When submitting records to the site you will be asked for the following information:

Survey Information

Information about who made the observation, when and where.

Your name, email address and names of recorders

If you have registered on the website, these will be automatically populated. If you are not registered the only field you must complete is your email address. This will be stored privately and will only be used to contact you if further information is required to verify your record. Names of recorders are only needed if they are different from the person entering the data to the website.

Date

Use the calendar to select the date of the observation.

Location

You can use the map to select the location where you observed the species. Alternatively you can enter the grid reference in the British National Grid format (e.g. SE123456) or the decimal lat/long format.

Please only use this website to submit records of wildlife you have observed on the University of York's campuses. If you have registered on this website, your login details will also work on the iRecord website where records of sightings from other locations can be submitted.

Additional information

This box is for comments about the sample. For example, was it part of a specific monitoring programme or project?

What you saw

This is the "occurrence" information. An occurrence is the observation of one species in one time in one place.

Species

Firstly, you will be asked the name of the species you have observed. The site uses a species dictionary so when you start typing a species name in the box in the recording form, a list of options will be provided for you to select from. You can enter common or scientific names.

Certainty

If you are unsure about the identification of the species you have seen, don't be put off submitting the record! You can mark your confidence in the identification as “likely” or “possible”, or just enter the name of the group it belongs to (e.g. butterfly). In the comments section you can provide a description, or you could upload a photograph, so others may be able to help with identification.

For further resources to help with identification, visit the ID help page.

Records submitted to this website are passed on to the iRecord website and checked by a team of experts. Records are tagged as verified, suspect or rejected. These tags are visible on the Explore Records page.

Total count

If you can, also enter the number of individuals of the species you observed. If you are unsure you can leave this blank.

Comment

As well as information that might help with identifying what you saw, you can enter other observations about your sighting here, such as interesting behaviour.

Upload photo

If you can, please upload a photograph as this will help with verifying your record.

If you have any queries please contact us at opalproject@york.ac.uk