Ten years ago I started working in the ecology department at the RSPB where I worked alongside some great naturalists and made many life-long friends. Matt Self, Malcolm Ausden, James Cadbury, Mark Gurney and of course, Mark Telfer. On the 6th August 2003, I went out into the field with Mark Telfer to Elmley Marshes on the Isle of Sheppey, north Kent to look for a very rare RDB1 beetle, the Pride of Kent Emus hirtus. I knew VERY little about beetles back then so the enormity of seeing one of these beasts almost as soon as we got out of the car was mostly lost on me. We then spent more than four hours searching cow pats for another individual on the hottest day of the year so far but to no avail. I even followed the back end of a herd of cows so we could search the freshest pats but we must have just been in the right place at the right time.
There are some old records in the SxBRC database for this species but it's been a very long time indeed since someone has reported one in Sussex. So if you see something that looks like a cross between a devil's coach horse and a bumblebee hanging a round a cow pat, you may just have seen the Pride of Kent in Sussex. Many thanks to John Walters who took this photo of the very same specimen back in the day before it was released back into the wild...
P.S., don't confuse the Pride of Kent with the Maid of Kent. The Maid of Kent is a little larger, is always found near water and lacks the golden pubescence...
Having just spent two hours keying out two small dung beetles, I just came across this angry
blog post about Mark Telfer's article on pan-species listing and the blog author's
response to the comments he received and felt like I needed to make a few things clear too. Just in case any readers are not entirely with me on why I am currently listing everything and trying to get to 4000 species by the end of the year, the reasons are as follows:
- I've been studying natural history for some 20 years now and as my knowledge base grows, it gets harder to remember what I have seen without some framework that is required to keep learning. Listing helps this. It also points to the areas where I know less and allows me to target my natural history. It gets me to new sites and enriches the whole experience. I want to be the most effective naturalist and conservationist that I can be, I can't do this if I am ignorant.
- Life is short and I want to experience as much of the natural wonders this country has to offer before I die. I try and photograph most new things I see too, another resource that is valuable to conservation as I give all my photos to Sussex Wildlife Trust.
- The more you know, the greater the range of work you can do in the field of conservation and help put something back in. If everyone only sticks to the easy to identify groups, we will end up in a situation where there might one day be no coleopterists or lichenologists for example. If we don't know something is there, how can we possibly help to conserve it if the need arises?
- Listing for me evolved with this blog, the two feed each other (I was doing neither this time last year) and the listing ensures the blog is full of new things and that my enthusiasm is maintained. I get the impression people are not put off by the listing theme, in fact people seem to like it.
- It's fun. I am actually enjoying natural history more than I ever have which I didn't think was possible. Having an arbitrary goal that is dauntingly far away means I am having to get out there a lot. I am seeing things I have always wanted to see that I just have never got around to seeing (and might not ever have seen if I hadn't started this challenge) as well as things I didn't even know existed!
Anyway, here's some more statistics: Natural history is more than a job and a hobby to me, it's a calling. I have studied wildlife for as long as I can remember, worked in conservation for the last decade, have given up months of my spare time, ran dozens of lectures and courses, helped conserve countless species, observed and identified 3107 of those species, (the two dung beetles were ticks) walked thousands of miles of transects, helped dozens of people with their ID skills and started a blog that within 9 months has had over 25,000 page views and I love every minute of it. I'm 32, I have 15 piercings, 6 tattoos and dreadlocks. I'm no anorak. Sadly there are people out there that get fixated on the word listing and don't look beyond that to the reasons for doing it. Wildlife in this country will be a tiny bit better off for my listing efforts both directly (in the form of records) and indirectly (by expanding my knowledge and sharing it with others).What's the problem?
I would have been within my rights to have posted an angry comment under Dylan's article but I don't see what that would gain. I blog for fun in my spare time, I don't want to be drawn in to an aggressive debate when I should be enjoying myself. I have not had a single negative comment on this blog and I would like to keep it that way. Consider this my response then, I want to show how this is nothing more than a wholly positive endeavour and I hope this has come across in this post. I know of two people I have helped inspire to put their lists together already from this blog, one who is only 17 and has already seen 1017 species! I bet he will be working in conservation in a few years. How could anyone put a negative spin on that? Thanks for following!
Oh, the photo by the way is the Fly Orchid fooling the wasp Argogorytes mystaceus which I took at Wolstonbury Hill in 2008.
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