Here is a bit of fun. I have taken a lot of photos over the 15 years this blog has been running, some of which I am pleased with. I have also taken plenty of awful photos, some of which are exquisitely bad. I present here a selection of them! In reverse order then...
6). Above is a Glanville Fritillary that was sitting perfectly still on my finger until I took the image.
5). The day I saw my first Quail, I had my camera on, ready to take the shot as I knew I was likely to flush them on this particular farm. When they did fly up, I turned my camera OFF and missed them, even though they were right in front of me. This is all I got (you can just about see them in the bottom right)...
4). On Jersey last year I was taking a sequence of shots of the amazing shrimp Periclcimenes sagittifer that lives among Snakelocks Anemones, the light was perfect! Shame I had it on the wrong setting!!! The problem with taking photos under water is you can't see what you are doing.
3). You know how it is, on a sunny March day you go for a walk around a site you've worked on for a decade when a Large Tortoiseshell flies by! This was the shot I got as it zoomed past me.
2). When you twitch the Beluga on the Thames.
And finally, the winner is...
1). And finally, that time a gorgeous adult Honey-buzzard glided low over head. Surely this would have made a brilliant photo. WRONG! There's always a bloody pylon in the way!
I did actually do some terrestrial stuff on Jersey, although not that much compared to last time. With 10 minutes to go before leaving for the ferry, Karen spotted this Geranium Bronze, thanks to some help from Tim Ransom. A new butterfly for me. They have been turning up in this area of Gorey recently, but I thought I had missed my chance.
A few minutes earlier I thought I had found one when I saw the vertical streak on the underwing of this butterfly. But it was just a box-fresh Long-tailed Blue! I have only seen them once before back in 2014. Really pleased with these shots.
Nearby we saw a couple of Swallow-tails too, including this very scruffy individual.
Whilst searching window boxes and planters around Gorey for a Geranium Bronze, I spotted this Tebenna micalis. A smart little migrant that I have seen three times now, never at light.
The rather large Halictus scabiosae was fairly common in the few flower-rich areas I could find. A new species for me.Down at Ouaisne, I spotted a few of these Antigastra catalaunalis in the coastal grassland. Only seen this once before at Portland. And they let me run my MV out the back of the Undercliff Guesthouse again, the first night had two of these ladybirds in, Calvia decemguttata. Also in the trap there, I finally caught up with Portland Ribbon Wave. And a couple of Spanish Carpets, a Channel Islands speciality. No trip to Jersey is complete without an encounter with the ground bug, Horvathiolus superbus.
I didn't do as much spidering this time but it seems that this Zodarion fuscum was new to the Channel Islands from Ouaisne. And a quick look around Portelet Common produced the awesome hairball, Heriaeus mellotteei.
I didn't so much beetling, but we did see Cassida hemsiphaerica at Groznez. A quick search for this parasite of Ivy Bees came up trumps, Stenoria analis.
We did alright for herptiles too, with Agile Frog and this Spiny Toad spotted. A massive thanks to Tim Ransom for his help. It was another great trip. There's so much to see on Jersey! Why not give it a go?
On the 11th, 12th & 13th July, Pan-species Listing had a presence at our second Global Birdfair and we were again listing the whole event on the site and the nearby meadows, hedgerows and woodland. We were keen to beat our 2024 total of 641 species but I have only just this afternoon finished identifying all the specimens. Did we make it? You'll have to wait... The set up was the same as last year, Mike set up a laptop and screen on our stand so we could tick species off as we found them and Andy arrived on the Saturday. I ran six one hour bioblitzes each day at 10.00 am and 2.00 pm (it was much hotter than last year and they were tough) and as we'd done it last year, far more people knew to bring their records to us. Especially those camping and running moth traps.
Here's our stall, with this year's new recruit, Mark Colvin who helped out for all three days.What a legend! A huge thanks, Mark.
We had Gatekeeper and Humming-bird Hawk-moth in the stall before we had even set it up.
I ran a talk to kick things off and the first two bioblitzes were extremely hot, setting the scene for a sweltering weekend! It's great to see familiar faces at these events.
As per usual, I forgot to take photos of people or landscape shots for that matter - just close up shots of small invertebrates and moths in pots. The first trap we opened on the Saturday morning was really lively and I got a couple of lifers. Eudemis porphyrana is a Na species on apple (which is abundant there). I have been wanting to see this for years! As I close in on 10,000 species, I still find new species most days, averaging at more than one species each and every single day, even in places that don't at first glance seem that exciting. If you hit any site hard and for long enough, you'll find something exciting!
The moth list for the weekend was nearly double that for 2024, as was the butterfly list. Purple Hairstreaks were doing very well. Then the Saturday bioblitzes started and we met this star, Billy! Billy and his mum Clare came out on two of our bioblitzes and we were all gobsmacked at how good a naturalist Billy already is at age 10. Not only that, he is super keen and really good at finding stuff and spotting things that are different (all the photos of us out in the field here were taken by Clare). You know it's going to be a great hour when species #1 is Osprey!
