Hi, I'm Rudi, i'm 8 years old and my favourite book is 'Tarka the Otter' by Henry Williamson. Its about the life of an otter named Tarka and British Wildlife. One night i was reading the book with my dad and i said that i wanted to see all the animals in the book, he said i should do it and call it the Tarka Challenge. My Tarka Challenge started on 1st January 2012. The book contains 89 birds, 54 land based animals, 120 plants and 56 aquatic organisms.

The rules are simple, i must either see each thing myself or photograph it using my trail camera. I will try and see each thing on my local patch (Ogmore River Catchment) but may need to look somewhere else in Britain.

Dawn Chorus Walk

We went out for a Dawn Chorus walk this morning and saw quite a lot of birds. Linnet, Yellowhammer, Raven, Carrion Crow, Chaffinch, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Cole Tit, Song Thrush, Mistle Thrush, Wren, Black Cap, Whitethroat.



We also found a couple of Beetles that i have never seen before. We used iSpot to identify them. You can put pictures on of what you have seen and experts will help you try and identify it. It is really good, you should take a look http://www.ispot.org.uk/

Anyway, we found a Bee Fly which i wrote about last year....



And a Black Oil Beetle, which looked blue in the sun. I have never seen them before but looked on the Buglife website and they are doing a survey on them so i filled out an observation form.

Learn more about oil beetles - http://www.buglife.org.uk/getinvolved/surveys/Oil+Beetle+Hunt

This is my Oil Beetle -



Then we found another beetle which had horns on it......


This is a Minotaur Beetle and was my favourite. The horns are for fighting with other beetles.

Find out more - http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/species/minotaur-beetle

Off the list was Beetle

Minotaur Beetle (Typhaeus typhoeus)

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