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Pan-species Listing - How to Become a Super-Naturalist
Posted by Graeme Lyons , Sunday, 23 March 2025 14:26
It has been a crazy few years, writing the above book has been pretty full on; no more so than in 2024. As well finishing my manuscript just about on time on the 31st December (following a two-week flow state period where I did well over 150 hours on it and time started to flow more quickly), I also entered quite a few records — 62,429 to be precise. So with less than a fortnight before my field season starts again, I thought I would take the time to write about all the great things going on in the world of pan-species listing.
The book
We are still looking at the moment at a September release. You can read more about it here. Pelagic worked with the brilliant artist Rachel Hudson to come up with the cover with my input, I love it. For those that don't know, the book includes what PSL is, how it all started, where it's going, how to do it and how to get into the 38 taxonomic groups that we use, including what books to get, websites to use, societies to join, what equipment you'll need etc. It's also a very personal book, I've relied heavily on my own experiences to explain the approach, from methods of surveying using the PSL approach to more challenging issues like representation in natural history and a whole load on neurodivergence. I only discovered when researching this book, that I am both autistic and ADHD. Yet I am also only writing this book because of those things too.
The website
The new PSL website grows from strength to strength and is now ticking along nicely. We have 354 people on the main rankings now, we've listed 27,662 species between us. Just 53 of these 354 people have notched up some 4,634,424 records between us, and we've found at least 203 species new to the British Isles. You'll now need a list of at least 2,035 species to get in the top 100! The website is totally free (although donations are welcome) and you can sign up here.
Global Bird Fair
We will be running a stall again at Global Bird Fair this year, along with the twice-daily 1-hour bioblitzes that proved very popular. As well as keeping a species total for the weekend, I'll also be running a workshop/talk on PSL there. This year Global Bird Fair runs from 11 to 13th July.
Mark Avery's garden
The author and conservationist Mark Avery has whole-heartedly adopted the PSL approach to listing all the life he can in his garden throughout 2025. I went up in January to help kick-start Mark's list and found a few spiders new to Northamptonshire in a haul of around 70 or so inverts. Mark is welcoming outside involvement, so if you want to help out you can get in touch with Mark at mark@markavery.info. You can also see follow Mark's progress on the PSL site here where his list is up already.
County PSL What'sApp groups
We've set up a Sussex PSL What'sApp group, there's now a London one (and talk of a Staffs one). I really wanted a way to disseminate info quickly, use it to publicise ad hoc get togethers (often at short notice) and to try and spend less time on my own. As well as hopefully helping out others who are less comfortable out in the field alone. I've already got a Humpback Whale out of it! I am really restricting the Sussex group to people who are actually already doing PSL, i.e, that are on the rankings.
My 2024 recording efforts and pan-species list
Finally, here is a little breakdown of my recording efforts in 2024. So I made 62,429 records across 74 hectads (I am yet to add the Channel Island stuff to this). Like 2023, it's going to be between 4,400 and 4,500 species I think. Which seems to be an upper limit, given the way I approach my 'blind PSL years listing'. I am on 9,331 species now, slipping into 2nd place last September. I should get to 10,000 species in about two years, I am going to try and get there by the end of 2026.
Here's my recording at the larger scale.
And my Sussex records.
It doesn't look quite so impressive when you set the map from the 2km grid to default. The big farm in West Sussex was the really impressive Marshalls Farm — a dairy farm where I recorded a huge number of species. Of the 62,429 records, 45,298 were in Sussex alone and have just been sent off to the SxBRC.
I entered 10,736 spider records last year! Yet this is dwarfed by the 15,432 beetle records though.
I still have a couple of reports to finish, and the book is coming back to me for another round of work any day now, but I really fancy a slightly slower year this year, that involves more time outside for fun, as well as a lot fewer 100-hour weeks at the desk (I have processed 400 tubes of inverts since the 1st Jan). A trip to the Isle of Wight beckons though, where sea horses are a very real possibility, I am one fish away from being joint top fish lister too, after my friend found this Topknot at Eastbourne a few weeks ago!
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Graeme, very much looking forward to the book, and I also like the cover very much, eye-catching. I wonder if there is scope for a Scotland WhatsApp group and organising the occasional field meet here, certainly our Community Woodland would most likely welcome a bioblitz, as would a couple of other sites, I might explore that. Since moving here in May I'm also listing species in my garden, target is 1,000 species in the tennis court sized patch, the current list on PSL needs a bit of an update which I need to get around to.