me. I just can't utterly rule out other gobies. I have more pics, but they don't add anything useful. Hmmm. 

This is Diplosoma listerianum, a gorgeous gelatinous sea squirt which occurs amongst weed in sheltered waters around much of Skye. There's a Grey Topshell beside it too. 

This tiny fish was floating by my welly when I spotted it, looking completely at the mercy of the tide as it drifted by. It was no problem to scoop it into a glass tube. The whole fish is well under 2cm in length and this is about the 'best' image I managed. I have no idea what it is!!! Maybe a wrasse? I had Sea Bream suggested, but I really don't think so. 

The obvious target species amongst the eelgrass was seahorse. We looked. We tried. We failed. I think snorkelling has to be the way to find seahorses. I'm not massively keen on the idea of swiping through the eelgrass with my net, imagine finding a seahorse minus its tail! Nope, not keen on that at all. But I am keen to see a seahorse! More slow, careful walking knee-deep through the beds required methinks. 

Neil spotted this (I'm fairly sure I would have just walked straight past it). The tentacle span is maybe a smidge over one centimetre diameter. We had no idea what it was, though Neil said it would disappear beneath the surface if disturbed.

Whatya got this time, Neil? Ooooh...... what is that?

I think it's a worm

What, like a fanworm? So it's an annelid?

Yeah, I think so. It'll disappear if you go near.

Cool, how deep down will it go?

Maybe a foot? I dunno.

I have a sieve, I'm going in. A foot you reckon? (shit..) Ok, we ready?

You'll mis.......oh!

And dive down it did, incredibly quickly too! Happily, I out-manoeuvred it and we were able to see it in its full glory 

This is the tube-anemone Cerianthus lloydii, which is something Stephen and I have never knowingly seen before. The tentacles and column are clearly visible in the image above. Below the column is a tube of mucilage with the muscular 'foot' of the anemone sticking up to the right of the column. The gravel tube is what the anemone usually lives in. This pic was taken at home that evening and the anemone was returned to the sea. I hope it does alright after being rudely relocated some thirty miles! 

Also new for me was this beauty, a stalked jellyfish and the first one I've seen for the best part of twenty years! Pity I didn't notice the encrusting alga on the eelgrass at the time, looks interesting.

This is Calvadosia campanulata, a stunning little beast which caused a small cry of delight when I found it. Despite lots of looking, we couldn't find any others. A real treat and my second cnidarian lifer of the hour, it's not often that happens! 

Neil called us over to look at a crab he'd found beneath a rock (well actually, it grabbed him around the fingertip causing some rather comical 'hoy hoy hoy - jeezo!' type squeals, but I won't mention that....) Here's the beast beauty in question 

Lairy bugger would not lower his claws! It reminds me of the cover to an album I like. Only one song fits

We decided it was a Risso's Crab Xantho pilipes which was new for Neil and Stephen, and I haven't seen too many of them before either. The next crab was my find and, despite masses of photographs being taken from just about every angle imaginable, we are still unsure which of two species it is! Here it is

Beneath the weed is a crab, the head end is to the left. This is probably Macropodia rostrata, but there's an outside chance of it being Macropodia deflexa. I swear I'll shave the next one and bring it home for microscopic inspection if that's what it needs to fully determine the species involved! 

Neil was Top Dog today and was finding stuff everywhere he looked, including the only sea slug of the day. This is Elysia viridis, the ridiculously-named Solar Powered Sea Slug. There is a bit of reasoning behind the name, but c'mon reeeeally???

The spreadsheet for HBRG seemed a bit thin. I suggested we add Human, Minke Whale and Razorbill to the tally, the latter two both being tideline corpses. Well, section of backbone for the whale. I suspect corpse would be pushing it a bit. 

Music-wise I was very tempted to play Octopus's Garden to you. But you get this instead. Sorry. Not.

Hiding in Plain Sight

The weather this morning was downright horrible, as it so often is on my days off work. But by mid-afternoon it had stopped raining so I headed out in search of flies. In a strong wind. What could possibly go wrong... It turns out that finding flies is entirely possible even when it's blowing a hoolie, all I had to do was alter my search method to suit the conditions. I headed into nearby Uig Wood and headed up the hill to an area dominated by Sycamore and Hazel. The Hazel didn't much suit my purposes, but the Sycamores were productive

Drepanosiphum platanoidis sucking the life out of a Sycamore midrib

I found this fantastic page dedicated to Drepanosiphum platanoidis. It explains all about the uncommon 'red' morph (as in my image) and why the 'red' autumn individuals exhibit the black cross bars usually only found on the 'green' spring generation. This is also the last time you'll see a leaf in this particular post. Today it was all about tree bark.

