Recording Sites

BirdTrack Options

 About BirdTrack

For the BirdTrack project, we obviously need to know where you go birdwatching. You can register as many sites as you wish, but records from sites that you visit regularly are the most useful, for example your local park or gravel pits. These sites are assigned to you within the BirdTrack database. If a friend wishes to enter records from the same site then they will need to register it under their own user id.

The information that we require is straightforward:

• Site name (up to 40 characters long)
• Grid Reference or
  Postcode or
  point to a map to get grid reference

All of the last three location recording methods are used to derive a grid reference that we will use to map your data. We have provided three different methods to make it as easy as possible for a wide range of people to use the system. The Google mapping system (including satellite images) is now available for Britain, Ireland and the Channel Isles. Postcodes are not used in the Republic of Ireland. When registering a site, we will automatically assign it to a county unless that square covers more than one county. In such cases, the site confirmation page will prompt you to choose the most appropriate county from a list of options. For help with counties click here.

An alternative method of adding a site to your list is to select it from one of the drop-down lists on the site registration page. These lists include the main birdwatching sites in Ireland and major RSPB reserves. To add one of these sites to your list just select it from the drop-down menu and click go. You can also select from a list of top county sites by simply selecting the county and then selecting your site from the new drop-down list. For both methods, the name, county and grid reference will be added to your personal sites list automatically.

What is a Site?

A site can be almost as big (up to a 10km square) or as small as you like. For most BirdTrack recorders a site is going to be a regular birdwatching area such as your garden, a local park or a nature reserve. For these sites you will be able to provide us with a fairly accurate location, such as postcode for a garden (eg IP24 2PU) or a four-figure grid reference for a nature reserve (eg TL8781). If your site overlaps two or more 1km squares, please give the grid reference for the 1km square in which most of the site lies. If you are birdwatching in an area where it is difficult to provide an accurate location, such as Rannoch Moor or Thetford Forest, then a 10km grid reference will be sufficient (eg TL88). After you have registered a site, the site name will appear on a personalised site list every time you use the data entry system. You can then select the appropriate site. If you discover that you haven't registered the site for which you want to enter data you will be able to register it before you proceed.

You can also now upgrade or downgrade your sites for ease of use, and this is ideal for entering casual records. Downgraded sites won't appear in the drop-down list when you enter a species list, nor will they appear on your main 'View my Sites' page. You can also upgrade these sites at a later date if needed.

Most of the time we will map results by 10 km squares and present other results at a regional level. For such analyses it is not vital to provide a highly accurate location for every site although it will be helpful if you are as precise as possible.

Providing accurate grid references will be really useful because it will allow us to disseminate bird records to County Recorders for use in bird reports (with the observer's permission). It would also help if you use site names that are likely to be understood by your local bird recorder.

Site recording and the Bird Atlas 2007-11

BirdTrack and Bird Atlas 2007-11 are running side-by-side and records submitted on one system will be available to the other (for more details on links between the two, click here). To make your BirdTrack records compatible with the Atlas, we need to know a bit more about your registered sites. In particular we need to know the squares your sites cover, and how these lie within tetrads and 10-km squares. To see how we will define your sites, click here.

Recording Visits

For each birdwatching visit we will ask you for some simple information. We will need to know where you went birdwatching, the date and the times of your observations. Recording times are not essential but they do give us a valuable measure of observer effort so we encourage you to record them. You also have the opportunity to enter notes about your visit. These might cover topics such as the weather conditions or which parts of the site were covered.