Tag Archives: biodiversity recording

Recording Grey squirrels

28 Wednesday Jan 2026

Posted by in animals, mammal

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At the start of each month my local biodiversity records centre chooses one species of flora or fauna to be the species of the month, in the hope that recorders will focus some of their recording time during the coming month in looking for and recording that species so as to fill in the gaps in their maps. This month the species has been the Grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), a mammal so ubiquitous that you might think it would already have been recorded in every 1km square in south east Wales but no. As is reported on the SEWBReC website:

it is a species that can become overlooked due to being considered “too common to record”. It is important to record common species as well as rarities, to track population changes and other patterns over time.

Grey squirrels had already been recorded in most of the 1km squares in my area but I did manage to contribute a few additional records during the month.

Fungi Friday: Stump puffballs

28 Friday Oct 2016

Posted by in fungi, nature

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I’m a dedicated wildlife recorder, inputting my sightings of flora and fauna into the database of my local records centre, SEWBReC (the South East Wales Biodiversity Records Centre). Each month the team at SEWBReC nominates a species that is poorly recorded in their system, in that hope that recorders like me will search high and low to help augment their records. The reason is that if record numbers are low, you can’t tell whether a species is endangered or just under-recorded, so it’s important to record even the most common things.

161027-stump-puffballs-1

The October species of the month is a case in point. The Stump puffball (Lycoperdon pyriforme) is really common throughout Britain, yet the SEWBReC database had only 167 records at the start of the month. Well, I can tell you it will have a whole lot more by the end of October, because I’ve seen them almost everywhere I go and I’ve been photographing and recording them all. It’s the only British puffball to grow on wood so it’s easy to identify, and it often grows in large colonies – as one fungi expert put it, it’s ‘the banana of the fungi world, its bunches create impressive vistas’.

For more on SEWBReC’s species of the month, see here. If you live in the area, or even if you’re just visiting, you can help by recording your sightings.