Put the weekend of the 25th and 26th May (with 15th & 16th June as a back up), in your diaries. What time? I hear you say. ALL day, I say. Midnight to midnight. Make no mistakes, this going to hurt. As Douglas Adams said about the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster: It's effects are similar to having "your brains smashed in by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick". Change the lemon to a sweep net and the gold brick to your suction-sampler, and you're starting to get the idea. We are going to try and see and identify 1,500 species in a single day! This is the sequel to the challenge we set up and achieved in 2017, (that's me and Dave some 12 hours in, in 2017, above) you can read about that here.
I've been toying with the idea for a few years of trying this again but with a higher target this time BUT I have had years of back problems until this winter that put me off it So, we've been fleshing out the rules and if you want to do it in your region too, you are more than welcome, the more the merrier. The rules are:
- It has to be Saturday 25th May or Sunday 26th May. Go with the best day weather-wise in your area. If the weekend is a wash out, then the 15th & 16th June have been selected as a back up but there the only dates we are doing it. This is the only deviation from the rules we set up in 2017, to allow for some regional variation in weather. The following rules are all the same.
- It has to be from midnight to midnight in one 24 hour period of a single day.
- It has to be teams of two. No more. And you must see everything together (although you both don't have to ID it). This is to stop people splitting up into groups and to encourage some aspect of learning and camaraderie.
- We'd much rather you find a partner to work with but if you don't have any friends, then it's going to be a major handicap to do this solo, so we'll allow it if you have no choice. Scribing alone is going to be extremely intense. I really want to encourage people to find a partner though, as we have set this up as a two person challenge and we could always do a solo one another time.
- If one person ducks out due to tiredness, they can no longer record as soon as they leave you or until they return. Again to stop people splitting up.
- One vehicle. With as much equipment as you like. You can deploy traps but they can't be activated until midnight. So you could dig a few pitfalls in but they have to have lids on until midnight, set some moth traps up but you can't start them until midnight etc. Bare in mind though that you can only have one vehicle full of equipment with only two people in it. Other people can attend but not help in anyway, including with kit.
- Moral support in terms of food and drink bought in by other people is OK though.
- You can start and finish where you like and drive as much as you like.
- Supporters can't go and pin things down for you in advance. By all means, use your knowledge of your sites and local area, this will be vital but no one else can help.
- ALL records must be submitted to your local record centre afterwards.
- A running total must be kept. This is vital to stop you over/under counting but also to let you know where you are and if you have made it to the total!
- Carefully designed recording forms will be key to this but you're on your own for how they'll look.
- Leave a few hours at the end for microscope work if need be. All identifications though must be completed by midnight. After that it's game over. This is going to be very difficult to gauge.
- I'd also encourage everyone doing it to raise money for conservation charities in your area. I'm doing it for the Sussex Wildlife Trust and as yet, one undecided charity with a significant biological recording focus. Much of our route will be on SWT sites. So I'll start fund raising closer to the time so any support there will be much appreciated. I think a penny a species might be a good way to approach it.
Now I hope people don't think that's too strict. Just want to get the rules down so that people can then decide if and how they'll play it. It will be great to get a list of who is going to take part. You can a;ways do a different challenge if you don't want to play!
We know 1000 species is achievable but that was tough but we did that last time without suction sampler and without doing any microscope work, so I think 1500 species is doable.
I'm hoping to get the press, Springwatch and maybe even the Guinness Book of Records involved (we got on local BBC radio in 2017). I really doubt anyone has ever done anything like this before anywhere in the world, the closest being a bird race/bioblitz. Birds are going to be almost incidental in this. Provisionally we've said 75 species but it will be a waste of time to go looking for them, just wait for them to flush or fly over. The big gains will be in the inverts and plants.
Have I missed anything? I'm trying to be as inclusive as I can without making the rules too easy to flaunt. So any comments are welcome. Please let me know what you think and lets start putting some names down as to who exactly is involved.
