On the road

Spent the last couple of days on the road, firstly in London for work and then a day on Sheppey today. Visited Beddington Farmlands yesterday evening and met up with Zach, highlight was a Little Owl in Beddington park.

Ebird lists from Sheppey today, Leysdown area here and Shellness and Swale NNR here. As always excellent birding in this area, today's top of the pops was a first-winter Caspian Gull (a personal Sheppey tick), 10 Bewick's Swans (five adults and five young), 86 Russian White-fronted Geese and quality winter  scenes comprising thousands of waterbirds. 

First-winter Caspian Gull (above and below) 

Bewick's Swans (above) and White-fronts and Greylags (below) 

The smallest geese and the largest ducks- not much in it size wise

Brents (above and below) 

Acleris action

Had a couple of Acleris sp in the moth trap at the Old Vic which I've had a go at identifying using a book (! almost forgot what one was!) -The Common Micro-moths of Berkshire by Nick Asher (an outstanding piece of work). I'm not sure if my CMR team will have any of my putative identifications though and they will probably insist that these Acleris go for gen dent.

It's half term and we have discovered a fresh hell - Fairytale Farm, where we took the kids yesterday. It will never cease to amaze me the weird and wonderful captive biodiversity in these family attractions- this time a breed of pig, the Mangalista which is a wild boar hybrid. Also secretly learnt the meaning of some dinosaurs scientific names.

Had a quick meeting with Nature Metrics here this morning looking into getting some e-DNA kits to help identify some of the species on our project sites which basically will never get round to identifying by sight such as micro-diptera and coleoptera and other micro organisms. That will be interesting to give that a go. They have a turn around time of 8 weeks which sounds good and can help across our projects here, in the Azores and Bulgaria. 

My only other experience with DNA testing (apart from kids!) was when we sent a sample of a presumed Amur Stonechat that I found at Medmerry in 2020  off to Martin Collinson . After many months of of waiting they said they couldn't extract any DNA and on twitter one of Martin's team said 'you get what you pay for'.  I would have been happy to pay and wouldn't really expect not to in a lot of cases so not sure what the attitude was for.  I don't actually agree with the assumption that anything free is poor quality either as there is a lot of outstanding quality work in natural history that people produce for free and open source too. Basically I think anything you are producing should be the best possible quality whether freely or commercially distributed (we produce both here and there are often very good reasons why something should be free, subsidised or commercial)- what's the point of doing anything if you are not going to do it properly.  Anyway hopefully dealing with a commercial company will be a better experience and worth paying for. I recommended they get into charging birders for quick turn around DNA identifications and they said they will look into it- certainly a small niche there- I would happily have paid £150 or so to get an eight week response on that Stonechat. Also lastly on this tangent, when the 2020 BB rare bird report came out they even missed the Stonechat record out (Collinson and BB are same crowd of British birding traditional establishment). It wasn't even down as an Eastern Stonechat and when I chased up they said it was a mistake and they lost the record.  Good job I don't find many rare birds in Britain because in my limited experience it's a shambles. Roll on commercial DNA  birding results and the  Ebird and Ebird validators takeover:-) 

I've gone for Sallow Button, Acleris hastiana (above and below) based on the lack of any prominent scale turfs on the wings (just a tuft on 'shoulder') and the rather distinctive white-headed brown morph. Who knows- will see what Dave says. Update 200223- yes I got this one right- thanks Dave. 

I've gone for  Vibrunum Button, Acleris schalleriana (above and below) on this one based on the three oblique rows of scale tufts, one near the base and two more either side of half way. If I understand correctly this time of year most Acleris in this area will be either schalleriana, cristana, hastiana or the completely unidentifiable ferrungana/notana pair. Update 200223- no I got this one wrong- from Dave 'Not hastiana, but it is difficult to be sure what it is, Peter. I think it could well be kochiella, but ferrugana/notana is also a possibility'

I almost missed it

Satellite (above) and Small Brindled Beauty (below)- new for years

Kuhli Loach- a recent addition to the mini-zoo

The Mangalista Pig at Fairytale Farm 

Ultra-low Carbon Birding

A very pleasant morning in the garden, the first day of Early Spring here with the first 'moth night' of the year, lots of birds being territorial and the first Snowdrops out. Ebird list here

Moths included 16 individuals of 6 species including Spring Ushers, Pale Brindled Beauties, Early Moth, Dotted Border, March Moth and Chestnut. 