Part of the small area I worked this afternoon

All of the trees in this image are Sycamores, apart from the thin screen of Sitka in the background that mark the boundary of this secondary woodland. The fenceline was fixed before lockdown, so the understorey has been spared the attention of the woolly maggots which munch the surrounding hillsides down almost into the dirt. I suspect these trees were planted, they all seem to be of a similar age and structure, but I've yet to ask anybody who actually knows for sure. 

Today was windy. In the above image the camera is facing directly into the wind, hence I spent my time searching the leeward side of these tree trunks for sheltering flies. I'm going to bung in a handful of images that hopefully give you a feel for that process. Honestly there are flies in each and every pic, no need to treat this as a test!  

Ok, so they were all pretty easy - just look for the non-tree shapes and silhouettes. Six flies in three pics, no hassle. But what about this next series of pics? How long until you realise what you're looking at and what is happening.....

This is a very lucky Limonia nubeculosa (note the black and yellow banded 'knees'). If you zoom in on the final images, you can see that there is a spider touching its front left leg. A moment after I took the last pic, the cranefly made a very rapid exit and all that was left to see was one unlucky Drapetisca socialis

Better luck next time!

Drapestica socialis is a common spider in Uig Wood. However, I noticed that there are no recent records from anywhere on Skye so have been zipping around from wooded area to wooded area and have been finding it wherever I look. It's colloquial name is the Invisible Spider and, despite the fact that they're very well hidden against their chosen substrate, the term 'invisible' in this instance refers to their web, not the spider itself. If the light is shining at just the right angle, it is possible to see their ultra fine web running across the bark of a tree. If you look closely you should be able to see it catching the light in this cropped image

Look for the fine horizontal dashes behind the retreating spider...

After an hour or so of searching trees for sheltering flies, I had formed a firm conclusion in my mind. Different types of fly shelter at different heights on any given tree trunk. By and large, all I was finding were craneflies, Sciapus (a doli fly), muscids and the odd Sylvicola or phorid. Remember that habitat shot above...here it is with coloured dots!

Paintballing comes to Uig! 

So let's break this down. All of the Sciapus platypterus that I found today (c.20) were within about a foot or so of ground level. The 30 or so craneflies I found (Tipula and Limonia species) were all within four feet of the ground. The muscids I noted (maybe 20) were all above head height, almost invariably sitting on/next to hangs of Lobaria.

RED - Sciapus platypterus always low down near to ground level

YELLOW - craneflies from near ground level up to about chest height, but mostly lower

BLUE - Muscids always above head level and tucked up close to overhanging lichens

GREEN - Invisible Spiders, always on areas of unvegetated bark with prominences above

Clearly there will be a degree of observer bias going on here. I wouldn't spot any Invisible Spiders that were quietly sitting at ground level or way above my head height. Ditto the craneflies, though I did spend a bit of time looking up higher for them (which is when I spied the muscids). I have a theory that the muscids were higher up so that if/when the sun broke through - as it did for all of about six minutes - they are well positioned to catch that warmth and grab some rays. I think the craneflies are more concerned about getting out of the wind, staying hidden and waiting for nightfall when they become active. I don't have any real ideas as to what Sciapus was doing. Maybe they were just sheltering down low, they are delicate wee things after all.

Of course, there was more to the tree trunks than flies and the occasional spider.

Tree Slugs (Lehmannia marginatus) and Tree Snail (Balea sarsii) 

There are also a good number of lichens, mosses and liverwort species in all of these pics. But that's one for another time. The above pic has what is probably Ulota crispa and Frullania dilatata overgrowing various crustose lichens, of which Lecanora is the dominant genus. As I say, one for another time...

One for the Cambridgeshire Beetler hisself...

And for the rest of us...

Have I found a Hawkweed New to Britain?

Well the answer to that appears to be...quite possibly so, yes! 