- Graeme Lyons & Dave Green - In Sussex raising money for Sussex Wildlife Trust + one other charity.
Last year, I really got much better at capturing the records I make throughout the year. Now I wasn't trying to 'pan-species year list' here, I was just trying to record as much as possible. I had no idea what I had recorded until I added it up two days ago - 'blind listing' if you will.
The grand total was of 55,111 records of 4,505 species. That would put me in 22 place (out of 239 people) on the PSL rankings and is more than half of everything I have ever seen (currently 8919 species). Of these 4,505 species, some 3,267 were invertebrates, including 1025 beetles and 401 spiders. Yet there is no way I could have done that without being involved in PSL for the last 14 years. I suppose this will be the decade in my life I get the most done. I am pretty pleased with these totals. That's 151 records every day on average. The majority of my records are from Sussex and I have already synchronized some 40,000 records with Sussex Biodiversity Records Centre. Actually, my peak was on 28th April with 1,042 records made as part of City Nature Challenge.
It's not all been easy. Mum died in January which was really tough. For the last two winters too I have had to condense six months write up and microscope time into four months to leave time to write the book on pan-species listing (this winter that was 192,000 words, over 18 reports), which has meant very long days and very few days off. I am very grateful here for a thing called hyperfocus. I am 80,500 words into the book and the other unexpected thing this year, was discovering that I am both autistic and ADHD (AuDHD) as part of my research for the book.
That's a HUGE thing to take in and this is me publicly coming out about it for the first time. That's where the hyperfocus comes from then. In some ways, it helps explain my obsessive energy for natural history and my better-than-average-memory but it also sheds light on areas of my life that do not work as well as they should. Someone described it to me once as "having a brain like a Ferrari but with the brakes of a Nissan Micra." And for all those people who have criticised my spelling over my life, this explains why (and why it annoys me so much). I wonder how many other pan-listers are neurodivergent? I bet a fair few are specifically AuDHD too. "We're all on the spectrum somewhere" comments are not helpful BTW, it's usually people feeling awkward, trying to shut you down from talking about something that makes them feel uncomfortable and dismissing what you have discovered about yourself. Try getting a proper assessment and then we can try that conversation again, I guarantee it will be totally different. More on the pros and cons of neurodivergence another time.
Anyways, back to the recording. The bulk of these 55,111 records are from paid surveys, I had 93 field days in my schedule last year, slightly more manageable than previous years. Well, 12 of these days were from two voluntary surveys but I treat them the same in my schedule. I did however, do quite a bit of recording outside of work. I wasn't year-listing spiders, so have done very little recording after September but I did do away quite a bit, the idea being to research the book and meet as many pan-listers as possible that I had not yet met. I had week on the Isle of Wight in March, I did City Nature Challenge at the end of April/start of May, a trip to North Wales and Snowdonia at the end of May (Great Orme being the furthest north I went), the PSL field trip to Sandwich Bay at the end of June (furthest east) and then another week away to Dorset in September and a long weekend in Cornwall in October (furthest south and west). I recorded in 89 hectads throughout the year.
And here, at the Sussex level.
I use a rotation of ten notebooks, never taking one in the field that already has data in. I get this into Excel ASAP, then import this into my Recorder 6 database. Specimens wait until the winter. It works!
Here is the breakdown of the number of species in each group that I recorded in 2023, I was blown away by 1025 beetles! I really had no idea.
Late last year and early this year, the new pan-species listing website was launched, it really is rather good and there has never been a better time to get involved with the movement. Have a look here and get involved!
With the advent of the new website, it's very easy to start pan-species year-listing but a word of caution with that. Pan-species listing is a life long vocation to see as much as you can, over your whole lifetime. If you become too distracted with annual year-listing of everything, not only will you have missed the point of PSL, you could also find that your list doesn't grow as fast as it could and you could also start falling into the trap that so many birders do. Driving around the country to the same places each year to see the same species. What I would suggest is, go for it maybe once or say once a decade but don't start doing it every year OR do it blind like I have here. If I started ticking everything off the new website each year, not only would I lose loads of valuable time at the microscope, I'd start chasing the targets. Which would mean losing more time in the field where I should be finding things I had never seen before.
