All in an hours work

Regular followers of the blog will know that I have been visiting my patch every Sunday morning for 18 years over that time I have recorded a wealth of flora and fauna. Today's visit was a fine summers day and so I thought I would outline my procedure and the typical sightings made.

I started today's visit at 10:09 am, the average temperature was 20.4 degrees C and the average wind speed was 0.0 m/s. I follow a standard route from the mill ponds, along the river bank and back along the field and then short extension across some willow carr and back along the river back to the mill pond..

The birds I recorded today were

Mute Swan 2 not the pair that nested on the site and had 6 cygnets
Magpie 3
Blue Tit 3
Wren 13
Goldfinch 19 mixture of adults and juveniles
Common Whitethroat 6 including two juveniles
Woodpigeon 22
Mallard 1
Robin 2
Grey Heron 1
Nuthatch 1
Carrion Crow 2
Moorhen 2
Blackbird 5
Blackcap 3 including a juvenile
Feral Pigeon 3
Chiffchaff 3
Jay 2
Jackdaw 4
Kestrel 2 one of which persistently mobbed one of the Buzzards
Great Tit 2
Skylark 1 singing male
Greenfinch 1
Common Buzzard 2
Swallow 4
Great Spotted Woodpecker 1
Dunnock 1

Butterflies
Large White 21
Peacock 2
Tortoiseshell 1
Ringlet 3
Large Skipper 2 first of the year recorded

Dragonflies and Damselflies
Emperor Dragonfly 1
Southern Hawker 3
Brown Hawker 2
Azure Damselfly 2
Banded Demoiselle 23 (12 male, 11 female)

Other items of note
Marked increase in the calling chirrups of Roesels Bush-Cricket

I finished recording at 11:11am giving a total recording time of 62 minutes. Today's haul stands at:
28 bird species
5 butterfly species
5 odonata species

The species recorded is most likely an under representation of those actually present and there was some effort to avoid double counting individuals.  I make this post as a way of illustrating how much information can be collected in a relatively short period of time.

What us is this data though? data collection is a passion of mine as a scientist and I process this data annually to track annual and seasonal patterns. I have collected these findings into a report which covers 2004 - 2014 available from Lulu.com if anyone is interested. https://www.lulu.com/en/gb/shop/mark-c-smith/the-natural-history-of-the-saxon-mill/paperback/product-19z2g96z.html. It takes a great deal of time to arrange this data and I hope to update this in  five years to cover the past twenty.

If you are not interested in crunching the numbers then can I suggest the excellent online systems. I use bird journal to keep my records neat and tidy (https://www.birdjournal.com/version-five-desktop-app) which I then export and upload to the BTO Birdtrack online system - https://www.bto.org/our-science/projects/birdtrack

For mammals the Mammal Society have released an incredible mapper app - https://www.mammal.org.uk/volunteering/mammal-mapper/ and works on both apple and android devices.

Enjoy watching wildlife, enjoy taking not of what is around and then contribute to the vast datasets that are being accumulated that help us track the fortunes of our species and act as a dataset to lobby government policy. Even the smallest sighting record is worth its weight in gold.