With the high summer field season drawing to a close, species recorders may be turning their attention to record keeping and database management plans for autumn-winter.
Last week, GiGL had a very productive meeting with Butterfly Conservation’s Surrey & South West London Branch about records exchange and management. The image this week is therefore a fine example of a much loved butterfly, the red admiral, Vanessa atalata taken earlier this summer in West London.
The Surrey & South London Branch of Butterfly Conservation have a rich resource of records that they have carefully re-databased and organised in the last year. Following exchange of records for the overlapping region of the Vice County of Surrey with Greater London, the butterfly County Recorder for Surrey will now be assisting GiGL by checking for duplicates within our database and bringing verification issues to our attention. In turn, GiGL records will be an additional resource for Butterfly Conservation, to support their work in Surrey & South West London. GiGL also have working data exchange relationships with the Hertford & Middlesex and the Cambridgeshire & Essex Branches of Butterfly Conservation.
To support volunteer recording societies working on their databases and verification, GiGL also sometimes works on data entry and validation of historic records. For example, as part of the ongoing cooperation between GiGL and the London Natural History Society, GiGL Records Officer Lyndsey has spent nearly 400 hours digitising over 20,000 moth records into a database format suitable for the County Recorder to verify. Lyndsey explains more here.
If you are involved with a recording scheme and would like assistance with the digitising of records or are keen to see records uploaded to GiGL’s database where they can be put to use, please contact us.
September 2014