A Project For 2007

[drplokta]

This year, I thought I'd see how many different species I could spot on the Rotherhithe peninsula, which has pretty diverse habitats for 2/3 of a square mile of Inner London.

A few ground-rules:

1. The area is bounded by and includes the River Thames, Plough Way, Lower Road and King's Stairs Gardens. The far shore of the Thames does not count. See map here.
   
2. Air-breathing vertebrates and butterflies only. Fish are too dull and hard to see, and invertebrates are too numerous and hard to identify. Amphibians at a non-air-breathing stage count, but will probably also be hard to identify.
   
3. Domesticated animals, including homo sapiens, don't count, but escaped or released animals do (e.g. the turtles living in Canada Water).
   
4. Dead animals don't count, even though that's the only way I'm likely to find a hedgehog.
   
5. Photos to be provided where possible, but it still counts if I can't get a photo.
   
6. Hearing but not seeing does not count.
   
7. Updates to be posted behind a cut tag for the benefit of those people who don't want to download large numbers of blurry thumbnails.
   
8. Herring gulls, lesser black-backed gulls, yellow-legged gulls and Caspian gulls are different species. Whether or not I can tell the difference is another matter.
   

[Poll #900960]

Comments

Good Luck

[whotheheckami.livejournal.com]

Will be counting the various species of humanity? Geek, Goth, Fanboy etc? ;@)

Re: Good Luck

[drplokta]

Those are all domesticated, and hence excluded by rule 3.

Re: Good Luck

[frostfox.livejournal.com]

Are you sure they are all domesticated?
Wot about chavs?
And I know several students who aren't housebroken.

FF - who has a *proper* owl (it goes 'twowit-twoo' as proper owls should) living in the trees at the end of the road.

Re: Good Luck

[hjsb.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you've got two owls...

[mkillingworth.livejournal.com]

Are you counting insects?

[drplokta]

See rule 2. Butterflies are the only insects to be counted.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Unless it's a water-breathing butterfly?

(English so needs better parsing rules.)

[drplokta]

If I should chance to see a butterfly breathing water, I'll probably have things to do other than agonising over whether or not it should count.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Hah, picky, picky! It could be drowning at the time.

But you're excluding giant land crabs. A coconut crab would surely be worth noting.

(And don't give me none of this guff about no coconut crabs never being seen nowhere near you.)

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Rule 8: hmmm, controversial!

(Ring species - the classic creationist bugbear.)

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Thinking about this, I think 65 is if anything an underestimate.

[drplokta]

Yes, I think so. According to this page, a birder who made six visits in the first five months of last year saw 55 species, and he missed a few I know to be in the area such as kingfisher and green woodpecker. There are supposed to be 20 butterfly species in the Ecology Park. Add half a dozen mammals (grey squirrel, fox, rabbit, mouse, water vole, rat) and the odd reptile or amphibian (turtles, allegedly a slow worm colony, conceivably a lizard, frog or toad) and you're over 80.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

I couldn't do the poll because there was no 42!

Though that's quite close to the mean, so maybe I could trend it down a bit...

(Though as I accidentally voted for no number, I won't bother trying...)