In the absence of any moths to talk about yet, this is another reminder for those of you who have yet to send in your 2020 records that NOW is the time to do so please! Full details of what is required can be found on the "Your Records" tab under the Blog heading above.
In 2020 I became a verifier on iRecord for moth records in Bucks and have just downloaded and sorted the year's data for inclusion into the Bucks moth database. A very big THANKYOU goes to the 18 or so people who each entered a substantial quantity of records there as the year progressed (you know who you are!), especially those who included pictures of the more difficult species which made verification so much easier. Certainly not to be forgotten, though, are the additional 80+ individuals who each entered ten or fewer records, particularly of daytime sightings which we might not have received at all if it wasn't for iRecord, so our very grateful thanks go to you too.
If you haven't previously considered it, why not try using iRecord in 2021? All three of our County Moth Recorders actively encourage the use of iRecord and are more than happy to receive records that way. The web-site is here, run by the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, and it costs nothing. You do need to register with the site but that's all. The main benefits for you are that you'll always have access to (and can download) your records and you can enter data as the season progresses (and thus ignore our pleas to send in records at the end of the year because we'll already have them). The main benefits for us are that photos can be included and if there's a query we can raise it with you when you might actually remember the moth in question (always assuming we can keep up with the verification process!).
For those of you who might now consider contributing regularly via iRecord, or who already do so but aren't yet aware of this much easier and preferred way of entering lists, under the "Record" tab please choose "Species group forms" and then "Moths" and use the data entry boxes there which should ensure that we get all the appropriate information in the correct format. Where relevant, please use the Comment section to add any appropriate additional information, such as identifying pheromone lures if they were used or for adding plant species for leaf-mines or on which caterpillars may have been found.
Many thanks!
Dave Wilton Westcott, Bucks
I saw this post about seven hours after emailing a spreadsheet of my 2020 records to Martin A! It's a bit late for New Year's resolutions, but I'll make one all the same.
ReplyDeleteI do use iRecord for ad-hoc records of other taxa, and it's quite easy to use. It's worth mentioning that for smartphones there is the iRecord app (and a specific iRecord Butterflies app for, er, butterflies, which I find very good for help with ID as well as a doddle for recording).
Because I do quite a bit of analysis on my own moth records (and because I also record in France), I use my own database as the master record, but iRecord has a bulk upload capability*, so it should be reasonably straightforward to sort that out and I'll look into that. Doing continuous record-submission rather than a big end-of-year blitz will probably make both my life and the verifier's life easier!
* One thing I need to check is whether & how one can manually add photos to certain records after they were bulk-uploaded. For example, if I catch 30 species in a night and bulk-upload those records, but 3 were unusual, confusable or out-of-season I would like to go back and add photos to those records. iRecord has a training mode where I can explore all this without accidentally submitting faulty or duplicate records.
There is something to watch out for if one wants to indicate that a species was present, but that the number of individuals wasn't counted. On some systems and in some places on the web, the convention is to enter a quantity of zero to indicate "Present". However, on iRecord a quantity of zero means means "Absent", which is very logical. On the app, there's a specific option of "Present" on the pull-down list for quantity. On the website, one should enter the species name but leave the quantity entirely blank (and writing "Present" in the Comment field might be a good idea).
Hi Tim
ReplyDeleteEven when you've entered a long list for, say, a night's trapping, each individual entry still has its own unique iRecord reference so you can always access a record again at a later date and make changes to it (including adding a photo or photos). However, if it has already been verified the record will be brought back to the verifier's attention again because a change has been made, so I wouldn't recommend doing that too often post-verification unless there's a good reason!
When it comes to individual moths that you might have kept back for dissection, best practice would be not to enter those records into iRecord until you've heard back from Peter, or whoever might have done the deed, and you can then add the dissector's name as Determiner and put "Genitalia checked male" (or whatever) into the Comments box.
Hi Dave,
ReplyDeleteI currently use MapMate to log all my moth records. At the end of the year, I create a MapMate file of all the new data and that goes off to Martin Harvey. This obviously means that the county moth recorder gets all my year's records in one hit, so I can see the advantage of providing progressive records via iRecord.
However, the big advantage of MapMate is that you create your own fully indexed personal database of records that can then be queried and searched to provide all sorts of interesting data such as phenology, flight times, top 20 moths, etc. I'm not sure if you can do this with your iRecord data?
Still waiting for the first moth of 2021.
A belated Happy New Year to everyone,
Steve Trigg
Hi Steve,
ReplyDeleteI also use MapMate for all my records (I've done so for years) and it still suits my needs admirably. However it does have some drawbacks, not least of which is problems that seem to occur whenever there's an update to Windows, but also that it is a subscription service which won't suit everyone. iRecord is free and may be a better bet for some, especially newcomers to this hobby of which there have been a considerable number over the past 12 months! Some CMRs will no longer accept MapMate Sync files because the data can't be changed without going back to the original supplier for every little tweak of a site name, grid reference or whatever. Of course, downloading the data into a spreadsheet like Excel instead isn't difficult but rather defeats the object of MapMate's replication process which is quite a large part of the programme.
No moths here yet this year either! It does look as though we may have some very slightly warmer nights to come over the next week, though.