Recording Wildlife

 

Pauls contribution to our local wildlife is to regularly record moths at a variety of sites locally. Whilst this is his hobby it is not just personnel interest. His records are fed into a county dataset along with other moth hunters across the county thus contributing to our understanding of moth distribution in Notts. But also feeding into a national database. This is also true for birds, butterflies, mammals, plants, amphibians and a range of other critters.

 

And your records also matter even if it is the birds and butterflies seen in your garden , on local walks or in your local nature reserve. Just because something seems common – records still matter – it helps confirms they are found in your patch and may indeed be actually common. It can also help map changes in abundance and distribution.

 

It is easy to record using this link https://record.nottinghamshirewildlife.org/  , these records will feed into county and national databases and just require you to identify location approximately on a map.

 

However it is fair to say that some categories are better recorded than others. You might not be surprised to know that spiders are not well recorded or plant galls, but neither are beetles despite making up 70% of insect species (Darwin was quoted as saying that the number of beetle species suggested that god had and inordinate love of beetles), even more surprising is that mammals are seriously under recorded, but many are small and/or nocturnal.