Hibernation Time

Autumn migration seems to have dropped off a cliff in the last week as wet and cool conditions have become established knocking back the moths and birds. Hopefully there are still a few days left for some late visitors but overall we are getting ready for the long winter. 

The main feature recently have been good numbers of Redwing mainly feeding in the Yew tree.  The only moth in the trap last night was a single Brick. I'm going down to one trap from now on so I've converted the Robinson's MV to the double Actinic (Actinic are supposed to be better for the winter). 

There's not a lot to do outside in the garden either or the mini-farm, maybe just a bit of cleaning up (but conscious of all the larvae that might be hibernating in some of the un-tidy areas). 

Inside the house at the mini-zoo I cleaned everything up there too, while doing that Jacob calculated that we now have 70 pets! (mainly fish but also snails, crabs, Chameleons, Geckos, frogs, toads, a dog, pony, chickens etc). I need to do a species inventory on all that soon as our aim was to advocate the Anthropocene in all it's splendour by embracing the most widest concept of nature and biodiversity to include the peculiar human and pet symbiosis (its all evolution!)  

So basically there is bugger all to do so it's time to start the winter task list. This year that includes digitising all my personal notebooks to Ebird. The future is all big data systems and decision making based on that data so might as well surrender all my personal birding data to 'Eborg'. Who knows input into those systems could contribute to future social credit scores involved in future digital governance and helping to manage chances of obsolescence and it's consequences. Who knows surrendering data might be a stupid thing to do as in the future you might be able to sell it? I doubt that will come first- I suspect a great social division will come first as global government algorithms presumably will seek to identify where value (a definition of it) lies especially if climate chaos and ecological breakdown leads to tough decisions being made where resources are in limited supply. 

Also on the winter work list is creating more garden habitats (a large border for pollinators) and a pond if we can convince Bryan to give us permission. Also we will be doing more work on Thee Bryans in preparation for our Beddington Farmlands campaign which should be escalating (kicking off ) within the next twelve months (the legal deadline for the reserve completion is the end of 2023). On the Azores project there are the reports to catch up with and if time permits a write up of the Pelagic project. 

So even though we are retreating inside this hibernation will be extremely busy. 

My first notebooks (12 years old) - in the process of digitising the data 

Panther Chameleon (above) and Yellow-bellied Toad (below) - our aim was to have 100 species (plants and animals) in an indoor mini-zoo (indoor universe/ bedroom rainforest). We must be close so will reach that target this winter too. 

Lazlo the cockerel got unlucky as we were getting ready to free range him but because of bird flu the poor bugger is going to stay in solitary (we had to move him from the hens after he nearly pecked one of them to death). The Hens are laying at least one egg a day at the moment. Another winter job will be looking into how we can create a run for him which will have to be along the front drive. 

This Convolvulus Hawkmoth was found in Hackbridge back in September, it's presumably the first for the Wandle Valley Regional Park area (there are no Beddington Farmlands records). This winter will also be a time to wait for Irecord validations  and feedback as required and sort out some outstanding identifications from records gathered throughout this year. We submitted 4000 garden records to Irecord this year.