Game On

My mate (yes, I only have one) Seth comes up with a natural history challenge each year. He creates a new blog to document what he's doing and then by about mid-February he gives up! This year his challenge can be found here

So his aim this year is to focus on beetles and flies and to identify as many species in each group as he can, with the aim of becoming more competent in the identification of these groups. This got me thinking. I am completely useless at beetles and slightly less useless at flies but would like to improve my skills in both groups. A little friendly competition might provide motivation to us both so last night I challenged Seth to a competition. The challenge was accepted.

The winner will be the one whose combined total number of species of flies and beetles recorded during 2020 is the higher. The species can be recorded in any life stage and we can get help with identification from other people as it is impossible to define a clear-cut line between doing it all yourself and just mindlessly asking people 'what's this?' that makes any sense. Neither of us is the type to just collect vast numbers of specimens and get others to do all the ID work anyway, and if we did it would sort of defeat our original object of improving our ID skills.

We both have advantages and disadvantages in this challenge. Seth is much better at beetles than me and I'm probably better at flies than he is although neither of us would describe ourselves as competent in either group. I live in the tropical south of England whilst Seth is in the tundra wastelands of Skye so I have access to a greater number of species, but Seth can largely devote his natural history time to the challenge whilst I have commitments with other taxa that I cannot ignore for the year.

It's going to be interesting to see how we get on. I honestly have no idea who will win and am largely relying on Seth giving up in mid-February to give me an easy win (and subsequent bragging rights for about the next 10 years). Whatever happens, there should be some good banter for the next five weeks (or however long Seth lasts).