What better way to celebrate the madness of last year then, with a belated top ten of my wildlife highlights. Some of which, I never got around to writing on my blog. Now, I would have put the creation of the new PSL site as number one, but I wanted these to be about actual sightings and records.
1). I found a spider new to Britain on Brighton Beach!
And it was a jumper too! I found this with Karen while I was monitoring the shingle creation/translocation project by Brighton & Hove City Council. It's Heliophanus kochii. More here.
2). Snowdonia and the Great Orme
I climbed two mountains in two consecutive days and got seven new spiders, thank to Richard Gallon. But finally seeing Snowdown Lily was possibly the best memory of all. More here.
3). The PSL field trip to Sandwich BaySo many amazing memories and I really should write this up more in full now but I think cleaning up on shieldbugs and moths was the highlight. Here I include finally catching up with Greater-streaked Shieldbug and Restharrow. Thanks to Kev and Debs for organising.
4). A week in Dorset
Another holiday with a heavy PSL slant. Lots of good moths but finally seeing Scaly Cricket was the highlight, as was all the time on Portland. More here.
5). Trip to Cornwall in October to meet Sally, Finley and LouisAnother one that needs writing up BUT relocating a spider I had found ten year earlier, confirming it as Enoplognatha mandibularis and getting my 2nd spider new to Britain in 2023 (although it was 2013 originally). Unarmed Stick-insect was a close second.
6). Isle of Wight in March
A huge thanks to Mark Telfer for showing me around the island and for all the lifers! Yet my self found Edmundsella pedata at Freshwater Bay was my highlight. More here. 7). Finding Nephrotoma sullingtoniensis during City Nature Challenge I helped secure Brighton and Hove as the city that recorded the most species AGAIN in 2023 but to actually find one of the rarest UK flies with very few previous records and add to our understanding of this rare species phenology and life cycle. More here. I had a great time at this place, with my highest total of field dets of invertebrates for a day (298) and my largest overall day total of invertebrates (367). There were plenty of rare plants there too. More here. I was working on Moor Barton, and picked up a few nice things down there in the evenings and on my way back home. Finally catching up with Cliff Tiger Beetle, Marsh Fritillary and Lulworth Skipper were some of the highlights.
10). Surveying the Downland Estate for BHCC
I am working my way through a landscape scale biodiversity study of these incredible 5000 ha of farm and downland. So far, I have made 13,422 records of 1618 species. Including 1160 invertebrates (not all in 2023 mind). I thought I had found this weevil new to Britain but I was beaten to it, Aulacobaris caerulescens. It was new to East Sussex at least.
Today is species 200 in #speciesaday, a series of daily 'microblogs' that I have been doing on Twitter for the last 200 days. Why bother? Well, I haven't had much time to do longer blogs lately, and I really like the snappy format of being restricted to 280 characters. I also REALLY like playing with my maps. As my Recorder 6 database hits 252,611 records, the maps are starting to be quite meaningful. So here are the rules...
- I have to do it every day. So far so good, but this is the 3rd time I have attempted this. Don't think I got this far before though...
- It must be something I have seen and have a photo of.
- If I have a meaningful story to tell about the distribution of my records, I will. Including how many records I have for it, etc.
- I'll include as much info as I can, including conservation statuses.
- No repeats.
This means I need to keep track of what I have featured so far. I was surprised to see that out of 200 species, beetles were winning with 63 species featured and spiders were a long way behind at 37 species. I do tend to feature whatever I am writing about at the time for work, so they are often out of season. That will change come the summer! This does mean there is a tendency to feature rarer things, as that's what I usually photograph and have to write about in reports. In fact, 117 out of 200 species featured had some form of conservation status. My mean number of records for feature species is 41.8.
