So that's it. Another year has rolled by and I'm still not rich and famous. But so what, surely being poor and infamous is the better way to live? I'm still alive (always a good thing), I have a job and I have a place to live. I have enough free time to allow me to enjoy the natural world around me and, best of all, I live on Skye! Life could be a whole lot worse, and I'm eternally thankful that I have the ability to delve into nature on a near-daily basis. When it's not raining horizontally, that is...
I accepted work in another part of Skye last April. I did think I'd made a mistake a couple of times, but I'm glad I've stayed and I'm grateful that I've been allowed to continue working throughout the winter period when everyone else apart from the head housekeeper has been let go. Guess I must be doing something right.
For the first time in a long while, I am not going away for New Year's. I did plan to hit Inverness or Oban, or maybe even Thurso, but the incoming snow and lack of any big events this year persuaded me otherwise. So I'm just kicking around on Skye this time, and I already know how my natural history year will begin - with a hotel safari by headtorch! Annoyingly the rain is starting to set in and tomorrow looks to be somewhat blustery and wet. But it is what it is, Skye in the wintertime is rarely a sunny and warm place. And there are Humpback Whales to be sought, at least four of them are in local waters at the moment.
I have a big project lined up for 2026, one I've been contemplating for a little while now. And, as is tradition, The Ghost and I are undertaking another of our Annual Challenges. Let me tell you all about it.
Ghostie spent the greater part of this year recording moths. After a couple of practice runs, 2025 was the year he finally hit his target of 1000 species in a single calendar year. Hit and smashed it in fact, with an incredible 1130 species self-found and identified. However, he pretty much forgot to look at anything else and so his suggestion for our 2026 Annual Challenge is a straight toe-to-toe battle: whoever records the highest number of species by 31st December is the winner and our target is at least 2500 species apiece. Seeing as I've never before seen that many species in a single year, I feel the Challenge is acceptably appealing. Numerically it will push me further than I've gone before and I will need to adopt a number of strategies to ensure I stay on track and achieve this lofty target. In 2024 I managed to record 2219 species, in 2025 I scraped up a few more and managed 2248 species. Will 2026 see me break the 2500 species barrier? And, more importantly, will I see more species than Ghostie does? If history has proven anything, it's that Ghostie is utterly relentless in his quest to beat me at whatever challenge we undertake. To date, he hasn't lost a single one. Will this be my year to triumph? Probably not, but I'll try to give the old bugger a run for his money!
But what of my big project, I hear you ask. Right, buckle up...
I've been a bit of a plant-botherer for a few years now, to the point where I barely look at an invertebrate anymore. The upcoming 2500+ species challenge will hopefully redress that imbalance somewhat. I'm sticking with plants as my main 2026 focus, but not just any old plants. Gosh no, dear reader, that would be far too simple.
I feel that my identification skills are alright for many of the plants that occur here on Skye. I'm familiar enough with many of them that I can recognise them purely on vegetative features or young growth. But I'm not a botanist. Take me out of my comfort zone and I fall down pretty quickly. Chalk grasslands y'say? England y'say? Non-Skye stuff you mean? Eek! But I am more-or-less alright on the plants of the Highlands and Islands. Apart from the tricky ones. You know what I mean, the hawkweeds, dandelions, brambles, roses, grasses and various other difficult families. So I've decided that I need to improve my basic identification and recognition skills for some of the trickier family groups. But not the really tricky ones, just the moderately tricky ones. As I said, I'm not a botanist. Not yet anyway.
For 2026 I have decided to study and learn my ferns, rushes, sedges and their allies. I already have a fairly decent amount of experience with some of these, but too often I find myself looking at the basal leaves of a sedge and slowly backing away rather than tackling it. Heck who am I kidding, I back away from sedges that are in full flower! Time to put that right.
I really like ferns but I do sometimes struggle, especially with the buckler and male-ferns and their lookalikes. The male-ferns are a notoriously difficult group, even for dedicated pteridologists, and ongoing work in the family is throwing up almost as many questions as answers. I foresee struggles and frustrations ahead for many of my Dryopteris encounters. That aside, I am very much looking forward to gaining a better working knowledge of our fern flora. And Skye is a rich hunting ground for them.
There aren't a huge number of rushes, 30 odd Juncus and 10 Luzula, and I'm looking forward to gaining better familiarity with many of them. The sedges are a bigger, far more diverse kettle of fish with some eighty species in the genus Carex and over thirty species of allied plants across several more genera. I think a lot of these could be pretty tough going for me. On the positive side, quite a few species do have the huge attraction of only growing in lovely montane habitats, and being up a mountain is a big draw for me.
Lastly are the allies. These are the clubmosses, the quillworts, the eusporangiate ferns and the horsetails. Skye is excellent for many of these, and I'm already familiar with a number of these plants. But it makes sense (!) to include these in with the ferns that I'll be studying. If I don't lose the will to live, or at least burn all my botany books, I think that improving my confidence and abilities with ferns, rushes and sedges can only be a good thing and will no doubt lead me into properly tackling the grasses. And then I'll be able to start thinking about becoming more of a botanist rather than just a plant-botherer.
So I shall continue to use this blog to record my adventures and mishaps throughout 2026, just as per normal. But I also now have a dedicated second blog documenting my time looking at the ferns, rushes, sedges and their allies. I've added a button on the navbar for you to click on, that'll take you straight to the new blog. Or just bookmark it for direct access.
