Nature Diaries & Records

[colinaj]

I have been keeping a Nature Diary since 1978when I was ten & keep a daily record of weather news worthy events & of course wildlife. I also keep computerised records on Exel spread sheets & birds in the Bird Recorder programme.
all records at the end of the year are sent to county recorders.

What do you do?

[DL]

In the past I have kept records of wildflower counts including Twin Flower and orchids also dragonfies and damselflies.

Currently I am in my second year of weekly butterfly and daytime macro moth counts and have been re-visiting locations where I previously counted dragonflies and damselfies to check that they are still there

I also keep a general species list for a couple of local patches.

[KeenTeen17]

I also keep a diary of the plants I see. I write them in and where they were found . and the date obviously I also use WAB to maintain a diary thread where I can post pictures and get comments on my travels etc. Its quite useful. The flower of the day thread is also very good

Not bumped to increase post count but because this thread has only had 2 replies and theres a few more WABbers out there who might have opinions

[Mercadante]

OK, can I ask you experienced nature recorders how often you record the common things?

I've started submitting odonata records to the county recorder, but am not sure what to do about all the Common Blue Damselflies (and later the Common Darters) in our garden. I see them any day that I look for them, so my records of them here are really just a record of when I went out (i.e., more or less, when it was sunny). Is this useful, or should I just record them here once a week, or month, or year?

[thunder]

Originally Posted by Mercadante

OK, can I ask you experienced nature recorders how often you record the common things?

I've started submitting odonata records to the county recorder, but am not sure what to do about all the Common Blue Damselflies (and later the Common Darters) in our garden. I see them any day that I look for them, so my records of them here are really just a record of when I went out (i.e., more or less, when it was sunny). Is this useful, or should I just record them here once a week, or month, or year?

It is very useful! Too often we think it is not worth recording common things - then we suddenly realise that they are not common any more. Almost any county recorder would rather have too many records than too few!

henrya

[Roger Morris]

This thread is of great interest to me - one of the biggest problems is that recording schemes are seen just as mapping projects - they can do a great deal more as the Hoverfly Recording Scheme has shown. Common species are really useful, especially for example species that you see in the spring and early summer - big blocks of data can help climate change scientists for example.

The biggest frustration I have is people just sending first and last records! They need context.

Regards

Roger Morris
Hoverfly Recording Scheme
Hoverfly Recording Scheme - Index

[earthdragon64]

I enter all my bird sightings on to the BTO BirdTrack site, and have ticked the box to have the records sent to the Vice County recorder, I've also surveyed some tetrads for the Bird Atlas project.

I record butterflies, moths, dragonflies, mammals, amphibians, reptiles and flowers on MapMate and send the butterfly, moth and dragonfly records to the Vice County recorders on a monthly basis. Mammals, amphibians, reptiles and any other insect sightings go to the Highland Biological Recording Group. The only records I don't do anything with at the moment are the flower records, mainly because I don't know what detail the VC recorders want, I'm sure they won't want to know the location of every Daisy I see.

[Roger Morris]

It costs virtually nothing to store the data, but if they are not there in the first place there is nothing that can be done at a later stage to rectify the omission.

It is your choice what you record. However, take a look at the maps of common species on the NBN and see how many are really quite weakly represented.:

[ChrisJB]

I've been keeping a similar journal since 1993 and always enjoy re-reading my jottings and re-living good days out. My local studies library has similar things dating back to the first half of the 20th century and I enjoy reading them too. Some of the old records of long gone birds like corncrakes and nightjars are fascinating.

Regards, Chris

[pliers]

I kept diaries for many years, but these days i use the BTO`s birdtrack to record my patch. And i record other wildlife for The Eye Project, a ongoing database to record all aspects of wildlife in the North East.

Of course the diaries were a more than mere lists, often would record events of importance like a win by my team (rare) or other personal stuff