Will I ever run out species? Well, I add new species to my PSL list at a rate of about 1.2 to 1.5 species a day and this has been consistent for well over a decade. So I doubt it! But I might run out of species that make good photos. Not any time soon though!
Here is today's effort featuring the photo from the top of this post.
1/3 #speciesaday no. 200 is Pardosa paludicola. Nationally Rare & Endangered. Massive, near-black wolf spider, speckled with golden hairs. Known from less than 10 UK sites. Early adult period, although females later. White egg sacks, like a Pirata.
2/3 I have 16 records from two sites. 15 from Butcherlands next to Ebernoe in West Sussex and one male from a site in Hants. Both could be considered as pragmatic/hybrid rewilding projects (although this is likely coincidence).
3/3 At Butcherlands, as of 2022 it had spread to six fields after I first discovered it there in 2016.
I do sometimes put these on Facebook too but it really goes from a 10 minute thing to a 30 minute thing if I do this. So best to get on Twitter to see these daily updates.
I went out on Monday, my first time outside this year (other than the Northern Waterthrush twitch - AKA, shivering in a ditch for five hours on the one day it didn't show well - one of the worst natural history experiences of my life, saved only by bumping into Harry Witts, then dipping the Canvasback then getting detoured the wrong way around the M25). I really needed a day out wandering around a good site with no targets in mind, just the chance of a few good spiders. Typically, I was recording across taxonomic groups but focusing on spiders. I tend to head to the same sites for casual recording, so thought I should try and explore a bit more of Broadwater Warren, as I was last up there in 2020. Now, I did a lot baseline surveying on this site 17 years ago when I worked at the RSPB (but I wasn't really into spiders then), so I am very fond of this site. I spent a bit more time on the open heath on Monday, although I gravitated towards the Sphagnum later.
It didn't take long to find a new site and hectad record for Rhysodromus histrio (above) by sweeping mature Heather. Fantastically camouflaged against the Heather foliage, this really is a heathland obligate - quite a rare thing amongst spiders. Nationally Scarce and restricted in Sussex to the West Sussex heaths and Ashdown Forest. With all the Heather being restored at Broadwater, it's not surprising that this has turned up. I found a second animal a few 100 m away, so good to see it established there. I nearly stood on a Woodock and also found a few Notiophilus quadripunctatus carabids on the scrapes (also a Nationally Scarce species). I thought I had an exciting liny with this little critter, but it was just Gongylidiellum vivum. You can see how small it is - that's an old Heather flower. I headed to the bog.
One of the commonest spiders in the Sphagnum in the bog, I must have seen about 15 or so, was Hahnia pusilla. A tiny spider that I didn't photograph, another Nationally Scarce species. That's more than I have seen in my life, I first recorded it there in early 2020 but only remember seeing one. The other really common specie there, is the money spider Centromerus arcanus. Ashdown Forest and Broadwater Warren are real outliers for this predominantly north-western species. Check out the SRS page for it, no species illustrates better how the High Weald is an 'upland island' in the south east. I also forgot to photo that species too. Then I sieved Euryopis flavomaculata, which is quite the looker (photo below). Yet another Nationally Scarce species. 
With my muscles atrophied from four months of sitting at the desk, I was exhausted. Got stuck in some deep Sphagnum and decided to head back. There are some tussocks under Alder carr I remembered but it was hard to access and disappointing suction sampling them. Walking back to the car, I spotted a large patch of lush Sphagnum under pines. I have noticed that when sieving Sphagnum, big thick clumps of Sphagnum palustre are particularly good. I also have a rule; if I see something worth sampling, I have to sample it. It payed off. It almost always pays off. Loads more Hahnia pusilla, Centromerus arcanus, a Heather Shieldbug and an exciting little golden money spider. Little golden money spiders in Sphagnum are almost always exciting. Clearly a Centromerus, I looked at it as soon as I got in.
