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29th December

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Annual Review

2006 started warm, with an early spring which brought earlier flowers than usual. Moving into summer, we had a very hot June and July. This brought an influx of Red Admiral and Painted Lady butterflies, and encouraged local insects in very large numbers. With the large numbers of native butterflies enjoying the long hot summer, we anticipated a wonderful butterfly autumn, with the offspring of the immigrants supplementing the flourishing native population. Not so: August and September were very wet and miserable, and few 2nd generation Red Admirals or Painted Ladies were seen.

This autumn humidity did, however, have a positive side-effect: fungi were early and numerous. I re-scheduled my first trip of the year to Ards forest - bringing it forward by almost a month - and found a wonderful array of Boletes, Russulas and Amanitas. Quite the best fungal forays I have been on were in 2006.

The winter has been mild so far, with only perhaps two nights with frost, but November and December were virtual wash-outs, with many days lost to rain and/or lack of light. It rained continuously from the start of November to mid-December.

The year ended with the purchase of the new 60mm Macro lens for the Canon 350 DSLR. All of the images from now on will be with this new lens unless otherwise noted, as it is clearly the highest-quality lens I have.

As I write (December 31st), it's raining again, although I did find a single flower of Primrose on our short walk.

Remembered moments from 2006:

• Finding and photographing Ichneumonids laying their eggs directly into their hosts.

• Leading my first fungal foray at Castle Archdale.

• A live radio phone-in on Highland radio.

• Reaching and passing 1000 species on the Species Index. (Now standing at 1038).

• Predicting the demise of a large Beech tree that promptly fell 4 days later.