Despite my best intentions, for a nature lover and local organiser of a survey for Butterfly Conservation I am not very good when it comes to recording and submitting my own sightings – whether it is birds or bees, or anything in between. It’s not as if there is a shortage of ways to submit and record data.
When I do record my data I tend to use either the appropriate survey scheme site (i.e. the Butterfly Conservation site, BTO BirdTrack site, or the Bumblebee Conservation Trust BeeWalk site) or the iRecord site but there are many other recording schemes and apps out there that will automatically plot your position and give a more accurate location.
But, the very first recording I did was with the Woodland Trust’s Nature’s Calendar. This has been going for twenty years now and, with a database of 2.7 million records, has shown the effect of a changing climate on the various events that happen each year in the Natural World. Whether it is the first or last sighting of swifts, your first orange-tip butterfly or when blackberries ripen, there are a host of events to choose. I haven’t logged into Nature’s Calendar for many years, but having just read an article in the British Wildlife Magazine highlighting some recorders with over 2000 records clearly showing the shifts with changing temperatures I am shamed into digging out my password, logging on and making a list of the things I can easily record in expected chronological order – something to do on my day off tomorrow! Perhaps this will encourage me to keep better records – I can feel a new notebook coming on…