The Year in Numbers 2022

Here's a few numbers for 2022 that we use to indicate/measure our productivity/impact at LITTLE OAK GROUP using a simplified triple bottom line accounting framework, maybe a better way to measure success/impact than just in terms of money. Of course the most important values such as depth and quality of personal relationships with each other and our personal emotional connection with nature  can only be measured personally and subjectively but for the lesser purpose of objective metrics here's our microscopic, probably arbitrary, perhaps counterproductive and definitely temporary contribution in this infinite immeasurable eternal natural world.  

ECONOMIC CAPITAL

Turnover and profit for 2022

Approx £270,000 at approx 20% profit across handled contracts

Net assets

Shares across land, properties, enterprise values and holdings in stocks and cryptocurrency: approx £2.5 million across distributed network (owned by directors or more accurately the banking system)   

NATURAL CAPITAL 

Land (not including property) owned and/or directly managed

 Approx: 5 acres (one acre Bucks, three acres Surrey, one acre Bulgaria) 

Land managed indirectly/ contribution to management

 Little Oak Tree and Garden care service over 500 private gardens and communal blocks equal to approx 64 acres not including nature reserves and public spaces (enormous areas over 500 hectares).   

Project Species Inventory Totals 

The Old Vicarage: 1159 species (including priority species) all time, 491 species of moth in 2022 and 594 moth species all time

Beddington Farmlands: 2000+ species (including priority and red data species) all time. (See reports/website) 

Bulgaria (new) : 93 species of moths and butterflies here and 140 bird species here

Natural Capital Monitoring Effort Indicators

Ebird checklists in 2022: 306 (approx 500 hours)

Irecord checklists in 2022: approx 121 (approx 250 hours)

Rarities found: Desert Wheatear in Bulgaria (3rd for Bulgaria), Water Rail in Azores (8th record), Vagrant China-mark (First for Bucks), Loxostege Sticticalis, L-album Wainscot and Raspberry Clearwing (Bucks megas) Vagrant Emperor Dragonfly on Azores (only second record), Schmidt's Quaker (Bulgarian rarity-identified by Michal Brzezinski on I-Naturalist) 

Carbon Accounts

With the ULEZ coming out to our borough in 2023 we will need to tackle our diesel van situation, Most of our business is circular already, we plant and protect trees and shrubs and store carbon in the approx 70 acres of land we directly or indirectly manage (and influence a much larger area). All our waste is recycled in house and re-used/sold. The Old Vicarage alone contains over 100 large to medium trees. It would be good to get more precise measurements on the amount of carbon we generate/sequester but ultimately unless there is a global carbon price that reflects the carbon footprint of every single product and it's supply and production chain that we use (plus the carbon footprint of any investments) than all carbon accounting can be easily mis-represented. Fundamentally trying to use carbon accounts as some kind of moral measure is as likely to be turned into an amoral/immoral weapon (Carbon crusaders, inquisitors and tax collectors are already at large) as it is to encourage less self destructive behaviour, but since Carbon is now becoming a Holy measure, might as well play the game. 

Net Biodiversity Gain Accounts 

These results will be in our project reports such as the Beddington Farmlands Bird and Wildlife Report etc. Difficult to make simple conclusions but overall where we do measure things there are lots of positives (not so many at Beddington Farmlands unfortunately). Again another area for more detail and again another area for manipulation and mis-representation by anyone who wishes too- I don't think humans can ever create metrics to measure ethics but we will go extinct or nearly extinct trying . 

SOCIAL CAPITAL 

Facebook Pages Metrices

Beddington Farmlands: 4.2 google stars, 1.9K followers

Thee Bryans: 1.2K followers

Blog Views

95,000 views in 2022, 1.78 million all time for Non-stop Birding (the Corvo blog gets another 14K or so mainly in October) 

Publications in 2022

Portuguese Rarities Committee Report (1), Azores Rare and Scarce Bird Report (1), British Birds paper, co-author (1), Trip Reports (2 on Ebird), Escape Magazine (1). 

Total Number of Project Publication Reads on Research Gate

14931 reads (all time) 86 research interest (which is 63% higher than average on this platform which is not bad for amateurs I suppose) 

Other social media metrics

Present on Twitter and Facebook in personal capacity and comfortably engaged. 

Personal bird and moths lists (mine) 

All time world bird list: 3176 (Bubo) 

All time WP bird list: 708 (Caspian Tit and Belted Kingfisher) (Netfugl)

All time WP mammal/cetacean list: 99, Marbled Polecat, William's Jerboa, Great Horse-shoe Bat and Alpine Chamois (retrospective from Bulgaria 2011)  (Kept in Aulagnier et al plus Cetaceans from Wikipedia) 

All time WP Moth List (mainly UK so far) : 867 (64 Uk lifers mainly from Old Vic) Private/scattered lists. 

Azores Bird List: 253 (Ebird) 

Bulgaria Bird List: 276 (Ebird) 

Beddington Farmlands Bird List: 224 (nothing new)

Oxfordshire Bird List: 171   (2 new ones this year- not done much birding in the county this year as been concentrating on moths and ultra low carbon birding in the garden) 

Surrey Bird List: 243 

The Old Vicarage Bird List: 95 (Seven garden ticks this year)  

LITTLE OAK GROUP

Schmidt's Quaker

Seems like we found a good moth species at Kamen Bryag, Bulgaria already. See HERE . I originally identified it as a Common Quaker but see I-naturalist link for discussion. Apparently it is a strictly protected species (see here and lepiforum here). Will be fascinating what the moth recording reveals over the coming years. I'm still only using a travel LED moth trap for a slow steady start. Once we get power on site (hopefully by March 2023) and start running more powerful lights it could get very interesting indeed. 

