The Lyons Share

...1035! So it's took me a week to get around to typing up the list (this week has been hectic due to all this glorious high pressure). The final score has dropped a little and comes out at 1035. So, some logistics: overall we walked 14.2 miles, drove 63.9 miles, recorded a species every 1 minute and 13 seconds and had a bloody good laugh! We recorded four species new to the reserve network including the Welsh Oak Longhorn Beetle below and many many species new to that particular reserve but this needs more work and deserves a blog of its own. We have raised £906 (plus gift aid) which is fantastic and we are so grateful for the support we have had from 67 different people! Thank you so much!

I was surprised to see we didn't really tail off ALL DAY except after we hit 1000 and became a little more casual around the moth traps at Burton Pond.

And here is the break down of what we saw. Plants made up over a third of everything we saw at 424 species. Followed by beetles at 116 and moths at 113. Overall we recorded 460 species of invertebrate. What we didn't see was pretty interesting. You may have noticed we took a risk by avoiding the coastal plain entirely, so no wonder we are missing so many water birds. However, we didn't see: Fox, Speckled Wood, any of the three white butterflies or a Silver-Y. Big soldier beetles were thing on the ground too.

I wish there were more hours in the day but I have to go and count Field Crickets now. So i am sorry this is yet again a little rushed and there are likely to be many typos in the following list. I've taken a few things off I wasn't happy with, added a few things on that we didn't write down and the rest is down to over vigorous clicking of the counter. I give you the full 1035 species! Watch this space for a review of the rarer things we found on our travels. The number is the order in which each species was seen. We used a clicker to jeep track of this. 

If you've scrolled this far, here is a little teaser for what's coming next year. Put the 25th May 2018 in your diary. Challenge #1500species is coming!