After several years worth of increasingly gung-ho square-bashing for the forthcoming BSBI Atlas 2020, local BSBI Recorder Stephen Bungard succeeded in surveying almost every square centimetre of Skye (including the surrounding islands, islets and any larger chunks of plant-supporting rock reachable by sea kayak) and has now decided to take a closer look at the somewhat bewildering array of Hieracium hawkweeds that occur here on Skye. 

Hieracium is an incredibly tricky genus of plants to get to grips with, scoring a decent 9 out of 10 for difficulty for most of we lesser mortals. However, given enough time in the field and with herbarium specimens, I'm positive that they are far more accessible than the books suggest. But who in their right mind would even want to grill hawkweed specimens? Happily, Stephen is no mere lesser mortal and has determined to 'sort out' some old records in an effort to figure out just what it is that we have here on Skye. He has, it has to be said, had a bit of help from BSBI Hieracium referee David McCosh. 

Last year I collected several specimens of the local hawkweeds that grow just down the road from me. Literally, just down the road. It was a bit late in the season and they were somewhat past their best, but I grabbed three or four anyway. David McCosh came back with mixed comments; they could be this, they could be that, he wasn't entirely sure what they were, could Stephen ask me to collect some more next year - but of better plants gathered somewhat earlier in the season. Cue this year when I did indeed grab a few specimens earlier in the season. These images are taken a tad before the flowers opened.

Images taken on 15th May 2020

I tried to take pics from several angles, hopefully highlighting various useful features in the process. Note these are just a handful of the images I took that day. A few weeks later the plants were in full flower, so I took yet more pics and this time I collected and pressed three specimens for forwarding on to the BSBI referee.

Images taken on 3rd June 2020

These are more habitat shots than of the plants themselves, after all I was including specimens for  close scrutiny. The footpath in the image above runs alongside the road through Uig. I really wasn't kidding when I said they grow just down the road from me - I walk past these twice daily, sometimes more!

I passed on my pressed examples of these plants to Stephen Bungard, who in turn posted them off to David McCosh. The roadside flowers all set seed, the leaves became generally worn and furled around the edges, and I thought no more of it. 

Fast forward to the middle of August and I suddenly noticed that a two of the hawkweeds were in full flower with healthy looking leaves, rather incongruously sat there amongst dozens of manky gone-over plants. How weird! I took a few more pics and grabbed one plant which I pressed and handed on to Stephen a week or so afterwards. 

Absolutely fresh as you like - these from 22nd August 2020

A couple of days back, David contacted Stephen regards the various batches of hawkweeds from across Skye that Stephen had forwarded to him.

Nothing of great interest, mostly triviale, anglicum, hebridense or shoolbredii. The less frequent were TB2 cyclicum from the site near Talisker Bay and  no.46 from Glamaig which is dasythrix. 

He then went on to mention my Uig plants

The plant from Uig does not fit any described species. With some hesitation I think it may belong to section Subalpina.

Stephen forwarded me this response along with the shortest email message I think I've ever received...

!

Over the course of the following day or two, David has come back with some further details regards the Uig plants.

The most obvious characteristic of the INDET was the stellate hairs all over the phyllaries especially on the margins. Apart from that, the phyllaries were blackish-green, subacute to obtuse, linear-lanceolate, 6-13 x 1.0-1.2 mm with numerous simple hairs and numerous very short or short black glandular hairs.  The peduncles had dense stellate hairs, numerous short glandular hairs and 0-occasional simple hairs.  Capitula 30-40 mm in diameter. Basal leaves many, mostly broadly elliptical and obtuse-mucronate at apex, often purplish beneath, the cauline 1-2, the lower sessile, acute and dentate lower down, the upper or only one bractlike. Inflorescence in the May collection paniculate-corymbose with a notably short acladium but the August and 2019 collection furcate-corymbose. H. petrocharis also has numerous stellate hairs, but its characters otherwise do not match.

I got most way through that before deciding that I really did need to go grab a botany book and double-check some of the terminology David was using (there's a damn good reason why I'm not a BSBI referee, ha!) From what I can make of it, David is still saying that the plants do not conform to any known British species and, potentially, there may be two non-conforming species involved. 

Let me just rephrase that. The plants growing abundantly on roadside rocks here in Uig may well be a hitherto undiscovered species of hawkweed. I may have discovered a new native plant!!! 

