Week 1 - Jai's 2025 Nature Roundup

6/Jan/25 - Week 1 of 52

Give me strength, this is the 2nd time I'm writing this after Shift+F4-ing the page

1. Introduction
2. Notable Observations
3. Goal Progress

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The first time around writing this foreword, it was a couple paragraphs long. Lots of yap, all valid in my opinion (Obviously), but:

1. I don't want to rewrite it
2. I don't think I need to rewrite it

So I'll just boil it down to a few points. Lots of shit going on in the world, none of it good. I mean, you only have to go back 4 years to the day in order to get a taste of it. The one place that I find somewhat consistently not-entirely-fucked when I need it is nature, and even then we're toeing the line a bit. Nevertheless, it's what I've got and I'm not gonna be a defeatist about it, and neither should you.

That's the gist of it anyway. Fresh year ahead of us, and we've already jumped a great hurdle by surviving the dreaded first Monday of the year. 359 more days means 51 more weeks, hopefully also meaning 51 more of these updates, my memory allowing. Watch this space every Monday sometime after 16:00 UTC or so as I recap whatever bullshit I've found in my garden this time.

The overarching crux of this series is my own goals in biological recording. From Jan 1 to Dec 31, this year I've set a goal of...

1000+ species logged

100+ bird species logged

These blog posts will all show my progress towards these goals, as well as a recap of any interesting observations from the past week. In addition, I'll also set some smaller challenges and less quantitative goals, e.g. learning to identify a new taxa or becoming more proficient in a field. 

For comparison, I managed a total of 896 different species, including 70 bird species, so not the most unrealistic goals but still a decent push! Anyway with that out of the way, here's Week 1.

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Notable Observations

Off to a quiet start here, expected since I've largely been restricted to the garden as of late, and things are still quiet on the insect front. It does mean I have more time to focus on my birding goal, as well as some Springtails, my "favourite child" taxa of the arthropods.

Total Observations: 66

Most numerous species: Dicyrtomina ornata & saundersi (5 observations each)

 Individual Interesting Observations

European Stonechat (Saxicola rubicola)

Tuesday (Jan 2nd)

 

A pair of these were flying around some of the shrubs near the lake, not uncommon sights but they're brilliant birds.

Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus)

Thursday (Jan 4th)

I consider myself lucky to have an identifiable shot of this one, it was chased off by a flock of Carrion Crows some 15 seconds after this photo was taken, whilst I was sprinting for a better view

Breakdown

Goal Progress

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And that's Week 1, not much else to say on it really. To see all my observations for this week logged on iNaturalist, click here.

To see all of my observations for the year to date, click here.

What did you see this week? Let me know in the comments!