5MR

What, I hear you ask, is 5MR???

It stands for Five Mile Radius and is something that has been around for a while now. Back in the glorious bad ol' days there were thousands of bird twitchers careening one way or another up, down and across the length and breadth of the country in a rabid quest to clap eyes on a rare bird that somebody else had just discovered. I'm not exaggerating, I was part of that horde for a good few years. A thousand miles in a day, you say? Hell yeah, I did that several times twitching Scotland and back from South London. Did I care? Did I hell, it was brilliant! Me and a few mates, setting off at some crazy early hour long before the sun rose, getting back just in time for a celebratory few beers at last orders, I absolutely loved it! The big awkward issue that barely anybody was even considering back then was the damage our antics were causing to the environment. Back then a person's carbon footprint was something produced by walking through charcoal and onto a white carpet. 

The concept behind 5MR is that you stay local to your home and see what you can find for yourself, and without burning up tonnes of pollutants in the process. Local, in this instance, being within a five mile radius of where you live. Lockdown number whatever the heck this one is would have the British populace 'stay local' whenever out and about. For myself, I live in a beautiful part of the world and have open hillsides, a Sphagnum bog, some deciduous woodland and several hundred metres of shore in my home monad (a 1km square). And it's the monad that keeps on giving! I could probably spend my entire natural history time in NG3963 and adjacent NG4063 and still find loads to keep me amused. Small minds and all that....

However, I was intrigued to discover what my own 5MR zone looked like, so I went and found out. And here it is

I was pleased to see that the better part of two thirds is on dry land, that always helps. Less pleased to see that much of it is a fair way from the nearest access point, so I'm going to have to get used to a bit of legwork this coming summer. To put my 5MR into a bit of context, here it is on a smaller scale map

As the astute amongst you will by now know, 2021 is the year I'm concentrating on getting a handle on spiders and flies. Well, I already have a vague clue about flies, but spiders are a new can of...er...worms for me. More legs and eyes than worms, I do know that much, but a can of worms nonetheless. For the less observant, there's a tab at the top of this page that says 2021 Challenge. Click on that and be transported to my other equally wondrous blog (vague disclaimer - it may not actually fully qualify as 'wondrous'...same goes for this one too).

My plan for this season is to count up how many tetrads are in my 5MR and to then make biological recordings in each of them, paying particularly attention to spiders and flies. The plants have already been done across all of Skye at tetrad level, but seeing as I'm good friends with the BSBI Recorder, I can probably ask him to generate target lists per tetrad and see if I can find a few of them. Also, I'm definitely going to have to figure some way of attaching my sieve and tray to the outside of my rucksack whilst wandering the hills. Bungees to the rescue, I suspect. I have an OS Map, I just need to find a bit of string and draw the 5MR circle onto it. Could be a bold endeavour, but it's another bit of craziness to help keep myself sane. If that makes sense.

Random tunage alert. It's taken me a while to find something from this guy that I positively enjoy, but here it is. 

Followed by this one, which I've unashamedly stolen straight from the Mighty Skev himself. Never heard it before, completely love it and such an incredible video!!