BUBO

Many moons ago there were four Bristol Uni students who were all into birding and, between them, they formed the Bristol University Birdwatching Organisation, or BUBO for short (Bubo is also a genus of eagle owls, one of which adorns the BUBO logo; very clever these uni lads). They then went on to produce an online listing resource, whereby a user could upload their own personal species lists for pretty much anywhere in the world, whether it be a Site List, a British List, an Uzbekistan List or even an entire global World List. I currently have 24 lists on BUBO Listing, it used to be more but I binned various old ones that were no longer relevant (for example I deleted all of my British Year Lists, seeing as I've essentially left the birding scene and am no longer in competition with anybody).

Importantly, as well as being a great resource for birders to store their cherished lists online, absolutely everything was visible for any other user to search through and study. Within a few clicks you could see who had gone for the latest rarity, or where folks had ticked Somali Ostrich, discover who were the top listers in Surrey, or find out who had seen the most birds in Panama and where they'd gone to see them. Rich Fuller, my best friend at the time, was one of the founding BUBO members, as such I was one of the first to upload my own bird lists onto the website. It was all good fun, particularly when they added the Targets feature which allowed you to see what everyone else had ticked off that you hadn't! BUBO Listing has gone from strength to strength, consistently adding new and exciting features and, in my opinion, is about the best place out there for storing your global bird lists. 

And then it suddenly got even better.

Two of the original BUBO founders, Andy Musgrove, a Norfolk-based pan-species lister, and Mike Prince, who has recently returned to Britain after many years of living in India, have taken the hugely bold step of adding the entire UK Species Inventory onto BUBO and making it available for users to generate their own pan-species lists. Wow! I mean...just wow! They have employed the help of a couple of top pan-listers, mostly I think for advice and a bit of extra publicity, and in the last few weeks they have already uploaded British and Irish Lists for butterflies, moths, dragonflies, orthopteroids, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish. So that's all the verts plus the more popular families of insects. Right now they are adding the plants, in manageable batches, so as not to overload existing users and, presumably, themselves. 

The whole process has generated a small degree of push back and some healthy discussion - why isn't Feral Cat listed, why should discarded pet terrapins and turtles be countable, surely plants of hybrid origin are tickable. But it's nothing that shouldn't be expected seeing as many folks have widely differing beliefs on what should or shouldn't be admissible. Many simply say that if a species is on the UKSI list then it must be good to tick. Hmmm, and that's where the trouble starts. 

Let's take birds as an example. There already exists an 'official' British and Irish bird list, but there are a couple of splinter groups who believe the official bird list is flawed and as such they allow various extra taxa to be counted on their own 'unofficial' lists. But who is right, who should listers follow? BUBO have neatly overcome the issue by allowing a user to follow the official list or an unoffical list, and in fact many users have generated lists for all three options. 

But who gets to officiate the pan-species list for Britain and Ireland? Which bodies should be followed, whose lists should be adopted, which taxonomy is the most up to date? The (official) British bird list stands at a little over 630 species. By comparison, the UK Species Inventory list runs into tens of thousands of species. It is huge and it is unwieldly (and constantly in need of revision as new species are found) and I suspect will forever cause frictions and disagreements over what should and shouldn't be on it. 

My own perspective is that the UKSI, for BUBO Listing purposes at least, urgently needs to be cleaned up. And fair play to Andy and Mike, they've already been busily doing just that. But why does it even matter, I hear you ask. Well....

I'm a competitive person and I'm proud of my pan-species list. I've worked hard to understand a bit about the natural world and to see lots of species, a great many of which have been self-found and self-identified. And, in Britain at least, I've seen more species than most other folks have. That alone makes me proud (or maybe the word I'm looking for is smug...)

I've seen American Bullfrog in Britain. I've seen Red-bellied Slider in Britain. I've seen European Pond Turtle in Britain. But none of these are on my British PSL. Why? Because they aren't wild animals, they're just booted out pets that are able to survive outdoors. The fact that they are big and obvious and can live for a number of years means that they are often seen 'in the wild' even though they themselves are not wild animals. They are simply dumped, unwanted pets that haven't died yet, that's all. Yes terrapins have on rare occasions laid a batch of eggs, but none have ever hatched. Yes American Bullfrogs did once breed and produce tadpoles in a stream, but they were quickly (and quite rightly) all exterminated. So, those terrapins that haul up on the island in your local duck pond? Nah mate, they just ain't countable.

The vast majority of BUBO's users are list-keeping birders because, up until a few weeks ago at least, that's precisely who the site was developed to cater for. Some of these birders will have branched out to look at 'other stuff' in the summer; moths, butterflies and dragonflies are examples of insect families that have gained a lot of followers from the birding brigade in recent years. Many of these folk will be competent naturalists, in fact birding may be a secondary interest to some, but many more of them will lack the knowledge to make an educated decision as to which of the multitude of taxa on the 'BUBO Checklist' are genuinely tickable species. Scanning through a few lists it's clear to see that it's becoming a bit of an issue. 

I'm not concerned that my reptile list, for example, is currently being overhauled by a bunch of numpties who don't know what they're on about (gosh no, perish the thought!) but I do believe there is a need for those talented BUBO Boys to 'clean up' the UKSI before things get further out of hand. Sadly, from their point of view, there is no single person expert enough on all taxon groups to offer them the required knowledge and guidance. So they're going to have to shop around, follow various official lists, from a large number of organisations and recording schemes, until the UKSI has been cleaned up to an acceptably realistic level. I wholeheartedly applaud Andy and Mike for undertaking what they both knew would be a huge task, and I very much hope the push backs and arguments don't put them off from continuing to host pan-species lists on BUBO Listing because in the end it will be nothing short of marvellous, I absolutely know it will. 

I've already spent a fair few hours uploading my PSL onto the BUBO pages. I made sure to fill in the dates and places too, so that each species account reads something like a data label. Once I'd completed that, I soon realised my spreadsheets held errors. How on earth could I have recorded a microlep in West Sussex and another in Aberdeenshire on the same day? Why is the Odonata Targets button telling me I still need to see Northern Damselfly when I know I've already seen it at a pool close to Loch Garten? Why doesn't BUBO offer me Small Engrailed and why can't I add Eriocrania chrysolepidella? Lots of small things that I've managed to amend on my spreadsheets, small things which I would probably never have noticed or gotten around to otherwise. 

One of my goals for the coming winter period was to put my entire PSL online, all in one place, completely transparent and accessible to anybody that chose to view it. BUBO Listing has unexpectedly provided me, and many others, with precisely this platform. Thank you Andy and Mike, you are both legends for doing this.