Guidelines for recorders submitting moth records.

Moth records should be sent to the VC coordinator for your particular vice-county rather than directly to the county recorders who can be overwhelmed with records at times. With over 100,000 records submitted per year in various formats, there is considerable work verifying and computerising data. Splitting the work between the VC recorders saves much time in producing an annual report. We strongly recommend MapMate (available from MapMate link) as a simple recording software, as records can be entered quickly and submitted at the click of a button. Records can, however, be sent in any format, and we would rather have records on the back of an envelope than no records at all!

VC coordinators may query records from recorders, particularly inexperienced trappers. Please do not be offended by this. It is very important that records on the central database are accurate and we are anxious to avoid unverified records of certain difficult species being entered. If requested, records from MapMate users must be deleted by the originator. Many species in the county are common and easy to identify, but many can only be identified by genitalia examination. Between these two extremes are moths whose identification can be tricky, and records from experienced observers may be accepted more easily than those from the new moth trapper.

In the species accounts, it shows the level of record verification required for each species of moth in Yorkshire and gives an indication which records are likely to be queried. The grades for Micro-moths are from the Butterfly Conservation national guidelines compiled by Dr John Langmaid, Stephen Palmer, Mark Parsons and Dr Mark Young (January 2016), and the grades for Macro-moths are from National Moth Recording Scheme/Butterfly Conservation v.1.0.1(2021-05-20).

Please read and agree to our Data & Privacy Policy before submitting records or photos. Website maps updated periodically.