Where were you?
21 Jan 2014At this time of year many local bird recorders begin accessing BirdTrack records to incorporate into their bird reports. You can help by making sure your sites are informatively named.
Avoid names like 'home', 'garden', 'Scotland' or 'M25' (i.e. road numbers without a place name). If you have a BirdTrack site for your home address, please use the format 'Thetford Nunnery Drive' (not '123 Nunnery Drive' because this will reveal your actual address on the public outputs and does not give local recorders / report writers any indication of the nearest village or town).
To edit a site name in the Beta portal is very straightforward:
- Login via the button at the top left of this page;
- Click 'My places' in the options panel on the left;
- Click on 'Edit' beside the site name you would like to edit;
- Edit the name and then click on 'Save' - it may take a few seconds for the anme to save.
If you use the BirdTrack App for iPhone and Android smartphones, please login online, click Manage my sites and check if any 'Mobile-' sites have been created. If they have, please either merge these into existing sites or give the 'Mobile-' sites a meaningful name, using the same process described above.
The problem with sites named in the automated format 'Mobile-TL1234' is that occasionally the smartphone's GPS does not pick up an accurate grid reference. Without a place name against which to cross-check, the people using your records have no way of confirming that the grid references of 'Mobile-' sites are accurate.
If you need to check the actual location of any site, 'Mobile-' or otherwise, go to 'Manage my sites' and click on the site name. A map of the site will then be displayed.
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