Mark Telfer
My total:
9137
Year I started recording:
1983
Last updated on:
29th January, 2024
About me:
As a schoolboy birder and twitcher, I wanted to get into other taxonomic groups and resolved an ambition to see 4,000 species of animals, plants and fungi in Britain and Ireland. It was an ambition I thought would take a lifetime to achieve. But I'm now in my 50s and my pan-species list is over 8,000 and always rising. I am still a birder and very occasional twitcher, and there have been years in the past where I'd have called myself a botanist, but invertebrates are my main interest now, especially beetles, though I'm also really keen on bugs, Orthoptera, woodlice, non-marine molluscs and dragonflies.
Age:
My bogey species:
Yellow-breasted Bunting. The carabids Blemus discus and Elaphrus uliginosus. Scarlet Darter and Green Darner. These are all rare things so it seems odd to call them bogeys but in the groups I've really made an effort with, they are the commonest gaps on my list.
My most wanted:
Pepper-pot Earthstar. Mouse-eared Bat. The carabid Callistus lunatus. Ghost Orchid of course. Any marine turtle. The shrimp Niphargus glennei and the Tadpole Shrimp Triops cancriformis.
My grippers:
Vagrant Great Bustards. Vagrant Darter Sympetrum vulgatum. Greenhouse Camel-cricket Tachycines asynamorus. The carabid Bracteon argenteolum.
Latest addition:
Simacauda dicommatias (moth, leaf-mining Chilean Myrtle), Salticidae sp. X (jumping spider, NTB, no name as yet), Cryptachaea blattea (theridiid spider), Lichtensia viburni (Viburnum Cushion-scale), Cacopsylla fatsiae (= Psylla tetrapanaxae?) (psyllid on Tetrapanax), Crypturaphis grassi (Italian Alder Aphid), Aulacorthum solani (Glasshouse-Potato Aphid), Aculops fuchsiae (gall-causing mite on Fuchsia), Penlee Park/ Morrab Gardens, Penzance, 26.x.2023. Thunnus thynnus (Atlantic Bluefin Tuna), off Botallack, 25.x.2023. Spodoptera exigua (Small Mottled Willow), Cot Valley, 24-25.x.2023. Schistostega pennata (Goblin Gold moss), Carn Euny, 23.x.2023. Dasypolia templi (Brindled Ochre), Cot Valley, 22-23.x.2023.
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