Curiosity and the ‘spiders web’
I grew up in the backwaters of a quiet corner of what was Cumberland, and now see that my early interest in natural history was driven by curiosity. The species that started it all was the Garden Tiger moth, with its once familiar wooly bear caterpillar. I still recall being shown the gaudy coloured adult moth by my grandfather when I was three years old. The two key motivators for my lifelong interest in natural history are in this story; my curiosity about things I found, and people who encouraged my interest. I know from my own children that this curiosity is a key part of their early years, but is not always cultivated to grow new ‘naturalists’.
Cumberland had been lucky to have a few eminent entomologists in the early part of the century, but most were long retired by the time I took up the cudgel of entomology, so I joined the Amateur Entomological Society and started to write to entomologists across the country in search of advice and interesting specimens. Collecting was the main source of records then, with winter evenings spent comparing my catches with the plates in South’s Moths or trying to identify flies from any books I could find. My letter writing provided some valuable mentors who sent me hawk moth eggs, swallowtail caterpillars and offers of field trips! I shudder to think how my excursions with old retired men would be viewed today, but they were real field naturalists who were more than happy to pass on their knowledge and experience to the next generation. This period also exposed me to the wonders of the Biological Records Centre and the enthusiasm of John Heath. He was my saviour in the dark depths of the Noctuidae where his critical identification guides were invaluable! His reward was a growing set of record cards for West Cumberland that filled in gaps in his maps for many insect groups.
All through my school days I kept a patchy record of what I found and what I was rearing in a diary I still have today. This still retains detail of finding the first records for Holly Blue for West Cumberland, or details of breeding colonies of marsh fritillary on a new site. These notes cover all insects and some other groups of animal and plant such as my scrawled sketches of Hydra that I fished out of a local ditch.
Curiosity and mentors are essential, but real progress comes with technology and skills. Identifying species was always my ultimate goal and pictures in books were of little use for most of the specimens I laboriously stuck on cards or used my Mums dress pins to skewer. I became a familiar visitor to my town chemist shop with requests for carbon tetrachloride, chloroform and ethyl acetate duly fulfilled – my only refusal was for a cyanide killing jar! A very supportive biology department at my Grammar School provided a simple low power ‘microscope’ that was just a single lens and a sloping mirror set in a wooden block and my first battle with an identification key began. The National River Authority, as it was then, was attempting to restock some headwaters in the western lakes with salmon fry and wanted an idea of the food availability in the upland becks. My teacher suggested that I try to identify some of the larval nymphs of stoneflies and mayflies that were a key part of the stream fauna. After wrestling with the couplets about the number of hairs on the third abdominal sternite, I did produce a list of species and a set of pickled specimens that I took along to the local NRA headquarters in Carlisle. Much to their surprise (and mine) the majority of my identifications were confirmed and gave me ambition to work at the Freshwater Biological Association labs in Windermere! Basic confidence and competence using keys allow a step change in biological recording and this was reinforced later in my career when I was able to afford a ‘good’ Nikon binocular microscope. Thus good equipment and the skills to use keys are critical aids to becoming a competent entomologist.
Years later, after a first degree in Zoology at Bristol (the Head of Department, Professor H.E. Hinton was an eminent entomologist!), then a D.Phil at Oxford, based in the University Museum under George Varley, and finally a post doctoral post at the Oxford Polytechnic with Dennis Owen, I was a trained entomologist. All through that period and continuing during my time working for the Nature Conservancy Council and English Nature in Oxfordshire I continued to meet enthusiastic naturalists who encouraged me and led me to apply my skills to nature conservation. A major by-product of those years has been many thousands of records gathered as part of routine site assessments or in my own time. I still gather records during my brief times away from a desk and am storing up a retirement task on working on beeflies of the Mediterranean region, so the curiosity is still there, people are still very important to my motivation and the steady growth of good, user-friendly keys is a pleasure to experience.
My main regret is that there are fewer and fewer opportunities to pass on the little knowledge I have gained. I once had an ambition to ensure that I could motivate at least one new entomologist to follow on in my footsteps, but with experience recognise that one is not enough; we need a far greater number of enthusiastic naturalist recorders if we are to keep track of the rapid changes in the status of many of our species. Invertebrates still remain the least known of all our main faunal groups and have much to offer as measures of the health of our natural environment.
Keith Porter – Natural England (Geographic Information Services – Principal Specialist)