Sunday 17 December 2017

A new challenge


My challenge for 2018 is, I'm going to ease off on checking Waldridge and try and see more elsewhere but still local. Also Waldridge Fell has really sickened me with the amount of dogs now allowed to roam and do their mess everywhere. I was continually treading in it or being bothered by them and on occassion attacked. I do bump into a number of nice, considerate dog-walkers but they have now become the minority.  So I'm generally going to look for stuff elsewhere next year.

I need to improve on my overall pan-list (British list of all species - plants, insects, fungi, everything!) which is sorely lacking things with marina, maritima etc in the vernacular   After some thought I'm going to try for 2,000 species but all within VC66 (County Durham) and all within 100m  of the high water mark and not venturing more than 100m inland at the Tyne/Wear/Tees estuaries. It could get a bit frustrating not being able to count many of seabirds or cetaceans that are too far out but I've seen most of them I could expect to see so it will not be a big problem. I have no idea whatsoever if it's its possible to get 2,000 or if in fact it will be dead easy but certainly different from what I'm used to.

The more I think about it, the harder I think it is going to be but it's nothing ventured....


I finished the challenge of this year which was to see 1000 species in the same 1km square - Waldridge in my case. Below is a breakdown of my final totals