Had this very kind and informative response from László Ronkay an expert on this species.

'it is a great finding, indeed! It was curious by the former disjunct records how the species was spread after the last Ice Age but now the traits are better recognised. Your specimen is somewhat intermediate between the ssp. schmidtii in the Carpathian Basin and the ssp. pinkeri in western Anatolia but closer to our "typical" moths having darker brown ground colour and reduced crosslines.

The species is in a definite spreading in the Carpathian Basin since the Millennia, now it can be considered as widespread in the less disturbed oakwoods eastwards from the Danube both in the mountains and the lowland and appears in more and more localities in Transdanubia, including the surrounding of Budapest and I myself met it on our balcony (on the seventh floor) at the light of a hiperactinic 8W tube three times in the last four years... This process may appear also in the small population fragments in the Balkans, if so, we can hope to detect them due to their spreading to places where lepidopterists (or photographers) collect/photograph more frequently'

Schmidt's Quaker, Dioszeghyana schmidtii , Little Oak Group Bulgaria project plot , Kamen Bryag, April 2022. I-Naturalist project HERE. 

Obligatory Birds in Snow Pics

The first snow of this winter at the Old Vic today. Seems like more winter thrushes around today but quite skittish.  Here's a few garden bird pics from today and recently. Latest Ebird list HERE

Blue Tits

Red Kite in the Spruce 

Common Buzzard- a picture from last week, one White Dove (Feral Pigeon) less 

Long-tailed Tit swarm

Dunnock 

Great Tit and Blue Tit (below) 

Cold week at the Old Vic

Not a lot to report on over the last week. It's been down to minus 5 at night so the mothing is non-existent and we've got another week of cold weather with the wind picking up towards the end of this coming week. Apart from a calling Golden Plover one morning the weather has not produced too many changes to the garden bird life, the winter thrushes are a bit more approachable. 

It's been a bit of a battle making sure the chickens have fresh water (everything is freezing up) and also I'm giving them plenty of live food while it's this cold (meal and morio worms).

In amongst the parade of xmas fair and markets I managed to get a day off to put some initial feelers out with estate agents in the area we are looking for our farmstead/nature reserve. Sue came along on what ended up being a very fun day culminating in an offer to take on a site with two tigers and an alligator thrown in. Too early for us to do anything yet but these things can take years (to research, save up for and wait for the right place to go on the market/ or head hunt a site) so good to get the ball rolling and get registered with some local agents to be kept in the loop. 

We popped into Worth Marsh while we were in Kent- the scale of this RSPB site is impressive, 245 hectare mega reserve. Had 7 White-fronts, Marsh Harrier and 4 Water Pipits in a quick walk through 

     

The mini-farm this morning in the heavy frost

One of our search areas 

World of Twigg

 

Another weekend another xmas market with Holly. It's more in the xmas spirit to buy presents and cards from small independent retailers and Holly's xmas tour has proved very popular. Still some cards left HERE. 

WORLD OF TWIGG

World List Update

 

Mountain Owlet-nightjar, West Papua, September 2022

Another job completed on the winter work list. Updated my IOC World List on Bubo. Now on 3176 species following 231 lifers this year (all in West Papua/Java except Caspian Tit in Az). West Papua Full trip report to follow but Ebird trip report HERE and Azerbaijan Ebird trip report HERE. All my trip reports HERE (Scroll down to Trip Report section). 

So a bit of progress for my 800 by 80 for the Western Palearctic and half the world's birds before the grave.

Azores Ebird Personal Records Update

Getting through the winter work list. Spent the last week digitising my records/notebooks from the Azores since my first visit there in 2001. Turns out my Azores Life List is 253 (although that includes Cat E, Mandarin and Rose-ringed Parakeet but also lumps American Herring Gull and Green-winged Teal). Apparently I'm second in the Azores Ebird listing ranking, with Ruben (top local birder) at No 1. I don't stand much of a chance staying at No 2 as a visitor to the islands but it's been a lot of fun inadvertently listing while exploring.

Here's some of the photos I've uploaded HERE. Azores Ebird HERE.

 It's been a great trip down memory lane from my first visit in 2001 and then the gull exploration trips in the early 2000s (found Short-billed Gull, a first for the WP and lots of other wintering vagrants including 20+ American Herring Gulls, Forster's Tern, Bonaparte's Gulls etc. Write ups HERE and HERE) and then to the ground breaking Corvo 2005 exploration trip (Write ups HERE and HERE; found White-eyed Vireo, a first for the WP and loads more) and then the Pelagic exploration trips from 2007 (Write up HERE). Alongside that the Corvo Autumn birding was growing year on year (Corvo Blog HERE and Reports HERE) and then in more recent years we have been establishing the Natural History Trip and helping to grow the Birding and Wildlife Community (Website HERE). 

An amazing journey and certainly looking forward to the future especially next year with the next exploration trips that will be focusing on the moths and butterflies and trying to find some mega lep migrants.  

It's amazing to think of how much birding and birding technology has changed through the duration of this project and frightening/exciting to think of where it will go over the next 20 years. Presumably the trends will continue upwards towards growing citizen scientists around big data systems (Ebird, I-Naturalist etc) and AI (Merlin, ObsIdentify etc)  with local perspectives (Local Ebird, Local Reports and papers) and development of more sustainable ecotoursim (and less mass tourism etc) and local sustainable system development with closer integration of citizen science and sustainable computer governing systems/social credit/natural capital/carbon credit systems as Capitalist tipping points (climate and ecological collapse) are passed.