I suppose I ought to do a quick "highlights of 2025" type thingie. I ought to have thought about doing this earlier, rather than on the fly.
A January trip into Inverness Botanic Gardens saw me eyeballing the spectacular jumping spider Hasarius adansoni, a hothouse species that I had quietly hoped for but never really expected to see. I spied movement on a tree trunk a little above head height and watched this large jumping spider creep ever higher, it's a damn smart looking beast!
The encounter that stands out as possibly the single most incredible sighting of my entire natural history career was the Sperm Whale that, after a lengthy cross-Skye chase, surfaced right in front of me during February. Just...wow.
In March I spent a few days in Cornwall with Danny the Pirate. I also managed to include a sneaky daytrip across to The Scillies. Discovering maybe thirty metres of densely packed Scilly Pigmyweed along a Garrison track just blew my mind! I later bumped into the plant recorder who said she almost fell over backwards when she first saw the colony two years earlier.
During April I found a colony of Rannoch Brindled Beauties on Sleat. Seeing the wingless "belly button fluff on legs" female was my moth highlight of 2025. I went on to find them at a couple more Sleat sites soon after that. A proper survey will probably show that they are widespread across the peninsular.
The discovery in May by a local naturalist that Chequered Skippers occur on Skye was a complete curveball for everyone. My subsequent bumping into several of them was the undoubted butterfly highlight of my year. This is the only known Scottish population away from the Spean Bridge/Fort William area.
In June I stumbled across a patch of Crested Hair-grass, a lifer for me. It was whilst laying on my belly, taking 'arty' pics, that a couple of concerned walkers asked me if I was alright, why was I laying on the ground. The ensuing conversation, from their incredulity that I was bothering to look at a grass, then their interest in how to spot it, to the proud boasting from the guy as he found and recognised a nearby patch all by himself, remains a highlight for me. Likewise "Mecca is the other direction" from a passing dogwalker as I was knelt down taking yet more pics. Priceless. I even sunburnt my back, it's not often that happens in Scotland!
In July I spent a week in southern England, staying with Ghostie for a few days. We did a moth trapping session up Magdalen Hill Down one warm night, recording a whole multitude of species and adding TWENTY ONE lifers to my PSL!!! Spending time with my good friend, watching him doing what he loves best, makes me happier than he'll ever know.
In August I took a mini-break into the Norfolk Brecks, finding all sorts of fabulous plants in the margins of arable fields. But the highlight, and possibly my favourite species after the Sperm Whale, was finding a larval Elm Zigzag Sawfly inside its zigzag cut out. Wow finally, I sooo wanted to find one of these!
In September I made yet another attempt to find Shining Guest Ant on wood ant nests in Speyside. I failed, but I did accidentally find a nest of the Narrow-headed Wood Ant Formica exsecta amongst numerous Formica lugubris nests, a rare and very pleasing lifer indeed!
My workplace closed down for the winter during October, allowing me to head back to Cornwall for further adventuring with Danny the Pirate and Ghostie. I stopped off at Start Point en route into Cornwall and was genuinely stunned at the sight of my first ever Blue-fin Tuna, leaping like small submarines through the waves. They are huge, bigger even than dolphins! I've waited a long time to see Tuna, they absolutely did not disappoint! Pity the first words out of my mouth were "Fuuuck me" as an elderly couple were walking by...
During November I turned to the microscopic world of water samples from a nearby Sphagnum bog. In one drop of water I found myself eyeballing a wondrous snowglobe full of bright green flakes, slowly spinning around and around. It was my first encounter with Eremosphaera viridis, a truly beautiful freshwater alga. I went on to find lots of them in the sample, glorious things that barely anybody ever sees in real life.
In December the local bird recorder worked his magic and found a drake Ring-necked Duck on a Skye lochan, just the second record here after a drake in 2016. I gave it a day before crumbling, jumped in the car and successfully twitched it. As far as I know, it has now been seen by just four birders, which is about half of the regular Skye birders!
I added 193 species to my PSL, the worst showing for some years. I largely neglected the invertebrates, numerically a very rewarding area to pay close attention to, and I barely made any progress with my backlog box which is full of various dipteran, coleopteran and hymenopteran specimens. Maybe I could pay a zoology student to go through them for me... This alone helps explain the relative deficit of lifers in 2025. I think Ghostie must have gained me a few dozen ticks, wherever would I be without that fella? I somehow managed to go an entire year without meeting up with Mark Telfer, a tragic state of affairs - especially as he keeps offering me use of his spare room. I also managed not to attend a single Skye Botany Group outing, largely due to an inflexible work rota which is something I hope to address next season. But I did head south and meet up with Danny and Ghostie several times. So a year with some lows, but with plenty of highs too.
2026 will see me chasing down all manner of ferns, rushes and sedges. It will also see me diversify back into other branches of natural history in the equally important quest to finally get one up on Ghostie and win a damn challenge for the first time. Fingers crossed, I quite fancy my chances.
Whatever you're getting up to, wherever you find yourself, and whoever you spend time with this year, I hope you have an absolute blast of a time. Find lots of stuff, go to lots of places, and try lots of different techniques to find things. Keep it as vague and as open ended as that and you won't go too far wrong.
Happy New Year everyone, hope it's a great one for you!
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