To be fair I've only been the boots on the ground, the clever work has been undertaken by others. As such, I've decided that should I have any say in matters (highly unlikely, I know but....) I'm going to suggest that the plants are named Hieracium bungardii. And if there are two new species, the latter can be Hieracium mccoshii. Never let it be said that I'm not a big-hearted chap, haha! 

I couldn't think of any Hawkweed tracks, so have this instead - Hawkwind's Quark Strangeness and Charm. I first heard this when I was seventeen, I think. I loved it then and I still do now. Never knew Marc Bolan had his own show though...

Six and a half Years Later...

A month ago yesterday, I stumbled across a smart tachinid fly which I assumed was going to be Dexiosoma caninum. It later keyed-out to the far scarcer Dexia vacua, a rarely found beast once thought to be extinct in western Europe. I popped a few pics on the UK Diptera FB Group where it was confirmed by tachinid expert Chris Raper. Chris then advised me that he'd prefer the record to be submitted via iRecord rather than by any other means. Hmmm...iRecord y'say?

Admission time. So I've had an unfathomable mistrust of iRecord (and of the people that sing its praises) for some time now. I really can't recall what it was that started it all, presumably someone mentioned something that put me off using it. But if that is the case, and I can't think what else it could be, I'm afraid I've completely forgotten what that 'something' was. The mistrust, however, has remained. 

Anyway, in spite of this I decided to bite the bullet and sign up to iRecord, mostly so that Chris Raper could receive the Dexia record in his preferred format. One record couldn't hurt and it was quite an important one too. So it quite took me by surprise when I attempted to sign up to iRecord and was notified that I already had an account. Oh? Obviously I couldn't remember my password, but pretty soon I was logged in to my account and was doubly surprised to discover that I'd been a member for six and a half years!! 

And so, after a mere 2400 days, I entered my very first iRecord submission

After I'd submitted the above record, I remembered that I had a reasonable pic of Dexiosoma caninum taken a couple of days after the Dexia record. I dug the image off the camera card, cropped it just enough to enable an identification to be made and, all of seven minutes later, submitted that too. Ooh, this was starting to be fun! 

The astute amongst the four of you will notice that the status for these records is "awaiting review". That's fine, I suspect that somewhere over 95% of all iRecord verifiers are busy people who fit 'verification time' around their paid work as and when they can grab a spare hour or so, probably on a purely voluntary basis and thus without receiving any kind of extra financial reward. It must be an absolute labour of love, fair play to them all. 

Despite this, I repeatedly refreshed my iRecord page throughout the evening just to see whether the flies had be verified. Nada. Oh well, Chris is probably busy doing other stuff, still early days yet. 

Suddenly I had the bit between my teeth, two records submitted and there was no stopping me now! Next up came a couple of agromyzid fly mines, a Phyllonorycter leucographella mine and a mirid bug that I knew was new for me. I also submitted a caddisfly as a "likely" and wondered quite how far I'd get with that in the absence of a specimen. 

The next morning my fly mines had been confirmed by Barry Warrington and that afternoon the mirid was confirmed by Maria Justamond. Shortly after that the caddis came back confirmed too (whoop whoop!) I then completely blew the caddis record by trying to edit the caption, which somehow pinged it back into the system as an entirely 'new' record. I added an apology to the verifier for potentially wasting his time verifying the same record twice, but it still hasn't been re-verified as of tonight. I fear I may have blacklisted myself in the world of caddis. 

Over the course of the following few days, I submitted several more batches of records and eagerly watched 'my' page for signs of further verification. Happily, every new verification was verified as correct, with each of them receiving two green ticks as proof. By now I was feeling pretty smug with myself and I even caught myself trying to evangelise iRecord to a couple of die-hard "it's HBRG or the highway" chaps here on Skye. There really is nothing worse than a recent convert....

