The Passing of Winter

So here we are, already a quarter of the way through 2026 and officially into Spring (as the rain pummels my window...) I'm very much hoping the next quarter will be considerably warmer and far less windy than the first was. I don't particularly mind the cold or the wind, but yeah enough is enough now. Sideways rain and hail has very much become the norm of late. Living this far north really can be a bit crap at times, though it goes without saying that it can also be utterly glorious and I'm absolutely in no hurry to leave.

Enough with the moaning - tell us how your big year is progressing, I hear you cry.

I've actually had a really great start to the year, helped enormously by working flexi-time. I'll be back onto a strict rota within the next ten days or so, but flexi-time has been great and I've certainly taken the piss taken full advantage of being able to pretty much come and go as I please. My goal for 2026 is to see over 2500 living species in Britain and the first three months have pushed me a good chunk of the way there. I do, of course, have some self-imposed rules to follow, perfectly presented in the visual below

As long as it's alive and wild I'm happy to count it

My rules are just for me. I'm not suggesting they are suitable for others and I'm not imposing them upon anybody; they are simply the same old rules that I stick by every year and have done for some time now. I do look back at some of my earlier PSL records and wonder if I ought to cross some of them off the list, examples being vacated leafmines or grubs in galls that were never reared through, plus there are bound to be some inverts that required microscopic examination yet were counted long before I owned a microscope. One day I'll sit down and have a cull, hopefully not too many species will be lost and then my list will be as 'clean' as I can make it. The same goes for this year's attempt at achieving 2500 species, I want it to be as 'clean' as possible. Hence the rules. There are a few caveats though.

I'm absolutely fine with twitching a species (providing it is wild and alive, of course), though self-finding a species is always going to be preferable. I regularly twitch plants and I'll twitch whales too if they are local (I'll also sometimes twitch birds if they are 'new' for my Skye list). Being shown something is also fine - ordinarily. I'll explain. Almost inevitably, whenever you're out adventuring with another naturalist, they will find something of interest and call you over to have a look at it. Sometimes the other person will be able to name the species they've found and, if you don't know any better, you simply have to take their word for it until you can check and investigate the images/specimen once back indoors. It happens, it's not cheating. 

But! I do feel that following somebody around with a notebook, frantically scribbling down any and all names being thrown your way is not good form. I rarely find myself in this situation because the vast majority of my time in the field is spent alone. Realistically, there's only Nick Hodgetts (bryophytes) and Mark Telfer (beetles) that I need to keep asking "say it again... how do you spell that again..." Because they're both so bloody godlike when it comes to their chosen specialities, and because I realise that the chances of them misidentifying a species are pretty darned slim, I will occasionally find myself blithely scribbling away whenever they hit a species-rich spot. But otherwise, that's not normal or acceptable behaviour, in my opinion. Anyhow, seeing as I haven't been out in the field with Nick for several years now, and I tend to see Mark less than annually of late, I'm anticipating that only a very small proportion of my 2500 species will be shown to me. Ghostie, bless him for always being the brunt of my jokes, will move mountains to ensure I see as many new species as possible whenever I head down south to meet him. There are many light-trapped inverts on my PSL that I would never have seen (or been able to identify) if not for his dragging me kicking and screaming into the night to stare at a bright light for hours on end. I fully intend for us to have at least a couple of light-trapping sessions together at some point this year, so I can expect a bunch of moth and caddisfly names thrown my way in due course. And I'm fine with that because I know he is utterly meticulous with his moth and caddis identifications, plus he always makes sure I have time to see and examine the moth or caddis in question before he squirrels it away back to the creepy laboratory deep within his haunted castle. 

Hmmm, not sure what prompted that little ramble, I was instead planning to throw some stats at you. Umm...here, have some stats!

At the end of January I had recorded 573 living species, which is 23% of my target number, and twenty one of these species were lifers for me. I'm fairly confident that I've never before seen that many species in the opening month of the year, made all the more pleasing due to the fact that I remained in the northern half of Skye throughout.  

At the end of February this total had risen to 761 living species, which is 30% of my target number, and eighteen of the 188 additions in February were lifers for me.

By the end of March I had reached 940 species, which is 37% of my target number, and seventeen of the 179 additional species were new for my PSL.

They may be massively devalued nowadays, but I still thrill at the sight of a Red Kite

For the moment I have definitely reached a plateau with less free time available and none of the spring insects have come on line yet (thanks weather!) Three individual bumblebees (only one of which was identified to species) and a few chironomids sums up all insects I have seen in flight over the past few weeks. I plucked four stoneflies and a scathophagid from fenceposts last week. I also beat Micrambe ulicis from Gorse flowers and had a carabid wander across a path in front of me. I then found some tenanted Phyllonorycter leucographella mines on Firethorn and that is it for my insect sightings over the last two weeks!

My rota this coming season gives me more free time than it did last year. At the moment I'm only working three evening shifts per week instead of four, though I'm obviously still working five day shifts too. I'll be able to finish up mid-afternoon on my fifth day and head straight off to wherever I please for my two days off. Last year I was on shift until at least 10pm the evening before my two days off. This may not sound like much of a difference, but logistically this really will be a massive boon for me. 

April will be a relatively lean month regards my finding many opportunities to actually get out and see stuff. The season is about to begin, the hotel is still understaffed and everything will be fairly chaotic to begin with. I'll probably lose at least a couple of my days off too. It would be great to do a sneak attack onto the mainland sometime over the next few days, while I still have the opportunity, but have you seen the forecast?! I'll soon pass the 1000 species mark but reaching 1100 could require a bit of a push. The hope is to hit 1500 species by the end of May - surely the insects will be active by then - but who even knows?  

It's happening - Spring IS on it's way!