How to access your numbers for the BirdTrack Birdrace

As we've mentioned here, for an extra element of competition, but primarily to make our patchwork worth a little more, we'll be asking you to submit the number of records and complete lists you have submitted to BirdTrack with your scores each month. Our aim is to smash a collective total at the end of 2014 of 1.25 million records!

BirdTrack is free to use web based software that allows to to contribute your sightings to a massive and rapidly growing database on UK and Irish birds, as well as giving you an excellent platform for organising and displaying your own data. The homepage can be found here, but you should note that there are also android and apple apps for use in the field - if you're interested just search for 'BirdTrack' in the relevant app store.

Signing up and using BirdTrack is straightforward - as is retrieving the info we'll be asking you to report with your scores - those who are unfamiliar with the system might be grateful for a little guidance though, so here goes...

What we need from you, month by month, are the numbers of 'complete lists' and individual records that you have entered into BirdTrack that were recorded on your patch. To do this, we'll add a couple of fields to the form we use to get monthly scores from you (via the blog) - and it should be fairly obvious how to fill them in. For you to access the numbers from BirdTrack, read on...


...On the homepage, look in the box on the left hand side and choose the 'Explore my records' option. On the new screen you'll see a series of options labelled Date, Location, Species and Project - have a look through these as they'll help you get the most oout of investigating your own records via BirdTrack. What we need from you are records from a given month (click on the Dates tick box, select the date range radial button, and choose the relevant dates) and from within your patch (click the Locations tick box, click the 'specific locations radial button, and ensure all the locations that are within your patch are listed). Finally, make sure that 'all species' is selected in the Species section.

Hey presto - its as easy as that! The software then returns all the data you've specified, and in the blue bar that hovers underneath the short eared owl, you can find the info we're after - the number of records and complete lists.