I ought to mention right now that I've only been submitting records for species where I'm totally confident of their identity or, less often, where I have a relatively high level of confidence that I've got it right. What I am not doing is submitting records where I don't really know what the species is and just hoping an expert will ID it for me. I believe that's a really crappy thing to do - and I hope I still feel the same way in the future too! What I am doing is using iRecord as a back up system, to ensure I'm identifying the species correctly in the first instance. If I'm really and honestly wavering between one or t'other species and just can't decide, I'll submit it as 'likely' under the name of the species I believe it to be. If ever there's one thing that drives me nuts, it's scrolling through a FB Group and finding a post captioned "ID please, thank you" (though usually lacking the thank you part). Piss off and at least have a try yourself first, lazy feckers! This really gets my goat, and I refuse to be one of those people.

So far I've submitted one caddisfly and two agromyzid leaf mines as 'likely' and the remainder as 'certain'. And had nothing but double green ticks come back. 

But then, after everything was going so very well, disaster struck!

Arse....

Barry Warrington is an amazing scheme organiser. Without a shadow of a doubt, he's the most responsive and helpful scheme recorder that I've ever dealt with. On top of that, without fail he verifies my iRecord stuff either that same day or by the following morning at the latest. If trophies or medals were awarded to scheme recorders, he would have shelves full of them I'm certain (he's also not paying me to write this, I'm just telling it like it is). Check the above record, I entered it at 9:30pm and he checked it at 8:12 the following morning. Legend.

See what I mean, he even takes the time to explain why he has rejected the record. It's a pity he doesn't have an 'agg' for these two species, but it's his scheme and he wants 100% clean data rather than blurred edges. Who am I to disagree?

It does mean that I have a red cross against one of my records, which kind of sucks. And then tonight, I received a second metaphorical i-slap in the face

See that single green tick amongst the double green ticks? That equates to an "accepted as considered correct" verification. That's not massively satisfying, but then again I only submitted a single image which doesn't show all details, so it's my own fault really. Unless the verifier doesn't want to put their name next to a record which is later proven incorrect, coz they'd feel a right numpty then. I wondered if this ever happens, it's understandable after all. Nobody wants to publicly lose face in front of their peers. 

I've submitted a couple of spider records, of the kind of spider that nobody gets wrong. I checked the species page for that spider. Some images have yet to be verified, including my two, and that's fair enough. Others have a single green tick over perfectly clear images of a very readily identifiable spider. Not a single one has two green ticks...whaaaat??? That positively sucks! This means that the very best I can hope for is that my records for these particular spiders are "accepted as considered correct" as opposed to "accepted as correct". It's a fine line, but my hubristic ego sees the clear distinction and it wants those double green ticks against the record. If a record can't be 100% ascribed to a species, that's fine. But if verifiers themselves really are that unwilling to commit....

As of today, I am one whole month into iRecord. Plus those six and a half years... In that month I've submitted 74 records. Of these, some 42 have yet to be seen and are 'awaiting verification'. I've had one 'unable to verify' and one record 'considered as correct', the remaining 30 have been 'accepted as correct'. That equates to 43% of my records verified and 97% of those have been accepted as correct. I'd like to see the verification rate increase but, as mentioned earlier, the verifiers do a grand job as it is and it's plain wrong to expect more. Even though I do. 

I'm not really looking at numbers, but I think it would be quite easy for me to double my iRecord submission rates, at least whilst the inverts are still largely active (I'm not iRecording plants, they go straight to the BSBI Recorder, and birds to the Skye Bird Recorder). What I have very quickly realised is that iRecord slows me down an awful lot whilst I'm in the field. Now, when I see something that I recognise (say, the bluebottle Calliphora vomitoria), I need to take at least one picture that shows the features well enough for it to be recognised once submitted. Which probably means three or more good images. Not easy when it's a large fly buzzing around in a grubby glass tube (and I'm not about to take it home, kill it, pin it and photograph it at my leisure when it's a species I see on a near daily basis). Then I need to dig out my GPS and make a note of the species and location in my notebook. My GPS is a struggle to read unless I pull out my reading glasses, so of late I've been wandering around with them hanging from my clenched teeth (I refuse to add a lanyard, I'm still in my forties and not ready for that quite yet!) Only after clear images have been taken, co-ordinates accurately read and written down and glasses popped back between my teeth can I move along. Previously I'd make a note of the monad I was in, take a quick pic/scribble of interesting stuff in my notebook and move along. 

Flippin' iRecord (it's brilliant really), will I ever get my life back again? And if somebody could verify the Dexia that started it all in the first place...

Talking of Dexia (yep, this is especially for you Skev)