In the afternoon we took the kids to Crocodiles of the World, where they breed critically endangered crocodiles and other Herpetofauna. 

Meanwhile this weekend back at our home mini-zoo we added a new species (now on 87 different species of 'pets'). Not only a new species but a new order- Urodela (Salamanders & Newts). 

The garlic that Bryan planted before he passed away is growing in the mini-farm and the chickens are now laying up to 3 eggs a day. 

Male Mallard- not an easy garden bird to photograph as often just an irregular fly over. A group of six were flying around today, perhaps the start of the group courtship flights they do

Pale Brindled Beauty, 7 of these this morning 

Spring Ushers (above and below). Quite variable with a pale one above and a darker one below. The most heavily marked individual flew off mid-photo shoot. 

March moth 

This leucistic Sharp-ribbed Newt (a Spanish species) seemed to settle into the Palludarium pretty well

The critically endangered Cuban Crocodile at Crocodiles of the World 

The first snowdrops- plenty of other spring flowers were out in our London gardens in the week

The February mini-farm - will certainly miss this place when we have to move out later this year

I called this blog post Ultra-low Carbon Birding because it seems carbon is the priority in birding at the moment and there appears to be an importance of rebranding everything  as carbon related . I read in the latest edition of British Birds that Low Carbon Birding (the book) was awarded first prize in the BB/BTO book of the year and won over Vagrancy by Alex Lees  & James Gilroy and Gulls of Europe etc by Peter Adriaens et al. The fact that a relatively unknown birder (completely unknown to me until recently and I've been birding for 40 years) could whip up an easy read that is awarded a higher accolade than two complex birding masterpieces, the result of a lifetime of dedicated work by brilliant minds collating data from thousands of birders across the world, is testament to how important the climate and ecological emergency is. 

I couldn't agree more which is why I like to go that extra mile and concentrate on Ultra-low Carbon Birding (formerly known as garden birding, garden wildlife watching and self sufficiency ) rather than low-carbon birding (formerly known as local patching) and mitigate my regional and global sustainable birding (high carbon birding that supports local birding communities and birding resources around the world) by aiming to have a Nature Positive and Carbon Negative personal footprint by land acquisition (currently directly own only 2 acres but aiming to buy more), investing in carbon markets, supporting local and sustainable businesses and communities, supporting conservation-NGOs (local, national and global) investing time and money in advocacy for local nature conservation (mainly Beddington Farmlands a 400 acre carbon sink) and running a business that manages over 600 private gardens, nature reserves and public green spaces within a net zero and net biodiversity gain framework. A lifestyle approach I like to call Non-stop or High Impact Birding through our vehicle LITTLE OAK GROUP. Fundamental to that is being based from an ultra-low carbon homestead and the backyard wildlife experiences and off grid capabilities that provides. 

A day in London

Had an interesting couple of days in London. In addition to doing Beddington Farmlands, Mitcham Common Gunsite and Watermeads in the Wandle Valley and Staines Res on the way back to Oxford I also got to see my 74 year old religious zealot mother get intoxicated after she accidentally consumed something. Ebird list from Beddington here. A few picture highlights below: 

First-winter Caspian Gull at Beddington- not such the regular speciality it once was there as the gull numbers are now much reduced 

Linnets at Beddington 

Male and female Goldeneye at Staines

The best view I got of the Lesser Scaup at Staines (enlarged below). 

It's actually a bit of a novelty coming back to London to see these everywhere.

Good work by Zach and Charlie at the farmlands opening up the viewing from the southern lake hide

The 'Wet Grassland'- this will never be wet grassland I suspect but still a nice bit of scrape. Valencia/Viridor/KKR have kicked the can down the road further by delaying the 'watering down of the ecological ambitions revisioning submission' to the end of March. All of this (the Beddington Farmlands Project) is legally obligated to be completed and opened to the public by December 31st 2023. Quite a conflict appears to be a near certainty. 

