Wednesday 15 July 2020

The Lizard, Day Two, The Eden Project

Had a fantastic day at the Eden Project yesterday that deserves no introduction. Had a Hummingbird Hawkmoth in the wild flower banks down from the car park but unfortunately it clouded over after that so not many inverts out. 

Crested Wood Partridges running around the Rain forest biosphere were interesting, amazing to think that in the Anthropocene in addition to antropocentric habitats such as farmland and plantations plus introductions, naturalisations, re-introductions and escapes that typify the semi-natural environment now (which I'm reminded of every night by the hundreds of Ring-necked Parakeets flying past my window and the roosting Canada Geese back at the Beddington obs) there are thousands of species, thousands of miles from their native geographic area within biospheres, aquariums, aviaries, safari parks, wildlife parks, collections and zoos across the world mashing up the natural biozones and blurring all the natural lines. A naturalist in the C21st should really be paying attention to this phenomenon and question what we mean by biodiversity- how many species on the Cornwall pan-species list if we actually include every single species which is actually in Cornwall? Nature itself presumably couldn't care less, how or why Crested Wood Partridges are now living in Cornwall, it's just a very curious twist in the evolutionary tale, a garden of Eden not created by God but created by Humans, an Eden of pockets of wow! in a cascading escalating chaos.  




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