It was clearly Centromerus cavernarum. Nationally Rare, Near Threatened and new to East Sussex. The last Sussex record was by Dick Jones in 1998 at the very far end of West Sussex. I had hoped to spot this in Beech litter in the Chilterns late last year and have looked for it at many different sites in a casual way, but it was not on my radar for Sphagnum under pines! I love this genus, it's the 9th species I have seen in the genus and my 542nd UK spider! Being my first new species of 2024, my target is to get to at least 550 species by the end of the year! Here is the spider's rather lovely epigyne.
How much things change in just three months! It only seems like five minutes ago we were discussing trialling putting the UK Species Inventory onto BUBO. It soon became evident that maintaining your list in BUBO and then adding your total on to the old BRC PSL website was just never going to work in the long run. So we started thinking, could we rebuild the website inside BUBO? If we could, it would need it's own identity though, to stop it getting lost in BUBO and it would need its own web address. We also got a slick new logo from Mark Lawlor, isn't it great?!
So after much work (mostly from the guys at BUBO I should add - but it's certainly taken up a lot of my time too), here it is: https://panspecieslisting.com. You don't need a new login ID and password, just use your existing one from BUBO and everything you have added will be there. They have done a fantastic job, it looks and feels great and does what we dreamt about when we first came up with the idea of a PSL website over 10 years ago but until now, were not able to do.
The great thing is, it's run internally, so it will be easier to update and evolve than it ever was before. It's still free but it does cost to run it, so do please make a donation if you can.
So what next for the BRC site?
Well, we'll keep it running for maybe the rest of the year, to give those a chance who have not added their lists on to the new site, to do so.
I will no longer be accepting new accounts to the old site. All new pan-species listers should go to https://panspecieslisting.com and sign up there.
Once you are happy to say goodbye to the old site, please write something along the lines of "As of 13th January 2024, my pan-species list is now up to date on https://panspecieslisting.com and I am no longer updating my list here" in the comments section of your profile.
A huge thanks to David Roy, John van Breda, Biren Rathod, Charles Roper and Bob Foreman as well as Biological Records Centre and Sussex Biodiversity Record Centre for their help and support over the last decade. It's a bit sad saying goodbye to the old site as I have pretty much used it every day for a decade but not that sad - as the new one is so awesome!
What's different on the new site?
We haven't gone for a like-for-like rebuild of the old site. Many of the features of the BRC site were not well used (especially those that emulated social media) so we haven't tried to replicate those. Energy has been focused on making the areas that were well used, much better.
Obviously, the huge difference is that you can now tick off all UK species, see other people's lists and use all the neat functions like 'targets' and 'blockers' but most of you will be used to this already, as it's been happening on BUBO for the last three months. See some of my earlier posts on this if you are not up to date.
We have updated the the 'Rankings News' section on the front page of the old site (on the new site, now called 'Listing Milestones'). I think it looks great, it doesn't have ranking changes this time, but more detail on progression through the taxonomic groups. And those grey boxes whenever you hit a multiple of a thousand? Yeah. We kept those, in all their glory.
We have new summary stats, showing the total number of species that all listers collectively have listed (currently 21,821) and the total number of listers and lists too.
We've updated the 'about' info (here), included an updated section on 'guiding principles' (a rebranding of what we used to call 'the rules').
That's enough of me waffling on, go and have a look around!
This just leaves one question. What exactly does happen when you reach 10,000 species? I have no idea, and it's a tightly guarded secret by the person who coded it. Here are some suggestions:
- The site automatically orders you a cake.
- Chris Packham offers to do all your data entry or all your washing up for a year (your choice).
- David Attenborough comes around your house, impersonates your favourite song bird for one hour, then awards you an oversize medal that you MUST wear every day for the rest of your life.
- You get this message: "You have completed pan-species listing. Your list will now be wiped and you must start again, or get a new hobby".
- Some variation on the spectacular grey box, maybe with a gold frame and a fanfare of trumpets.
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