GREEN FINANCE

I've added a couple of links to the Biding and Nature Politics section (viewable in the web version) of this blog.  I've added CarbonCredits.com and the Green Finance Institute (here) in addition to the links to Inkcap, Stock brokers, Nature Political Commentators and Green Politics Satire. Dieter Helm and the Green Finance Institute also have excellent podcasts on Spotify. 

Any regular reader of this blog will know how excited I am about the nature finance revolution. 30 years ago I was studying Environmental Science at University (Plymouth and Exeter) where multi-metric economies were first envisioned and  it has taken that long for these ideas to actually appear into real life (apart from tiny test tube rebel cells like our own Little Oak Group). I'm not sure it has dawned on everyone yet that this actually heralds the beginning of the end of Fundamental Capitalism as limits to growth are reached (expressed in the declaration of the climate and ecological emergency) and the costs associated with the externalities of Capitalism (including climate and ecological breakdown) are beginning to be subsumed into economic considerations, manifested in the adoption of the Polluter Pay principles and Public Money for Public Goods which have been transposed into initiatives and new legislation such as the Environment and Agricultural Acts through various vehicles such as the Net Biodiversity Gain Framework, Net Zero, the Sustainable Farming Initiative, ELMs and Carbon Credits. The government advisory body, the Natural Capital Committee headed up by Dieter Helm (an Oxford University lecturer aka the father of natural capital) were largely responsible for these changes and that committee has now been merged into the Office of Environmental Protection (OEP). It's a new system- basically at test stage.     

The next stage of this revolution is the most exciting for naturalists. Much of the system change so far has been about Carbon but there is still a long way to go before we have something similar to a tradeable biodiversity credit (although Net Gain has started this ball rolling) in the way we now have expanding tradeable Carbon credits and carbon markets. In a way the Climate Crisis is being addressed (by introducing carbon metrics) but the Ecological part of the Climate and Ecological Emergency is still largely un-resolved. All our bird and moth recording and all other citizen science will be going into developing a meaningful biodiversity credit which will be scaled up using e-DNA methods (e.g. where one water sample can tell you all the species in the water body as all animals leave traces of their DNA) and extrapolative modelling. There really does appear to be some light at the end of the tunnel now for biodiversity loss as a biodiversity metric/credit is the beginning of a biodiversity price which will eventually be reflected in the cost of goods basically pushing all consumers to buy regenerative goods and to drive unsustainable and value extraction corporations to extinction. Our system is currently unsustainable which literally means it cannot be sustained- it will (it already clearly is!) absolutely and certainly collapse (probably slowly but surely) but fortunately we now have a safety net developing and a new direction roughly worked out. The financial opportunities in all this are immense- the most powerful people in the future will be those who embrace this as early as possible.

It's interesting for me to see my first one of these Foresight Annual Report. I generally scour through Corporate Annual Reports to pick out their green washing and lies but this is the first one I've ever seen (maybe I'm a bit behind on all this) that is a Natural Capital Company listed on the stock market. As 95% of capitalist start ups fail within the first two years it will be interesting to see what the survival rate of this new age of Stock market listed companies will be. Certainly interesting times with immense new opportunities. How the unsustainable collapse and the sustainable rebuild inter-relate will be extremely interesting. 

