My 5MR Explained

I think I need to write this one final post regards what I plan to do with my 5MR this year (see previous two posts if this is new to you) and why I'm doing it, just to clarify the ins and outs of it all. 

I'll be spending this coming summer/autumn wandering the hills, moors, coastline, bogs, villages and wooded ravines that occur within a five mile radius of my door. I say summer/autumn, but realistically I think I'll be well underway before that. So, back to basics...

What is my 5MR? 

I've drawn a circle with a 5 Mile Radius on an OS map with my humble abode positioned slap bang in the centre of that circle. Most of everything to the west and south west of me is positioned over the sea, so I'm ignoring that part. The portion of circle that falls over the land is my '5MR' and I've split this area into its pre-existing tetrads, which I have named using their OS codes. Below is a part of my 5MR with the yellow dot positioned over where I live. Each bold square is a tetrad (2km x 2km square) and is itself composed of four monads (1km x 1km squares). Put another way, each bold square is about a mile and a quarter across and a little over 1.5 square miles in area. All told, there are roughly sixty square miles of land inside my 5MR and I intend to wander a large percentage of that this year.

The red dot is Beinn Edra, I'm REALLY looking forward to being up there!

Why have I plotted this 5MR?

I need some sort of a project to keep me occupied during this lockdown and exploring my 5MR is something that will repeatedly force me out into the hills. Uig Wood is all very well and good, but there is so much more to my area and much of it I have never yet explored. There is no haphazardness to my map. The recording compartments are all beautifully and simply defined yet many of them have zero biological records other than of plants. I have an urge to redress this imbalance. I have now provided myself with the framework for my time spent out in the field, all that's really left to do is to get out there and explore it. Also, I seem to have developed a definite gut over the winter period and I'm hoping that a bit of legwork and scrambling into the hills may help shift that...

What will I be looking for in each tetrad?

Last year I was in contact with Craig Macadam, the guy who runs the national recording schemes for stoneflies and mayflies. He's asked me to collect various stonefly species for barcoding work (one of the species here doesn't really conform with the mainland specimens and could potentially be very interesting indeed. The others he just wants for general barcoding purposes) and if there's one thing that the Trotternish Ridge is really good for, it's upland streams and rivers running across open moorland and hillsides - the perfect habitat for stoneflies! So I shall be targeting those for sure. 

Secondly, I'll be looking at plants. Using the BSBI website, I can produce species lists for each of the tetrads in my 5MR and I can further split these lists into plants found before and after any date of my choosing. For example, I could set the year at 2000 and input the tetrad code which would produce a list of all plants seen since 2000 plus a second list of plants which have historical records from that tetrad, but none yet for this century. And it's the species on those second lists that I shall be especially targeting. Happily for me, the local BSBI Recorder has offered to share what knowledge he has of the 'missing' plants with me in the hope that, seeing as I'm out and about anyway, I may stumble across one or two of them. Plus there are shedloads of really great plants that I've never even seen yet that occur along the Trotternish Ridge, so I'm bound to pick up a few lifers whilst at height. Finally, there's my 'potentially new to science' Hieracium that needs to be collected from more sites before being formally described, assuming it really is something different and not just an aberrant known species. So I shall be very carefully documenting the hawkweeds I find and collecting some for the BSBI Referee.

Plus I shall of course be looking at the spiders and flies that occur out there. These two orders constitute my 2021 Challenge, so I simply have to study them in some depth. My concern is that I too, in turn, may be studied in some depth by them. Yep, I'm on about clegs, deerflies and midges. Usually I'm alright with midges, and they shouldn't present any problems at all at altitude - the wind will keep them away. I often find clegs on my arms/legs but they don't ever seem to bite, or I don't feel it if they do. But those bastard deerflies panic the bejeez out of me. Again, I've yet to be bitten by one, but they are relentless little feckers and have to be netted/potted/swatted because they do not give up! They work in teams too, grrrrr. The only bit of good news is that they've yet to be recorded on the top half of Skye. I hope it stays that way too. And let's not forget the ticks which are prevalent in this part of the world. Will this be the year I finally start tucking my trousers into my socks and officially become an old man? (Could it also be the year I finally identify a tick that isn't Ixodes ricinus??) 

And remind me, why are you doing this??

Because I can, and because I'm really looking forward to exploring parts of Skye that I've never been to before, even though they are all, quite literally, within five miles of my door. This is an opportunity for me to spend a far greater time outdoors than I currently manage. I'm going to be actively recording too, rather than just aimlessly wandering. I have targets in mind and the simple act of crossing from one tetrad (or monad) to the next will act as a reset button and I get to do it all over again! I find that immensely attractive just in itself. The days are very long here in the summertime, when/if (when!) the hotel reopens for the season, I shall still have several hours worth of daylight remaining at the end of my shift. And if it doesn't reopen until well into the season...heck, I think there are about 19 hours of decent daylight in midsummer with only about two and a half hours of proper darkness. That should give me ample time to hit the outer reaches of my 5MR. 

So there you have it. I'm going to be traipsing the hills, glens, bogs, woods, shorelines and villages within a five mile radius of my door in search of some plants and various invertebrates in order to produce a wealth of biological records from a massively under-recorded part of the world. I fully expect to be nominated for an OBE once I'm done, but I shall politely decline. Heck, I don't even believe in astral projections......