The 2020 PSL challenge

In 2017 I set myself the challenge to identify 1000 species in the UK within that year. I thought it would be quite a stretch, but ultimately it proved relatively easy as I passed the 1000 figure in early July of that year. I finished the year on 1150 species, as I kind of lost the motive to push on towards a higher total. The last two years have not seen me set myself any specific challenges, but my Pan Species Listing has gone from strength to strength (or is that from rampant curiosity to full blown madness?) with me noting over 1600 species in 2018 and over 1800 species this year, with my British life list now standing at 3111. Without the help of a large number of individuals I wouldn’t have got anywhere near these types of numbers, so thanks to all those that have advised, assisted, suggest and corrected me over the past three years.

Whilst virtually all my bird records are officially reported via Birdtrack, I’m very aware that my reporting of other taxa is piss poor. In an attempt to improve my reporting of all other taxa I looked to set a challenge, for 2020, that measured the reporting rather than simply identifying species. I did toy with the idea of the 1000 for 1km challenge – where you look to record 1000 species within a single 1km OS grid square. Aderyn shows 758 species recorded for my home 1km square – ST0996, as of 24 December 2019. A large number of these are species I’ve reported via iRecord, but looking through the list of species I noted a number of birds species missing – 10 species - and there are no bird records since 2015. I know that the local biological records centre access Birdtrack, so my Birdtrack records are available for their database.  I think the reason why my records are “missing” from Aderyn is that most of my Birdtrack sites are located in two, or more, 1km grid squares, so Aderyn cannot list my Birdtrack records to any particular 1km square – and in a few cases, probably can’t allocate to any specific 10km grid square, as I’ve sites that are in two 10km squares.

With the recorded species number for the square sitting at just over 750 species, the 1000 in 1km challenge would see me add useful records to the database. However, with my home square having a list of some 750 species, I wondered what the neighbouring squares had listed. A quick play with Aderyn showed those 8 squares raged from 509 to just 87 species. Perhaps a 100 in 1km challenge in any of those would be more valuable. Whilst I think I could manage the 1000 in 1km, my thought process got round to thinking about looking to get all 9 squares up to the 1000 species mark. A massive ask and something I don’t think I could do within a single year. But…… a plan is hatched…. A target. To get all 9 squares up to 1000 species in the next two years.

For the record the current (as of 24 December 2019) species totals for each of the squares stands at:

ST0895 – 272

ST0896 – 509

ST0897 – 87

ST0995 - 452

ST0996 (home square) – 758

ST0997 – 152

ST1095 – 172

ST1096 – 245

ST1097 – 273