Interestingly a reader of this blog messaged me recently commenting that I had come a long way from my Extinction Rebellion point of view (I was a co-founder of a local cell in 2019 and was a direct action activist). However as I pointed out, from my perspective that campaign fulfilled it's objectives- locally we got a Climate and Ecological Emergency declared in Sutton and globally the Climate and Ecological Emergency moved to the top of the political agenda and mainly since COP26 the Green Finance Revolution has started. The campaign worked and has started systemic change. I know it is not as fast and deep as some hoped but it certainly worked and got the ball rolling.  I agree the fact that it is not as fast and deep as it should be means that the collapse part of the collapse and rebuild of society will be much greater than theoretically needed (although the human condition has its natural limits which does not heed theory or rationality- basically we have to learn and change the hard way)  There's no point in continuing with disruptive direct activism when you've got what you wanted out of it. We were using the campaign locally to elevate Beddington Farmlands to the top of the local political agenda and that worked perfectly for us. I also got myself exiled from the local community which is a perfect position to be in for the final stage of the Beddington Farmlands campaign- an exiled rebel coming out of exile to help win the final battle is perfect for this story. A win that will almost certainly involve the new nature conservation system that has appeared since my exile- hopefully we will see an at scale test of this new system and what happens when it faces a disaster capitalist multi-billion dollar asset management company. Should be fun!  

So I have not in the slightest come a long way from my XR point of view, XR was part of this journey which we are building success on success. XR as an organisation itself (XR was actually a campaign of a larger well funded organisation called Rising UP) have also pledged to end public disruption for 2023. XR always said it was the alarm. The alarms have sounded and stopped- the bombs of Fundamental Capitalist Economic Collapse are now falling and the Sustainable Armies are aligning. 

The Old Vicarage

I've said it before and I'll say it again- I am no fan of winter. It's like a mini-death. 

The garden moth list is on five with Twenty-plume Moth in the house. I put the trap out a couple of times this year and totally blanked. The only moths I've had have been in the house or near the house lights. I missed an evening last week when mild conditions produced the best night of the year for local moth-ers and now the night temperatures have plummeted again. 

Been doing more Garden Birding aka Ultra-low Carbon Birding (the only thing that Carbon zealots should be doing if you follow their logic). Yesterday's garden Ebird list Here. Highlights recently have included a Peregrine, the usual Buzzard on patrol from the Spruce, a few winter thrushes and up to five Coal Tits around. Most of my birding last year was in the garden (137  checklists out of  a year's 307 checklists were garden entries and I didn't do a checklist every time I did garden birding either)  I ended up on 81 species and managed to map out a good estimate of the breeding bird population and get some seasonal trends. Bar charts for 2022 here . All time garden list is now on 95 Here.

The only good thing about winter is the time it provides for non-field work and we have made good progress this winter especially with the mini-zoo. Now on 84 species of 'pets' (includes all species within totally controlled environments including tank plants and live foods) so slowly getting to our 100 target.

I'm also supposed to be writing reports and papers too but it's increasingly difficult to find the motivation when there's digital platforms and resources that can produce similar results. The benefit of that is that it makes more time for field work , diversification and private work. The WEF said recently that not only do any of us have a job for life anymore, nor a life where we might have five careers but the future will be where we all have five jobs at the same time. I can relate to that, not in a enslaving World Domination way but in a liberating way. I started off just Birding and it was a life's work- learning identification from books, doing field work and reporting and paper writing etc. Now with the help of the global hive mind and platforms it's possible to get several natural history plates all spinning at the same time and to a reasonable standard (enough for a citizen scientist to contribute valuable data and records). Replacing reports with Ebird bar charts, papers with blog posts and digitising past records, papers and reports basically saves enormous amounts of time and integrates everything into a searchable 'platform of platforms' making it possible for individuals to diversify and concentrate more on assembling systems. In that way all of us will have the opportunity to create our own tailor made worlds around us (or become enslaved in the dark WEF's matrix).   

