Records, procedures and systems

[robpartridge]

Having last summer moved house after twenty-nine years, I’m faced with recording butterflies and various other things on some new sites (though I haven’t actually moved a great distance). This got me to thinking about the varied ways in which this can now be done, Most trips out and about I carry a notebook, make lists of species and estimate numbers. Some of this gets transferred into a hand-written A4 record diary at home, and then everything goes into Mapmate at some point on the season. Thinking about the purpose of my recording, it is chiefly to have a record of what species are where because I live in an area much of which is intensively farmed arable land, and hostile to most species. I also want my records to have some value to wider recording schemes.

I’d be interested to know what sort of records, procedures and systems others use, and what they would use if they were beginning again on new sites.