Over Christmas and New Year when I was laid low with a bad back, I needed something to occupy my time. After I had checked, double checked, uploaded and verified all the county's dragonfly records for 2025 onto the iRecord website, I was in a bit of a data crunching mood, so I thought why not begin pan-species listing?
If your current thought is along the lines of "Well, there's Le Creuset for a start", then, no, not that sort of pan. Rather, it is a way of keeping track of a lifetime's wildlife watching. Every species seen, everything, from the tiniest protozoan to the largest mammal, and all manner of wildlife in between.
Obviously, the sooner one begins keeping records (what, when, where), the better. It is definitely not recommended to wait until you're in your mid sixties and have just tweaked a multifidus muscle in your lower back, but we are where we are.
So how the heck was I going to produce any sort of meaningful list?
Well, as a dragonfly enthusiast, I do have records of every dragonfly and damselfly I have seen since 2006, and whilst admittedly this is still a terribly late starting point, I do not have a time machine.
Another small point in my favour was that once I moved to Orkney, in 2014, I began a year list for birds, in part because it's a great place to watch birds, but also because along with the opportunity came the feeling that it would be a fun thing to do. It's quite telling that I actually used the word 'fun' there, isn't it?
The other useful archive to mine for information gold is this blog, and the several that preceded it, especially the one that began in 2009 and ran until 2020. Whilst the blogposts weren't always written on the day of a sighting, they usually held enough info to gauge when the day was. Additionally, any photographs shown in the post can be tracked down on a hard drive and checked for the date they were taken.
But, yes, you're right, even with those glimpses into my natural history journey, there will be so many undocumented moments, some of which are really special memories, that a complete list will likely be beyond my grasp. For instance, the first Corn Bunting I ever saw was when I was a child. There I was in deepest rural County Durham, one balmy evening, when I heard a sound that was very similar to a bunch of keys being jangled. I traced the source of the sound to the top of a tree and there was sat a smallish bird, "jangling keys" for all it was worth. Ever the nerd, after relishing the moment of a self-found new-to-me species and trying to commit the look of the bird to memory, I hot-footed back home to pour over a bird ID guide until I found "The song of the Corn Bunting is similar to the jangling of a bunch of keys". Even now, I could take to you to the exact spot, presuming that the tree is still standing all this time later, but do I know when this occurred? No. I couldn't even tell you the year, never mind the month or the day. It was probably Spring or Summer, but that's as temporal as I can be.
In this particular instance, I do have records of subsequent Corn Bunting sightings to fall back on and, happily, one of those is a special memory too.
As luck would have it, just after New Year, a book review featured on Mark Avery's blog was about pan-species listing:
Sunday book review – Pan-species Listing by Graeme Lyons – Mark Avery
so I went to the PSL website, signed up and made a start.
Currently, I am still wading through the Animal kingdom, stuck in the shallow end, and will eventually move onto the Plant kingdom. At some point, I will need to gird my loins and venture towards lichens and fungi, but I am not sure whether I will have the wherewithal to tackle such things as algae and bacteria. However, I am absolutely loving it, safe in the knowledge that I won't make it into the top echelons of the hobby, but if I manage a 1000 species, I will be happy.
For the record, I have seen 36 species of dragonfly and damselfly, out of a possible 60 in the UK. Whilst for butterflies, it's a paltry 32 out of 84. Plenty of room for improvement, eh? And those are my best groups! Ugh, spiders will be tricky, but I am looking forward to "ticking" another arachnid, Ixodes ricinus, the sheep tick, the personal scourge of many past wildlife watching adventures.
To put things in perspective, the top PSLer is currently on, as of last month, 13098 species, all in the UK and Ireland (plus Isle of Man and Channel Isles). And the chap who wrote the book mentioned above is on a quest to see 6000 species in 2026!
No pressure.
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