The primary purpose of this site is to promote the recording of moths in the Lancashire vice-counties VC59 (south of the Ribble) and VC60 (north of the Ribble). This is citizen science at its best and a team of people has been set up to help in this endeavour; it is they who receive your records and verify them before forwarding them on to the local and national databases. There are several methods of getting your records to us (detailed below), but essentially, whichever method you feel comfortable with will result in records going to the County Moth Recorder (CMR) for the VC your records are from for verification and scrutiny. See the Guidelines page for a list of British Moths and the acceptance criteria.

The CMRs workload is divided up primarily by VC and Macro/Micro moths. See the Contacts page for email addresses of those entrusted with this responsibility.

Recording options

iRecord

iRecord is a platform for all your nature observations. Many schemes such as NMRS, iNaturalist, etc feed into the iRecord database. These data are passed to local verifiers who are tasked with verifying the veracity of the records and may contact the recorder if additional information is required.

iRecord intructions for Lancashire Moth Recorders

NMRS

Follow the link to the National Moth Recording Scheme. This is essentially a specific front end to iRecord. You need to register but this will be linked to your iRecord account if you have one. Records will be processed as if they’ve come through iRecord.

Spreadsheets

The automated spreadsheets (one for Macros and one for Micros) have been designed to flag up acceptance criteria for you moth records as you enter them (whether you need in image, specimen, etc) and are formatted so that they can be imported into the master MapMate database. They have sheets for entry by name or the ABH number. Please complete all the fields. They are limited to 1000 records (to make them a manageable size). Some people submit them to the CMR annually, others monthly or anywhere in-between – please contact your local CMR to discuss as necessary.

Spreadsheets Version 24 (March 2024) are available for download below and include all revisions to acceptance criteria. Please delete any old versions you may have. On the recording sheets, you will need to make a copy for your own use – you won’t be able to amend the original. Depending on the browser you use, clicking on the link to the Macro or Micro Entry Spreadsheet will either download it automatically or, in the case of Edge for example, Open it up in Excel online. If this happens, down load a copy from there. If you have any difficulties, contact Dave Bickerton (see Contacts page).

Macro-moth Recording Spreadsheet

Macro Entry v24.01 March 2024 (download Excel spreadsheet)

Micro-moth Recording Spreadsheet

Micro Entry v24.01 March 2024 (download Excel spreadsheet)

Mapmate

Mapmate is a legacy database system that several recorders have used. Please note that support for this system ends in 2025 so new recorders should use the options above.

There is a Lancashire database of records that can be shared to users. A ‘cleansed’ version of this is held as the definitive Lancashire dataset.

Graham Dixon:  troubleatmill[at]btinternet.com  is the Mapmate sync hub for VC59 and VC60. Please contact Graham if you wish to submit records by Mapmate. He can then arrange the replication details with you. 

Other options

Basic Spreadsheet

Please only use this if the automated sheets just will not work for you

Basic Entry Spreadsheet (download Excel spreadsheet)

Paper Templates

Please consider printing these out and passing them to any recorders you know who cannot access a computer to submit records.

Macro Template (download Excel spreadsheet)