It's the usual end of year dilemma: do I bother putting a review of the year together? Too many highlights (good days out), lowlights (long periods doing nothing much) and non-events (pants mothing!) to do it justice. Last year I did a bit of an A to Z review of the blog over the year with hyperlinks - I haven't got the time or inclination to go that far this year, though I did like the A to Z structure. One thing I have had a lot of in 2012 (relatively) is British ticks ... far too many to review, and difficult to pick put highlights from that lot. So in what is possibly the laziest but most lavishly illustrated end of year effort, here is an A to Z of British ticks I've had this year ..... not in any order of preference, rarity or taxonomy, just alphabetical. Even that is with a bit of poetic licence - seemed a straightforward enough idea at the start!
Adela croesella
Balclutha punctata
Corizus hyoscyami
Dasysyrphus albostriatus
Ectopsocus briggsi
Fly Orchid
Grammoptera ruficornis
Heliophanus flavipes
Isotrias rectifasciana
Chaetorellia jaceae
Salsola kali (Prickly Saltwort) - yes, K was hard
Lauria cylindracea
Marchantia polymorpha
Navelwort Rust
Opsius stactogalus
Phasia hemiptera
Neurigona quadrifasciata
Rhagoletis alternata
Syritta pipiens
Trypetoptera punctulata
Arge ustulata
Aroga velocella
Wild Liquorice
Xysticus cristatus
Yellow-bird's Nest
Zygina angusta (probably!)
Happy New Year to everyone who reads or stumbles on this blog, and here's to a great 2013 in the field.
4 comments:
Happy new year Mark, yes what a poor year it was for moths and the small catches continued everytime I trapped, no matter how rich the habitat was. I hope you have a good 2013 with plenty more ticks.
Ben
Cheers Ben - same to you.
Happy New Year to you Skev and i just wanted to say how much i love reading your blog. As i also live in Leicestershire your blog is of great interest to me.
As a twitcher i wondered what camera would you suggest for taking bird pics? I bought a nikon coolpix 8700 seven or eight years ago with a telephoto lens but have never had much success. The time has come for a new bit of kit, any ideas?
All the best for 2013. :-)
Hello Steve, same to you and thanks for your comments.
As for the camera gear, I guess it depends totally on your budget, whether you want to print/publish the images and you photographic preference. A DSLR body with a decent sized lens will give good results but hammer your wallet, or maybe you could go down the digiscoping route (which I can't advise on as I've never done it). I use a Panasonic Lumix FZ45 bridge type camera which is a pretty good jack of all trades and can be used with add on converters with some success. It's certainly not the best option for bird photography, but does a good enough job for blogging I reckon.
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