Since I now live somewhere completely different, I'll try the same again for 2014 and see how I get on. The ground rules (lightly edited from last time) are:
- The area is everything in walking distance of home.
- Air-breathing vertebrates and butterflies only. Fish are too dull and hard to see, and invertebrates are too numerous and hard to identify. Amphibians at a non-air-breathing stage count, but will probably also be hard to identify.
- Domesticated animals, including homo sapiens, don't count, but escaped or released animals do (e.g. pheasants).
- Dead animals don't count, even though that's the only way I'm likely to find a hedgehog.
- Photos to be provided where possible, but it still counts if I can't get a photo.
- Hearing but not seeing does not count. (So much for scoring any owls.)
- Updates to be posted behind a cut tag for the benefit of those people who don't want to download large numbers of blurry thumbnails.
- Herring gulls, lesser black-backed gulls, yellow-legged gulls and Caspian gulls are different species. Whether or not I can tell the difference is another matter.
As before, here's a poll for you to guess how many I'll see. A few points to bear in mind:
- I'm now in the middle of the Kent countryside
- But farmland is actually not very biodiverse, less so than suburbia
- But there's plenty of woodland nearby as well, and we have a big garden now
- But there's no open water, so a lot less waterfowl and seagulls than last time
- And I'll mostly be accompanied by a large and boisterous carnivore who will scare off some of the wildlife
How many species will I spot?
0
0(0.0%)
5
0(0.0%)
10
0(0.0%)
15
0(0.0%)
20
0(0.0%)
25
0(0.0%)
30
0(0.0%)
35
2(10.5%)
40
1(5.3%)
45
1(5.3%)
50
0(0.0%)
55
0(0.0%)
60
1(5.3%)
65
0(0.0%)
70
0(0.0%)
75
2(10.5%)
80
4(21.1%)
85
2(10.5%)
90
1(5.3%)
95
0(0.0%)
100
5(26.3%)
