2021 in Numbers

Okay, it's taken me longer than it should have to get to this point, but having got my moth records for last year sorted I've been able to sort out some numbers for last year.

First up, you may recall that I had set out to have another crack at square-listing. Despite my recovery from surgery and having chemo, it started fairly well but by the time I'd got back to working full time and had to juggle a bit more it fell by the wayside. Still, with the moth records in I was surprised to see the final numbers. Here's a couple of basic charts with the overall breakdown and a breakdown by insect orders:

I was not really intending to beat the overall total, and I'm in no way surprised that I fell short - though I was surprised that I'd smashed the 1000 species mark and was only 40 off the 2013 total. I had hoped to better my 2013 totals for Plants, Coleoptera, Diptera, Hemiptera and Hymenoptera. The Plants total is not bad at all considering that I'd pretty much thrown in the towel and avoided lots of grasses. Coleoptera and Hemiptera totals were good, and it's pretty obvious that I had no enthusiasm for Diptera. I've got no intention of doing this again any time soon.

As for my garden moth records, it turned out to be a pretty good year with a total of 423sp. (beating the previous best 421 set in, of course, 2013). Within that total were 28 new for garden species:

I'll be updating the Garden Lists page over this week. Then I'm done with 2021 from a recording/listing perspective. It's fin de l'année rather than fin de siècle, but there you go.