Like millions of other minions I've been playing around with ChatGPT. Apparently according to 'Dave'- our collective global AI consciousness-  a Caspian Gull can be identified by it's deep wing beats, an Azores Gull by its 'kaw kaw kaw' call, Beddington Farmlands is an SSSI  and I am a leading wildlife artist of my generation, so it's clearly full of bolloxs at the moment. The fact that this AI app can be used to write passable scientific papers shows how little originality there is in professional academia. Most of academia is mass duplication, confusion parading as profundity and the application of complex methodology on abstract and irrelevant matters so its easy for an AI to duplicate wishy washy duplication. Some are heralding the imminent collapse of Professional Academia (which will presumably have to adjust by embracing Citizen Science to a much greater and fundamental level). Indeed every now and then professional ornithology comes up with something not only useful but fundamentally important- like Ebird or Xeno Canto which have both emerged from Academic institutions but the reason Birding evolved in the first place was to democratise and liberate ornithology from the choke hold of endless repetition and restraints (by available funding and the political agendas behind that funding)  of Professional Academia. I think we have a long way to go before ChatGPT can answer birding questions as Birding is as close to pure unadulterated science as you get and is constantly evolving and cutting edge- an edge that cannot be detected at scale by computers whose algorithms work on popularity metrics as have to search through the abyss of academic drivel and mass generalisations. An interesting development in all this is how birding is now being re-integrated into the 'sweeet spot' of Academia (through e.g. Ebird but also many other citizen science collabs)- the innovative and more purely motived part of it. For me this re-integration of pure science from the professional and citizen science sector is the red thread that will shape the future. AI will expose the rest for the obsolete 'junk code' it is and will almost certainly call into question (rioting question maybe) the whole Student Loan and University Industry.    

Anyway back to the Old Vic and the benign world of hermit garden and home living.

Coal Tit

Red Scooter Blenny (above and below). We have finally got our marine nano reef tank cycled and have the first fish in it. We had an almost instant tank crash and two Clown Fish died as nitrate levels shot up to deadly levels but have hopefully sorted that now. Certainly not easy getting the marine tank environment right and the smaller the experiment the greater risks. 

Nassirius Snail- part of our marine clean up crew including Hermits and Turbo snails

Panther Chameleon 

Day in West Sussex

Another week, another week searching for our new base. This week I visited a property in the Pagham Harbour area and after the work was done I spent a rather nice afternoon at the reserve. 56 species in about 3 hours. Ebird list HERE.

This would be a superb place to be based. I checked out a 3.5 acre site, a few 100 meters from the RSPB entrance and about 4 miles from the coast so presumably good for migrants considering it is well within the Selsey Peninsula. This site would actually be perfect. However we need to do some affordability calculations now as we are still confronted with the issue of this has all come 5 years ahead of planned resulting in smaller deposit/capital pot and during a time of rising interest rates. Our earlier affordability calculations did not include a 6% borrowing rate as our investments from only 10 months ago were at rates of 1.5%. A LOT has changed in the last year. 

We might need to resort to a plan B which would be to look for something smaller and there are also family issues to consider as the agreement for plan A was in five years time when Jacob had finished primary school. Plan B wouldn't be too bad either- would mean relocating in the area we are now so that Jacob can finish primary school, kick the can down the road and in the meantime buy a holiday home on the coast and several days a week there, birding and moth trapping. Plan B would actually be a lot more laid back but apart from a large garden (which we will rewild) it wouldn't be the 'private nature reserve' base we wanted and more of a 'wildlife garden base'. However plan B would free up a more substantial disposable income stream which could be diverted to developing the Bulgaria project (which ecologically is actually much more valuable and where we can get a lot more for our money). Will see where all this ends up. At the moment all the cards are being put on the table to make some choices 

In other news, my gambling on green investments has finally paid off and I am now 6% up! Although that success is mainly due to rises in the buffering investments (e.g. META, NETFLIX etc) but Aker Carbon Capture and TESLA are both on the rise. However most of my green investments are still liabilities but at least they are being balanced now. Seems to make a lot more sense to invest in a new economy rather than just sit around scratching my arse just doing Low Carbon birding- although I still intend to do a lot of Low Carbon and Ultra Low Carbon Birding (aka Garden and private plot birding). I like nothing more than sitting around scratching my arse birding but I also feel I have a responsibility to contribute to a new economy and a new system. So I hope all this will work out.

Knot (above) and Brents (below) at Pagham

Golden Plovers and Lapwing at Pagham

This former Land Settlement Association Small holding is perfect for a small private rewilding/natural capital project. If we don't go for it someone else must! Please contact me if your are interested.

View over Pagham

The best thing about Selsey- local and sustainable Crab, Lobster and seafood.