Billy found some great stuff too. Including this Stoat skull!
We turned a log and Billy knew this was a Lesser Stag Beetle straight away! I don't think I knew this species until I was about 30. He is planning to join us and help us out even more next year, and we look forward to seeing him then and how much his pan-species list has grown by then! Keep up the great work!
The best way to do well in natural history is to start when you are young, so he's on a tried and tested route to end up doing something really exciting in the field as he gets older.
I wandered around a bit more this year and found a few more interesting areas. There are some big old trees here and many of the more interesting beetles are deadwood associates. Such as Platystomos albinus (Nb). So, did we beat last year's total of 641 species? Too right, we smashed it with 824 species! Here is the breakdown compared to last year's stats, along with an accumulative total for both 2024 and 2025 combined.
Look at that accumulative total! In just six days over two years in July we have recorded 1,036 species at Global Birdfair 749 of which are invertebrates. Of the 824 species we recorded this year, 395 were not recorded in 2024. This is not surprising though, it's amazing how many invertebrates you only ever find one of when surveying. Pan-species Listing can help you become a really great all-round naturalist but when we are considered collectively we can be formidable. A massive thanks to everyone who contributed records, especially Ben Rumsby and his dad (and for turning my trap on when I was off site) and also to Neil Phillips.
Next year I will be doing book signings, as it is due to be published on the 27th January 2026. You can pre-order it
here. You can sign up to pan-species listing
here for free!
And finally, here's all 824 species from those three days! I have highlighted the 17 invertebrate species with conservation status here in bold with their abbreviated status.
UDATE: I should add that we were not policing or verifying other people's records that were brought to us here, all species were accepted on face value and the records to be submitted directly by each observer. Away from moths and birds, most of the records were ours however. Also, thanks to Skev it seems that Monochroa palsutrella is a county first (we trapped this on an amazing tropical night on the 11th to 12th along with quite a few wanderers and lots of by-catch).
I am trying to finish my annual monitoring of the arable margins of the Norfolk Estate this weekend but the weather has been challenging. I shot up to Lee Farm for an hour yesterday afternoon at 3.30 pm after the storms dried out (to make this afternoon a more realistic possibility). This is year six of me monitoring the Peppering side (and year three of the Lee Farm side). This year has so far been exceptional and it is amazing just how any new species are still turning up.
So, here is what happened in just one hour of monitoring two arable margins of two fields yesterday. I recorded 103 field dets in that hour, not in itself exceptional. At about 26 minutes into the survey I looked in the net and saw this!!! Carpocoris purpureiepennis. A recent colonist and a lifer, with very few UK records so far. It was the first to be noted on the new pan-species listing website. I was pretty stoked with this, as there are very few shieldbugs in the UK I have not seen now. I carried on looking through the same sweep net sample, and saw this! The same species but showing how variable they are.
Here they are side by side.
They are pretty big bugs, and strikingly different to anything else. They also look pretty odd underneath.
I walked back and swept a third one, which was very soft and clearly teneral, showing confirmed breeding. Apart from a nymph of this genus recorded in Kent earlier this month, this seems to be the first confirmed breeding of this species in the UK according to Tristan Bantock. Now there are lots of other species in the genus on the Continent, so you really do need to check any Carpocoris carefully.
On the same margin, I turned one big flint and found Eratigena picta, a Nationally Rare house spider with very few records nationally. I had in this field last year and last month.
Other species seen in that hour included a nymph of a Vernal Shieldbug, Dark Green Fritillary, Sitochroa palealis and Cerceris quinquefasciata. It was an eventful hour. I particularly enjoyed this five-spotted ladybird, which is clear an aberrant Seven-spot Ladybird, but shows the importance of correctly writing common names.
But the other day at Peppering was also really exciting. The first margin had a Hornet Robberfly! The first one I have recorded up there in six years.Small Blues have colonised the margins this year with the new seed mix providing plenty of Kidney-vetch.
I found this scarce migrant moth, Loxostege sticicalis. A lifer and with less than 30 Sussex records. Sitochroa palealis and Evergestis extimalis were also new to the site. There were plenty of Clouded Yellows too.Then I nearly tripped over this huge Large Conehead, another recent colonist! This is my first for the site and my first West Sussex record. This is an impressive cricket.
I also heard a Whimbrel flying over and found Knapweed Broomrape.
Last month was exciting too! I stumbled on my first ever Small Marbled there.
As well as a couple of Bordered Straws! Who needs a moth trap when you can just stumble upon moths in fields like this?! It also shows just how much insect migration is happening this year (although I have recorded many more migrant insects here than anywhere else on the Downs this year).
These arable margins are all in place to help the Grey Partridge project up there, which is a fantastic initiative and is really working to help biodiversity across the board. The farmers and keepers are working together with ecologists to produce something really exceptional. I have recorded over 1,000 species on just 16 fields over the years (and have hardly mentioned here the host of native rare species, with over a 100 noted so far). This year, the margins have been incredibly exciting and diverse though. Now hopefully I can get up there this avo and finish the survey for the year...
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